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Mar 18

Patterns of Technology Use in Wikis in Higher Education

From: http://home.howstuffworks.com/prickly-pear-cactus.htm

Thomas and Minocha (2007) reported student feedback on the introduction of a Moodle wiki in a Requirements Engineering (RE) course at the UK Open University. The authors proposed three questions to review the success of the wiki and the course (p. 2):

  • Did the wiki activities facilitate collaborative learning as we intended?
  • What other tools might support collaborative requirements development?
  • What are the challenges in teaching collaborative RE using a wiki?

A number of issues arose during the course. The design of the original course was based upon independent learning by the students. The introduction of the wiki created a collaborative, group-based approach to fulfilling the assignments. The scoring system had to be revised to take into account both individual contributions and group activities. In addition, the andragogy moved from an independent learner to include numerous elements of social constructivism. Finally, one of the other issues revolved around motivation. In order to get the students to apply the wiki, numerous papers, and articles related to requirements engineering were used as the topics for discussion. Those outcomes suggest that traditional courses should not just be changed with the introduction of a wiki, but need to be completely redesigned, similar to problem discovered in moving traditional courses to online courses.

Mixed methods for deriving answers to survey questions were used by the authors to query up approximately 117 students. Qualitative feedback from many of the open-ended questions suggested:
the sharing of ideas, including constructive feedback, contributed to the students ability to reflect and modify their own views;
collaborative authoring contributes to the iterative requirements engineering process;
missed assumptions and inconsistent requirements were more easily identified.

In the next iteration of the RE course, Thomas and Minocha (2007) indicated that a number of initial problems encountered in the first offering had been overcome. A significant problem was the lack of discussion capabilities within the version of the Moodle wiki, and enhanced capabilities would be included in the future. In a five-month course, the logistical challenges of getting students together to self-organize for meetings requires the application of a scheduler augmented to the wiki. Finally, the inability of the students to meet face-to-face and carry out other online socialization activities diminished the trust among group members who were relative strangers. Again, the insights we gain from these findings are the need to significant functionality as part of a wiki platform.

Thomas, King, Mincoha, and Taylor (2008) followed up this initial study and expanded it to include 250 students in two courses at the UK Open University encompassing 56 wikis. The two courses included a post-graduate Computing course, Software Requirements for Business Systems, which emulated the original Requirements Engineering course in 2007; and a post-graduate course in the Business School entitled Current Issues in Public Management and Social Enterprise. A qualitative inductive analysis was applied to identify emergent themes. The wikis were strictly text based and designed to be exceptionally simple in the toolset. The goal was to concentrate on content, not presentation. Even simple changes to a wiki page were not being tracked, since any modification by a new author may be captured at the page level, but the author of the change cannot normally be associated with text changed within a wiki page.

Simple wikis were defined as “a pull, not push, technology, which means that contributions are unknown unless one deliberately looks for them” (Thomas, et al., 2008, p. 79). Constrained tools like a simple wiki exhibited many limitations. Simple wikis are strictly text-based, do not accommodate rich formatting, and cannot handle diagrams, images and photos. Richer, more complex wikis can accommodate multimedia material, provides alerts and subscriptions to modified pages, and has very rich features for formatting text and data on the page. In conclusion, an attempt to utilize simple wikis failed because the students anticipated very rich formatting of content as well as accurate presentation. Additionally, many of the logging and discussion forum features that would comprise function rich wikis were identified as very useful, again suggesting sophistication in the tools need to appropriately apply a wiki to a classroom situation.

