Theory into Practice: Wikis as collaborative learning tools
Did you know that in 1901 President Abraham Lincoln was exhumed at the request of his son to prevent would be criminals from digging up the body and holding it for ransom? Further, did you know that on this occasion 20 something people looked into Lincoln's coffin and saw his body, 36 years after John Wilkes Booth shot the 16th president in the back of the head while Lincoln was watching a play? (interestingly, his body was so well embalmed that people claimed he was still "recognizable")
If you're anything like me and learning is not just something you do for a living, but something you live for, Wikipedia is like purified caffeine that you directly inject into your bloodstream. Personally, I can't get enough. One subject will link to another and all of the sudden you've gone from reading about cheese making processes to salt domes and energy policy over the years. There have been more than one occasion where much "important" work was set aside as I pulled one of my all night Wiki binges. (what can I say, some people do drugs and booze...I just look up obscure facts)
As with most things I encounter in life, one of my first reactions is always, "neat! now how do I use this in the classroom?" But instructors beware: Wikis are a wily beast that will truly turn a mirror to your own known or unknown beliefs about education. Wikis can be a powerful learning tool in the classroom, but only if you're prepared to spend the time to really understand what is going on.
While I generally assume my audience to be fairly digitally literate and hip to Wikis, I want to back up for a few seconds and talk about what a Wiki is and how it works, if for no other reason to make sure we're all on the same page.
A Wiki is like a webpage. You can access it nearly anywhere (it is distributed). It has stuff on it (content). And it allows for internal navigation (hyperlinks). However, this is where most similarities between static webpages and a Wiki end.
Unlike a regular old webpage, a Wiki is dynamic. That is, it can easily be changed. But most importantly, not only can it be easily changed but it can be changed by a group of people instead of a single person. The single most important idea behind Wikis is that it belongs to a group or community instead of a sole author.
Think of it this way. A Wiki is much like a blackboard. Anyone can walk in, read the content, and add to it, change it, or delete it if they wish. All they have to do is pick up an eraser and a piece of chalk. However, now imagine that by circling a word on this chalkboard, it would automatically link you to nearly any other chalkboard on campus. This is the power of a Wiki.
The idea is pretty simple: the more people who contribute to it, the more knowledge is contained within it. Or, to put it another way, go ahead and name all the presidents from Washington to Bush in order. Can't do it? Neither can I. But if you put 43 people in a room and had them all memorize just one name and their order, as a group it would be a simple task to name all of the presidents in order. The point is knowledge creation and not memorization. Who cares if it took 40 people to create an article as long as it is correct. And, as constructivists everywhere are overjoyed to report...it works. It works very well. Accuracy on Wikipedia, the most well known Wiki out there, is generally judged to be surprisingly high. Even when people purposely add false information, it is almost always corrected in a short amount of time. Much faster, I am happy to point out, than some text books used in classes.
But here's the bottom line: a Wiki won't work if you just toss it into a class. You have to plan for success.
To use the Wiki, you must understand the Wiki
Recently a colleague bumped into me at a coffee shop and mentioned he had seen some of the Wiki projects I have been toying with. One is a Wiki I started that would be dedicated to creative writing pedagogy. He seemed generally enthused about the idea and was curious about the possibility of using other software so it "looked better" and also storing syllabi and other teaching documents into a searchable database. I told him I'd be happy to look into it and we parted ways.
However, after he left it occurred to me that my colleague, while having really great intentions, was not quite grasping the whole point of a Wiki. A Wiki is not content presentation. A Wiki is not content storage. A Wiki is not a content database that can be searched. Rather, quite simply, a Wiki is pure content/knowledge creation. It is a tool to produce content, to produce knowledge. And no, it isn't pretty. It isn't streamlined. Rather, a Wiki is an unruly river going in whatever direction it can go in order to find its way. You can build all the levees you want, but a Wiki will go where it needs to. In a sense, it almost has a life of its own. Wikis are truly happiest when they are doing what Wikis should do.
