EDU651 Week Two Assignment

Wow, this has been a great week. I learned more than I ever thought I would about Wikis. I would not have ever considered using a Wiki as a learning event however Wikis are a great way of sharing ideas and collaborating with a group of peers or other learners on projects, events or online learning.

I read chapter 1 through chapter 6 of, Using wikis for online collaboration: The power of the read-write web by J.A. West and M. L. West (2009). This book is easy to read and presents some very compelling reasons to use a wiki in an online environment.

Wikis hold great promise for online learning and collaboration however; instructors should avoid pitfalls that can derail learning. A few pitfalls that I will look out for are:

• Avoid building an entire course within a wiki. This practice is not recommended and instructors should combine other tools such as blogs and discussion threads to help stimulate ideas and opinions in the online classroom. Have a clear plan of how you want students to interact with one another and what outcomes you want from the content. A wiki may not contribute to the growth and development that you are looking for in your students.
  
• Avoid regulating users to editing only their own work. The idea is for users to collaborate and learn from others and instructors and the group should relinquish ownership and control of the wiki. Providing students with etiquette guidelines can relieve some of the conflict that may arise when peer editing takes place.
  
• Finally, instructors should recognize the learning differences and styles of their students. In a corporate environment for example, the participants can be a mix of Millenials and adult learners and these groups will have different skills and learning goals. Instructors should recognize these differences and develop learning events that will work for all participants.
  

I am looking forward to creating my wiki event that will be presented in week 4 of our class. The contextual application will focus on a team challenge that will be based on products and services learned in class.

The challenge to this type of learning project is that learners could become too competitive rather than developing selling strategies that will benefit them once they are in their stores.

Wish me luck on this project. If it works, I may be able to introduce it to my team.

 

Reference

West, J.A. & West, M.L. (2009). Using wikis for online collaboration: The power of the read-write web. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.