Blogs and Wikis: Models on the Road to 2020 for Transition and Student Engagement in Collaborative Spaces
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Description
As an instructional medium, wikis have many advantages. Their collaborative nature enables a class to tackle projects larger than a single individual could attempt. The ability of students to view their colleagues' work allows for cross-fertilization of ideas. Looking forward to the next decade and beyond, wikis seem destined to play a larger role. Widespread usage of social-networking sites is making students more comfortable with Web-based interaction, even those studying non-technical fields. Mass collaboration facilitated by wikis is becoming more important in the economy (cf. Tapscott and Williams’ Wikinomics). In an era where educators have difficulty keeping up with technological change, wiki-based collaboration allows students to scout out new material, leaving a legacy for later classes to learn from and build upon. Read More..
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In 2007, Learning Advisers and faculty at the University of South Australia (UniSA) instigated an orientation program which required first year undergraduate Computer Science students to use blogs to document their trails through what has become known as the “CIS Quest,” a means of nurturing community and facilitating student engagement. Early indications have shown positive shifts in the retention and success of the students and the Quest has become a model for other schools. Andrea Duff unpacks the humble blog and poses two questions around the notion of “university communities” in 2020. Who will their constituencies be and what place may blogs have in sustaining them?
At North Carolina State University, Ed Gehringer’s Evaluation of Wikis through Peer Review offers new insights to the use of collaborative spaces to enhance student learning. Wikis enables a class to tackle projects larger than a single individual could attempt through a cross-fertilization of ideas. Looking forward to the next decade and beyond, wikis seem destined to play a larger role in higher education. The Expertiza project at North Carolina State University provides an infrastructure for peer review, and allows instructor and students to interact to assess and help students improve their work. Projecting to 2020, Gehringer suggests that students will be increasingly comfortable with social networking and collaboration as key ingredients in learning tools for the future.