This leads me to a point which is probably one of the most critical ones I can make concerning Wikis: if your teaching methods are foundational (that is, you provide the content and your students receive it), a Wiki is the absolute last thing you want to unleash in your class.
Wikis were not meant with content and knowledge transmission in mind. While it is true that I can peruse the Wikipedia for hours on end, what makes it engaging is that I am an active participant in exploring the knowledge of a community. Additionally, I can add to that knowledge or change it if I want (even if I do not). Because of this, the knowledge found on Wikipedia becomes part of the world I live in and participate in. I can actively choose to accept or question the authority of the Wikipedia. Knowledge, in the Wiki world, becomes something that is fluid and participatory.
For the majority of instructors in postsecondary environments, this is the exact opposite of what they want. As Ken Bruffee notes in his Collaborative Learning: Higher Education, Interdependence, and the Authority of Knowledge, "The normal goal of Lecture Convention teaching is to provide answers, promote the authority of those answers, and enhance the authority of the lecturer providing them. Since answers imply questions, it would seem that the role questions play in Lecture Convention teaching must be particularly interesting and varied. In most cases, however, it is not. Most lecturers answer questions they are prepared and willing to answer. They may answer some questions students ask, they may finesse other questions with a quip or joke, sometimes at the questioner's expense, they may refuse to answer questions, or they may lecture so long that there is no time left to entertain questions"
In this scenario, there is no room for a Wiki. The dominating attitude towards learning in American universities, whether instructors are conscious of it or have never thought about it enough to recognize it, is built upon an assumption that all authority for knowledge flows through the instructor. A Wiki is a direct threat to this. A Wiki, when successful, is built upon an assumption that the authority for knowledge belongs equally to a community of peers and not one single individual. Of these two assumptions, there can be no mixing.
The reason you cannot throw a Wiki and its assumptions into a classroom built upon an assumption that authority rests in the hands of the instructor is that whenever that authority by an instructor is invoked, students must adhere to it and use it as the basis for all of their actions. If they do not, it is clearly understood that their grades will suffer as a result. Simply put, you cannot tell a student what the correct answer is and then ask them to come up with different answers. Further, you cannot ask a student to come up with their own answers and then tell them what the correct one is. For Wikis to truly be a successful addition to a classroom, it must be accompanied by a philosophy that the authority for knowledge in a classroom is with out fail and exception, shared equally by all members of that classroom.
A Wiki is more than just facts, it is a community
One of the most fascinating aspects of a Wiki is the community aspect of it. It is, in all senses of the word, a true network. Ideas link to other ideas, which in turn connect the knowledge of one member to another. In this regard, a Wiki is a subtle form of social networking. Like other forms of social networking and computing, when members of a community become involved in each other's network, a sense of personal motivation and connection result (see my previous entry on Facebook and Myspace)
In my own classes, I have sought to find a way to help students see this connection by crafting an "assignment" that walks students through the steps of using a Wiki. In doing so, a few things are accomplished. Students are actually asked to participate by forming their own section of the Wiki. Further, students are asked to seek connections they may have with other students. At the end of the assignment (usually given during the first week), students know how to use the Wiki and have begun to see how they are connected to each other. The whole point is to start to form a true community of diverse individuals who are still connected by common experiences and knowledge. Since students are going to be relying on and trusting the authority of each other for knowledge in the classroom, it only makes sense that this trust in a community is started early in the class.
(To see and participate in (and please do!) a working example of this, head over to the Instruction Underground Wiki where a running copy of this assignment is live and available for UMN students to participate in. If you're not from the UMN, you can still view it, but you will be unable to edit pages)
In final, Wikis can and are a powerful tool but only when the shoe of educational philosophy fits the foot. Most cases where I have seen Wikis either fail outright or just fail to live up to expectations, it has been due to the fact that Wikis were implemented in a classroom where the traditional assumptions in foundational education were still in place and had not been critically questioned. When this happens, the technology of Wikis fail to pull their own weight and become arduous busy work for students and faculty alike. And if there is no good reason to use technology, there is no good reason to use it.