Wikis: what we have learnt

We're into the final stages of preparing for the new term and I've just finalised the pre-course activites for new students on the D&T education course. This is the thrid one i've set up and each time I tweak it, hopefully making improvements. We've been using wikis at NTU for the past 4 years as part of the pre-course induction with our undergraduates. My colleague Sarah Davies initiated this in 2009 exploring the effectiveness of wikis as part of new student induction. She set up a wiki with ‘pre-entry’ activities such as getting to know you and joining a group. The wiki is useful for setting up online tasks prior to starting university. For our new students aren't able to access the university VLE as it they need to enrol first so the wiki (we use pbworks.com) is outside the university site. 

Although Sarah's findings indicated some students struggled with the wiki we persevered and three years later wikis are used throughout the course, not only for pre-course induction. We like wikis because they encourage collaboration which we see as a central part to learning in higher educaiton but also in design and technology.

We conducted research with the 2011 and 2012 cohorts of students using a framework from Salmon (2004). Salmon's work was primarily to do with online learning but her framework helped us understand the interactions taking place on the wiki and also develop our wikis. This has its own drawback s but on balance it works for us

This is the fourth year of using wikis as part of the pre-entry and through trial, error and research we've learnt:

• keep the web address simple – a long web address can be off-putting
• use the same format for each activity; the purpose of the task, what needs to be done, how to respond to others and using your time wisely;
• keep each task simple, don't ask participants to do more than one thing at a time
• plan the activites to scaffold collaboration online:
• • We encourage socialisation on the wiki in the first few activities: hello, who are you and join a group online
  • We link to the wiki during welcome week and in the first design assignment 
• involve the whole team, lecturers, support staff and technicians

Want to read more about our work? Follow these links:

DAVIES, S., and HARDY, A., 2011. Getting to know you: design and technology education students transition into higher education learning. In: PATT25/CRIPT 8: Perspectives on Learning in Design & Technology Education, London, 2-5 July 2011. London: Goldsmiths University, pp. 151. 

HARDY, A., and DAVIES, S., 2011. Working with diverse groups of learners in the digital age: 6: blended learning tools to support collaborative learning.

 SALMON, G., 2004. E-moderating. 2nd ed. London ; New York: RoutledgeFalmer.