Lyndsay Grant’s "'I DON'T CARE DO UR OWN PAGE!' A Case Study of Using Wikis for Collaborative Work in a UK Secondary School" reveals one of the central truths regarding web 2.0 technologies: just like any other tool that has been used in the educational arena, the tool itself won’t do the work of Superman in the classroom, bringing about great heights of educational achievement—wikis don’t result in classroom success simply by assigning students a project that requires them. Rather, wikis exist as a tool that have the potential to enable students to interact and show their learning in new ways, and like any other tool, require upfront instruction in their proper use (to avoid serious injuries—or at least mistakes and frustration).
In the process of working on this wiki project with Theresa Hafeli and Alice Kedves, it became clear to us early that Grant’s article functions largely as a cautionary tale: sometimes, with the allure of new technologies, we throw up our hands and exclaim, “Yes, our savior has arrived!” only to soon realize that—yes, just as we knew before and have been painfully reminded of again—no technology will save us. As a result, then, Grant’s article highlights the importance of three items that are key to education in any context, and uniquely key in the context of teaching with wikis: 1) equipping students with the skills required to succeed, 2) modeling these skills, and 3) applying these skills in ways that will lead to positive social—and learning—interactions. As a secondary school English teacher, it was heartening to condense Grant’s discoveries into these three items, as they are relatable and relevant in my regular teaching life, allowing for easy transference into my practice.
First, the idea that it is important to equip students with the skills necessary to succeed in any task is something of a no-brainer. However, in Grant’s article she explains that she did not explicitly teach such skills before starting the wiki project with her students, and it seems clear to that this issue turned out to be the crux of her experiment. As Johann Larusson and Richard Alterman note in their essay "Wikis to Support the ‘Collaborative’ Part of Collaborative Learning,” wikis do not guarantee that students will either learn or collaborate. In my own teaching life, then, I regard wikis as simply one more medium that students might use as part of class. Just like other mediums already used to show learning in my class—written work, posters, picture essays, PowerPoints, presentations, speeches—wikis offer an opportunity for learning, but not a guarantee. In this way, it has made it much clearer for me to understand what exactly must go into the frontloading of a class before I can expect students to successfully use wikis. This is both an exciting—I’m looking forward to integrating wikis—and a comforting—it’s not unlike other tools I already have students use in my class—thought. Before requiring students to give a PowerPoint presentation, I would explicitly teach to any holes in knowledge or skill areas that students display; the same rule applies for wikis.
Second, the importance of modeling the correct use of any tool or process is absolutely essential to the success of students. It simply makes sense: since elementary school, we’ve seen first hand that learning occurs more effectively when we show rather than tell. Following the “I do, we do, you do” model of instruction, one important thing to do with my students before requiring them to use a wiki is to—using my own computer projected onto my white screen—complete the “I do” part: go step by step through each function that they’ll be required to use. Then we will go to a computer lab (or bring laptops into my classroom) and play with the wiki together, getting the hang of it until all students understand each function (“we do”). Finally, students should be in a place where they can proceed on their own and dive into a project (“you do”). In our research we discovered that many teachers, when faced with the idea of integrating technology into their teaching, do so with the thought that the students already are familiar with all the technology that they are being asked to use, and that, further, the students can learn how to use most technologies faster than adults. Apparently, though, there is some research out there to suggest that this is not true. The truth, in fact, is that kids don’t know everything (surprise, surprise) even when it comes to technology, and that adults tend to be faster learners. This idea likely answers the question posed by Lund Andreas and Ole Smordal in their essay “Is There a Space for the Teacher in a Wiki?”—yes.
Another important step in modeling skills before using a wiki for a project is the social aspect: students need to already be well versed in areas such as involvement in peer editing and giving and receiving feedback. In my own teaching, this is where transference comes in and plays a huge part, as these social learning skills are already explicitly taught and used by students in all my courses; the only difference is that before they’ve been carried out in the realm of pen and paper. Now, with wikis, they are carried out in virtual realms, but the same underlying rules apply: be positive and productive in feedback, give specific and detailed feedback, and take others’ comments seriously. As a teacher, I often find myself saying something like, “Remember last month when we did _______? Well, this (new thing) is just like that except ________....” This same phrase will often be used when introducing wikis into the classroom.
Thirdly, and finally, the importance of actively applying the above skills in ways that will lead to student success is essential. This generally means that the active participation of the teacher throughout the students’ experience with wikis is vital. Whereas before I may have walked around my classroom to listen in on conversations between student groups giving writing feedback to ensure their positive progress, I now need to be involved on the wiki in a similar way: monitoring the back and forth of editing carried out by students, giving both praise and advice myself when and where needed. Research shows that it is not true that, just because students are online and using a wiki to mediate their experience of writing and collaborating, they are fully self sufficient or can be left to their own devices. I suspect that, near the end of the school year after much work on using wikis successfully, an ideal goal for the students and the teacher might be that the students can work self-sufficiently, but it is a long journey that must take place before such genuine self-sufficiency occurs.
A couple of other items as side notes: as teacher, I am always looking for ways to the content and the delivery of the content engaging to students. Wikis do a nice job, in some ways, of achieving this goal, as most of my students are constantly becoming more and more immersed in online, computer-based lives. In this way, wikis allow for interaction that is more relevant, and perhaps more engaging, to the everyday lives of students than pen and paper. Additionally, wikis serve as wonderful archives, naturally forming a story that tracks the progress and changes made by students throughout a project or projects. In this way, wikis have great potential to serves as digital versions of the “learning” or “writing” portfolios that have formerly been compiled and presented in binders.
Throughout the process of creating this wiki, Alice and Theresa were fantastic to work with. The project progressed, I felt, like many distance education group projects do: everyone did a great job of doing quality work and communicating via email, but different geographic locations and life schedules mean that projects don’t move forward as fast as they do with face-to-face learning. This phenomenon in itself has interesting implications in the realm of studying the student use of wikis: what do we learn to commonly expect from online learning as adults that we might teach to and expect from our high school students when they do wiki projects?
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