User:Ryguasu/Toward an ED156 wiki

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For my praxis praxis assignment, I've decided to make a recommendation about what (if any) computer technology should either supplement or replace the ED156 mailing list. My recommendation is based on the idea that the use of computers should facilitate one or more of the following goals:

1. Allowing people to see, and hopefully learn from, (some of) one another's work 2. Encouraging collaborative efforts to reach newer, more nuanced, and more useful ideas, beyond what's possible during class

Note that the second goal's focus on collaboration is a reflection the Dewean ideal of education as a joint endeavor.

My recommendation is that the class should have a Wiki, that is a collaborative web site where anyone in the class can make changes at any time. This should be the main computer-based communications medium for the class, while the mailing list should be either eliminated or limited to very particular uses.

I don't explore what a Wiki *is* in great detail, focusing instead on whether the technology would benefit the class. If you want to see a really thriving Wiki web site, go to www.wikipedia.org. If you are scared of computers, it might interest you that, at least in my mind, I am pretty sensitive about what computer users of different skill levels are and aren't capable of doing. I think you all are capable of using a Wiki.

Sorry about the length; I would need more time to make a more succinct case.

LEARNING FROM OTHERS' WORK

ED156 uses the mailing list to address the first goal above by having students send some of their assignments to the list for all to read. Unfortunately, there are several drawbacks to this approach. First, although one might still learn from an assignment posted several weeks ago, finding old posts via the mailing list archive is cumbersome. Because people don't use identical subject lines in the posts pertaining to a given assignment, it's hard to use the list archive's subject search to find a particular assignment. The alternative, remembering the due date and going to look for messages sent on that date, is hardly convenient. And if you want a very brief summary of what everyone did for a given assignment, well there's simply no easy way to get that at all.

Second, the mailing list archive makes it difficult to keep track of the connections between someone's assignment and someone else comments/questions there about. If someone has found my class observation assignment in the archive, you'd think it would be easy to tell whether or not anyone had posted a comment about it. But there's no reliable way to know.

Third, the above two flaws are exacerbated by the fact that, if *you* manage to find what you're looking for, your effort tends to leave no trace for others to find the same information by an easier path.

Third, the mailing list doesn't provide a way for you to revise an old assignment in light of what you have learned since. This is against the spirit of our first goal, because it forces someone who is trying to learn from your assignment not to learn from your latest thoughts on the matter, but to an outdated version.

A Wiki could allow students easy access to one another's work while also addressing the above flaws. To begin a Wiki-based assignment, Chris A. or a TA would create a page on the wiki site devoted to describing the assignment in general. Then students, instead of posting their response to the list, would create a new page to house their response, and also make a link from Chris' page about the assignment to their own. Note that, when all the students are done, Chris' page will have a link to everyone's particular response to that assignment.

In this situation, the first flaw above becomes a non-issue. For example, you could find Leslie's classroom observation with just a few *sensible* clicks: go to the ED156 page, click on the link for the classroom observation assignment, and finally click on the Leslie link.

To address the second flaw, a sensible Wiki solution would have students append their questions or comments on Leslie's classroom observation to the end of the page where she's posted her observation. Thus if you find the one, you automatically find the other.

As for the third flaw, since a Wiki makes it easy for anyone to create a link from one part of the site to another, any student who finds a useful connection between two different ideas can easily make a link between their corresponding pages -- a link that becomes available for everyone to use.

The fourth flaw would also disappear in a Wiki, since Wikis are designed to support easy revisions to every page. Moreover, they automatically save past revisions, along with their revision dates, which means that this feature can't be used to cheat on deadlines. (This is in contrast to e-mail, where it is easy to lie about when a message was sent.)

I have yet to discover any significant drawbacks to this scheme. It's worth noting that Wikis have been used for similar purposes in classrooms before. For example, [Collaborative Software Lab] describes one class that tried using Wikis for "fishbowl reviews", where students could submit their work to a "fishbowl", so as to receive constructive criticism from interested teachers and students.

COLLABORATING TOWARDS NEW IDEAS

The ED156 mailing list helps students collaborate to develop new ideas by allowing for people to have a class-wide e-mail conversation. A Wiki might be able to provide a more useful forum for these discussions. In addition, it would allow for new, more collaborative activities to take place outside of class.

An e-mail list and a Wiki provide rather different kinds of forums for discussions. The nature of an e-mail list is to store exact, unalterable copies of every previous message, and to keep them ordered (primarily) by date. A Wiki page, in contrast, is very freeform, allowing people to delete or modify their previous comments (or even other people's comments!), to rearrange the comments on the page, to reorganize the discussion in a more fruitful order, to merge two different discussions, etc..

The freeform nature of Wiki discussions arguably has two disadvantages. First, because the discussion is so malleable, it may be difficult to trace back exactly who said what and when. Perhaps someone would be tempted to delete their previous comments they had, say, offended others. Such activity could potentially make it harder to enforce Chris A.'s rule that people must be accountable for what they say. Fortunately, I think it's possible to enforce such accountability norms through social sanctions, so technological barriers may not be necessary here.

Second, Wiki discussions tend to get a bit disorganized, and sometimes require people to "clean them up" a bit. This is work that is not needed on a mailing list. At the same time, it's *impossible* on a mailing list, so things *never* get "cleaned up".

