Upcoming Presentation on using a Wiki in the Classroom

A fellow grad student, Dave Elfving, and I will be presenting at the Teaching and Learning with Technology conference on March 2nd at Purdue University. The title is “When does a wiki work? A case study in graduate education” and we’ll be discussing our experience over the past year and a half of using a wiki in our department – focussing on the first semester where we used it extensively in one class and hardly at all in another. It’s part of Dave’s thesis and more of a side project for me, but one I’ve been interested in for some time. It’s nice to work on something a bit different than my thesis, keeps the gears turning. We’ll have a few video clips of people talking about the wiki & we’ll post everything online afterward.

I suggested using a wiki on the first day of class (even then I was thinking it would be an interesting case) and it went from there. As time went on several broader questions emerged.

* What is the place of collaborative writing in graduate education & academia?
* Why do people contribute, and in what way do the do so?
* What is the pedagogical value?

Hopefully we’ll have a good discussion.

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You’re currently reading “Upcoming Presentation on using a Wiki in the Classroom,” an entry in Ericka Menchen-Trevino, the blog of Ericka Menchen Trevino

Published:: 01.15.06

Tags: education, education2.0, Research, wiki

Prentiss Riddle 02.08.06 / 2pm

I wish I could be there to hear your talk. Last year I was part of an unintended side-by-side experiment on this topic at UT’s School of Information. One of my profs introduced wikis in his classes and another introduced a blog. Of the two, I’d say the blog was more successful.

The blog format — post a paragraph or two about something of interest, or respond to other people’s posts — seemed analogous enough to classroom discussion for people to get the idea, and easily mappable into the “participation” portion of our grade.

The blank slate of the wiki, by contrast, seemed to discourage students from becoming active participants, and the fact that changes and attributions were out of sight in each page’s history made it harder to see how one might be rewarded for participating. The main activity that took place in the wiki was the one specific task the prof requested, to post our papers and presentations, a pretty far cry from the interesting ways people use wikis in the wild.

Just one experience, and I’m sure others’ would differ.

Ericka 02.10.06 / 7pm

Interesting, and I can see how that could happen, but it was just the opposite for our class – probably because we introduced the wiki first and the the purpose of the blog seemed murky, I think. Thanks for the comment.

adam claridge 03.01.06 / 5pm

i, too, would love to be able to hear what you have to say on this. i am a final year education student looking to work in primary shcools and am just now embarking on looking at how a wiki might work (or not) in a primary school setting.

(“primary” = “elementary”)

cheers.

Ericka Menchen-Trevino

Upcoming Presentation on using a Wiki in the Classroom

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