Murali Raman, Terry Ryan & Lorne Olfman. (2005). Designing Knowledge Management Systems for Teaching and Learning with Wiki Technology.

Journal of Information Systems Education, 16 (3), 311.

The goal was to enable students to learn about managing the design, development and operation of information technologies for knowledge management. During the semester, students were expected to create, refine, and maintain a knowledge management system, using an instantiation of wiki technology called TikiWiki.

The findings suggest that effective implementation and use of a wiki to support knowledge management for effective teaching and learning is contingent upon familiarity of both students and instructors with the technology, level of planning involved prior to system implementation and use in class, class size, and the ability to motivate students to learn from one another based on the principles of discovery learning.

The participants in the project were undergraduate and graduate students from three Israeli Universities. Students belonged to seven departments: Management, Industrial Engineering and Management, Information Systems Engineering and Management Information Systems

Language of teaching classes: Hebrew, and the other languages including: Arabic, Russian, and English

Range
Undergraduate students – 18-25

Graduate students (executive MBA) 15 yrs older

Wikitextbooks are textbooks which are written using wiki technology.

The need to develop a wikitextbook arose in the context of the teaching of an introductory information systems (IS) course in Israeli Universities.

The proposal was to publish the outdated e-textbook as a wiki, and to invite students and the public to update the outdated textbook.

Each student will work on improving small fragments of the textbook as a part of their learning assignments.

In some classes, the students received credit for updating the wiki, and in other classes updating the wiki was an elective assignment.

The software chosen for the wiki was MediaWiki which allows users to write in any language.

The wiki assignment required students to read and augment existing sub-chapters in the wikitextbook, as well as to create new sub-chapters.

It was assumed that the process of contributing to such a textbook will be an empowering learning experience for the students, and a contribution to the academic institutions, to the discipline and to educators in academia and beyond.

In the period between May 2005 and November 2007, 7894 user edits were carried out on the wikitextbook.

389 sub-chapters were added by the users to the initial 225 sub-chapters, resulting in a total of 564 sub-chapters.

Ninety one images

were added by the users to the initial 172 images.

The students reflected positively over the experience.

The users described how the assignments forced them to explore a topic in more depth than otherwise.

Some students reported that they did not learn anything from the experience since they only wrote what they already knew.

Some students reported that the exercise exposed them to new knowledge while others felt like no new learning took place.

Students described their experiences not only as enjoyable and educational but also specifically as an empowering exercise.

The experience provides a glimpse into the potential of wikitextbooks to become vehicles for the empowerment of students, teachers, and classes, and for the strengthening of educational institutions, disciplines, minorities, and society in general.

The wiki is a participatory medium and students are empowered by their participation in the educational process.

Wikis may also contribute to society if and when they are made freely available online.

Limitations

Issues such as perceptions, attitudes towards technology, and social influence can augment or diminish the usefulness of the technology.

Empowerment is also a relative concept; the empowerment of one stakeholder could potentially weaken another stakeholder.

Differential empowerment, a process by which stronger members are disproportionately empowered, thus increasing the gap rather than narrowing it.

The preliminary and exploratory field study was performed without controlling for independent variables.

Solvie, P.A. (2008).Use of the wiki: Preservice teachers' construction of knowledge in reading methods courses. Journal of Literacy and Technology. 9(2), 57-87.

18 preservice teachers

1. Did learning style preference have an effect on use of the wiki?

2. Did use of the wiki increase understanding of the social nature of literacy?

3. Did use of the wiki increase understanding of reading instructional practices for students with various learning style preferences?

4. Did use of the wiki support students’ ability to construct knowledge in the context of the reading methods course?

1. The wiki addressed all four learning preferences but results showed that not just the wiki as a whole needed to be aligned with learner style preferences but the specific tasks within the wiki.

2. This research found that the students did not connect this wiki experience to reading instructional practices on their own.

3. Participants narrative comments did not vary according to learning style preference.

4. Participants responses indicated they learned about reading instructional approaches from the wiki project.

Wheeler, D., Wheeler, S., & Yeomans, P. (2008). The good, the bad and the wiki: Evaluating student-generated content for collaborative learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39, 987-985.

Four groups of students in the college of education aged 18-25 (n = 35)

To determine the usefulness of wikis in fostering collaboration/support and promoting understanding among students

Students enjoyed the wikis but some found them to be a little unstructured.

Students contributed the wikis but only read the sections of the wiki to which they contributed.

Students took such ownership of their pages that they became emotional. At times they expressed that they would “cry” or become very angry if their contributions were altered in any way.

Contributions can become unbalanced with some students participating substantially more than others.