Meg’s EduPedia objectives

Your EduPedia objectives

What are you hoping to learn from this module? Your objectives can be the same as mine, but is there anything else you are expecting to learn? Write down your thoughts, discuss with a partner or small group in the class, or wiki it!

Discuss it on the discussion thread for this topic

Introduction

Wow! Wikis sound fantastic! I want to start using them right now in class! Well, before you do, you need to think a few things through. This module is aimed at using wikis in a course context and starts you off with some of the educational design ground work you will need to undertake before you start using wikis in class. If you’re using wikis purely for professional or class management purposes, you might want to skip ahead to the Privacy, security and copyright module.

Focus questions: Educational design

What educational design process do you normally go through when starting up a new course or class topic? Can this be effectively transferred or modified to the wiki context? How important to you is the instructional design process? What are your strengths when it comes to designing education for your students? Where do you typically fall down? What do you need to know more about? Write down your thoughts, discuss with a partner in the class, or wiki it!

Discuss it on the discussion thread for this topic

Wiki considerations

Like anything to do with the use of technology for education, it’s the hard, curriculum, educational or instructional design work that underpins how successful your class blogging experiences will be. Have you thought about

• Your purpose or vision for the wiki?
• Your objectives? Learning outcomes?
• Your audience?
• What students will be doing on the wiki?
• How will you communicate your expectations?
• How will you cover the set curriculum?
• How you will use the wiki to scaffold learning into the wiki environment?
• How will you evaluate the effectiveness of using the wiki in class?
• What types of exchanges you want from students in the wiki discussions?
• What types of information do you want their pages to consist of?
  
• What connectionsstudents should be making between the course materials?
• How to get students engaging with controversies in the area?
• Where students will source their data from?
• What concepts do you want students to engage with?
• What other tools you will encourage students to use to meet your learning objectives?

Make sure you (based on Farmer's advice for blogs, 2005)

• Are clear about why you will use a wiki/wikis over other things
• Use wiki for what they are good for (collaborating, communicating, sharing information — see the module on wikis in education)
• Use proven wiki tools such as WetPaint, WikiSpaces, or PBWiki
  
• Tell students how you will assess their work
• Include instructions and guidelines for tasks, problem-solving approaches and work routines (Tan, Ow and Ho 2005: 4) (pdf)

Some more practical considerations might also be

• Will you need any technical or teaching assistance in setting up the wiki?
• How much time to you have to manage wikis in the classroom?
• Will you moderate pages and discussions or will you ask students to work in rotating teams to do it?
• Are you using the wiki to encourage individual student work or group student collaboration?
• Will you let students set up their own wikis or will you do it for them? If you let them set up their own wikis, will you require that they use the wiki software that you specify, or can they chose their own? If they choose their own, what minimum requirements must it meet in terms of functionality?

Jonathan Davies conducted Real Live Research on wiki use and says that

• Wiki users should have a common goal
• Wikis can build up areas of redundancy
• Trust is all
• You need a strong wiki community for it to work
• Wikiing must be valuable on a personal level
• There are sometimes issues over provenance
• There can be a lack of and collegiality and collaboration
• Some contributers get concerned over who owns what
  

The ADDIE model

If you don’t know of the ADDIE model, then it might be useful to have a quick look at it. It basically means that for each educational experience you design, you should:

• Analyse
• Design
• Develop
• Instruct
• Evaluate

Check out the links and resources section below if you want to learn more.

Exercise: Your class context

Think of a class context in which you would want to use a wiki. Create a design for your students’ educational experience, based on the considerations outlined above. What learning outcomes do you want? What wiki strategies and tasks will you use so that your students reach those outcomes? Write down your thoughts, discuss with a partner or small group in the class, or wiki it! You can also use Meg's wiki plan to help guide you (pdf, 296 KB).

Discuss it on the discussion thread for this topic

Reflection

Write down your thoughts, discuss with a partner or small group in the class, or blog it!

Links and resources

Educational design
Instructional design basics, (pdf) John McGloon

Instructional design, Hari Srinivas

Web-based instructional design, Virginia Tech

Instructional design template for the Web, Ken Oliver

Instructional design tips for online learning, onlineteachers wiki

Using wikis

Designing Knowledge Management Systems for Teaching and Learning with Wiki Technology. A very comprehensive case study from 2005.

My brilliant failure: wikis in the classroom, by heather