What one gains from the freeform nature of the Wiki, however, is that people are free to reorganize discussions to suit present needs. If comments about a certain topic are scattered helter-skelter, they can easily be brought to one central place for everyone's convenience. Comments that have become irrelevant can be removed. Discussions can be cross-linked to one another. It's easy to make a "see also" section for any discussion, which could, say, point to relevant web pages. All this is to say, one can contribute to a Wiki discussion in more ways than just adding text.

One way to summarize the above is to say that whereas an e-mail list is great for keeping perfect track of a discussion's past, a Wiki is great for keeping a discussion relevant as the present marches toward the future. Now I think the heading of this section -- collaborating towards *new* ideas -- suggests that what's critical about an ED156 discussion is not keeping exact track of what *has happened*, but discovering new things about what *is happening* or *will happen*. To the extent that this is correct, a Wiki seems like a better discussion forum for the class.

In addition to facilitating discussions, Wikis can facilitate additional kinds of collaboration. Perhaps a relevant example for ED156, [Rick, et al.] describe an English class that successfully used Wiki software to allow for collaborative work in close reading. The teacher would post an excerpt from the text on a Wiki page, and the students would mark up and annotate the parts they found interesting. Naturally, students could comment on each others comments as needed. One interesting thing to note is that the same instructor tried doing the close reading exercise with Wiki software in one intro class and with something like mailing list software in the other intro class. I suspect it may be no coincidence that the former class liked the task more and, despite having spent the same amount of time on it as their mailing list counterparts, did better on related tests and assignments.

Another use for Wiki software in ED156 would be coordinating the written work for the final project. Because a Wiki-based final project write-up would involve everyone in the group working on one and the same master copy of the document, this would eliminate much strife traditionally associated with collaborative writing. [Collaborative Software Lab] describes an English teacher who has found that Wiki-based collaborative writing is an effective counter to the "staple-together model", a model wherein each section independently writes his or her section of a paper, resulting in a paper with little coherence and students who don't know what their other group members have written.

FAILURE OF THE CURRENT ED156 WIKI

My unofficial ED156 web site is technically a Wiki; anyone could edit any of the pages. Despite editing the pages not being hard to do, however, no one other than me has found a need to add to or modify the site in any way. Although a few people have suggested they find the site useful as it currently stands, I view the experiment as a failure, since it addresses neither of the goals indicated above. Thus there's a vital question: If ED156 had a Wiki in the future, why wouldn't it fail as well?

The first thing to note is that ED156 shares many attributes with classes where students have generated very elaborate Wikis. Georgia Tech has used Wikis in a great number of its classes, and has studied the conditions of their effectiveness. [Duzdial et al.] report that success is likely for classes where 1) students are willing to collaborate with one another, 2) there is a focus on discussion, and 3) the questions asked tend to have multiple possible answers --- and that failure is likely when these conditions don't hold. In my estimation, ED156 has all these attributes.

One might suspect that the ED156 Wiki failed because it involved learning a little bit of new computer skills. The above authors, however, found that students very rarely avoided Wikis because the technology seemed too difficult. I should note that the software running the ED156 Wiki is very similar to the one they were running, so one might imagine the same result would apply here.

[Collaborative Software Lab] offers what strikes me as the most plausible explanation for the failure of the current 156 site. Most successful uses of Wikis in classrooms, they say, involve introductory Wiki activities encouraged (and often required) by the professor. On our current 156 Wiki, in contrast, there was no direction from Chris A., let alone required activities. In addition, I failed to provide particular activities for people to engage in when they first looked at the site. In light of Chris A.'s "Discussing Discussion" article, that students didn't productively engage with the site is actually not that surprising; if students need clear direction in order to have a successful small group discussion -- and discussion is presumably already part of their lives --, then shoudn't they need *more* direction when introduced to a totally foreign technology?

I believe if Wiki technology was introduced from the beginning of the class and if Chris A. stressed its importance, then an ED156 would not fail but fly.

IS THERE A CATCH?

On the whole, I believe, the above makes a compelling case for using a Wiki in ED156, and for disbanding the mailing list. Aside from the few problems mentioned above, the main difficulties in establishing an ED156 Wiki would be getting a server to run the software and having Chris A. and/or his TA(s) think a bit more about how to make Wiki most useful.

As for the server, there is variety of Wiki software that should be no challenge for a good computer person. (The software I use took me about 10 minutes to install.) If there is one that's going to be in the class (ideally a TA), then problem solved. Alternatively, there are some servers that provide free space for classroom Wikis. This may be a good alternative to setting up a server, although I'd still recommend getting a good computer person on board, who can learn the details quickly and help make them easier for everyone else.

As for the extra thinking, this is probably not insignificant, given that Chris A. is a busy guy. The amount of initial thought may not be as large as first appears, however. If the mailing list were removed and the same assignments were moved over to a Wiki forum, that would provide a good deal of useful stuff to do with the Wiki right off the bat. Once they got familiar with the system, I'd be willing to bet students would suggest others.

REFERENCES

Collaborative Software Lab, College of Computing, Georgia Tech. "A Catalog of CoWeb Uses"

Guzdial et al. "When Collaboration Doesn't Work"

Rick, et al.. "Collaborative learning at low cost: CoWeb use in English Composition"