Bruns and Humphreys (2007) stumbled upon a very insightful observation associated with user interface. After noting that a sparse MediaWiki environment hindered the learners in a course, the Bruns and Humphreys introduced Atlassian Confluence™, which had much richer functionality. The correct technology appeared to effect adoption as well as learning. Schroeder (2008) suggested that the use of a wiki by learners required the development of best practices that need to be conveyed in order to successfully overcome the challenges of using the wiki architecture by novice learners:

  • Create a culture of trust among wiki participants;
  • Set up conventions and require students to abide by these;
  • Have a common goal for all participants;
  • Assign meaningful, authentic activities;
  • Include explicit instructions and provide time for practice;
  • Remind students of course deadlines and schedules;
  • Define and identify roles for collaborative activities;
  • Provide clear and explicit course expectations;
  • Model examples of collaborative activities; and
  • Be patient with students and realize they may need help.

Bruns, A., & Humphreys, S. (2007). Building collaborative capacities in learners: The M/Cyclopedia Project, revisited. In Proceedings of the 2007 International Symposium on Wikis (WikiSym ’07). New York, NY: ACM.
Schroeder, B. (2008). Within the wiki: Best practices for educators. Presented at the Educause Western Regional Conference.
Thomas, P., King, D., Minocha, S., & Taylor, J. (2008). Wikis supporting authentic, collaborative activities: Lessons from distance education. In Rethinking the Digital Divide. University of Leeds, UK.
Thomas, P., & Minocha, S. (2007). Using a wiki to facilitate learning on a Requirements Engineering course. In Proceedings of the Higher Education Academy’s Eighth Annual Conference, August 2007. (pp. 28-30). University of Southampton.

Feb 17

New Forms of Learning

Cactus 6

Silverstein (2009) suggested increased learning absorption and retention by undergraduate students taking an engineering course in Material and Energy Balance. The learners were obligated to interact with a wiki after a lecture and reflect upon selected textbook chapter elements. Although many benefits were observed in the evolving student learning after lectures and through the interaction on the wiki, Silverstein did note two outcomes that were contradictory:

Comparing exam performance by this semesters’ students with previous terms students show no statistically significant differences… Students that the instructor suspected at the start of the course would be unable to complete the course were successful early in the course and were able to demonstrate learning sufficient to pass the course with a ‘C’ or better. (par. 19)

Tselios, Altanopoulou, and Katsanos (2011) confirmed this last observation in their study involving 36 first-year students attending an Introduction to Web Science course. The study consisted of a pretest-posttest design. In this study, learners who initially were poor performers improved almost 30% over the duration of the course. Not only were notable learning gains reported but the students also indicated better writing performance, increased self-organization skills, and improved collaborative group processes. The authors concluded “…that a properly designed, framed wiki-based activity could substantially facilitate students to achieve high levels of learning.” (p.5).

Forte and Bruckman (2006) executed a detailed study of freshman learners in an American government course at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Three basic questions drove the study (p. 3):

  1. To what extent do students’ interactions online affect their reasoning and writing?
  2. How does publishing influence students’ beliefs about their writing and motivation to write well?
  3. How does publishing influence the content and tone of students’ writing?

Reasoning and learning was affected. The analysis of the first and final drafts of essays showed that 80% of the learners using peer evaluation in the wiki to revise papers and 90% received feedback associated with the argument of the essay and its content. Most learners did not perceive the public nature of a wiki as a site that would be outward facing to the public, especially after the course finished, when it would become a resource. Explicit permission was obtained from learners to reuse their material in the future, but learners were quite naïve and did not comprehend the true nature of the wiki or the fact others (in the public) might find their work interesting. The pilot suggested that an online audience of a public wiki played a crucial role in creating meaningful and effective writing-to-learn. In conclusion, the authors described the basis for moving forward from this pilot (p.6):

…wiki-supported information resources … signal a unique opportunity for student writers to enrich public discourse in a way that serves a real purpose and engages a real audience…Online publishing can encourage students to adopt the view that writing is one part of a collaborative process that involves both their efforts and the disposition and ability of their readers experiences. A sense of audience is a vital part of written communication.

A study by Guth (2007) at the University of Padua confirmed the value Forte and Bruckman discovered for engaging learners on public, classroom-based wikis (p. 65):

  • writing on a public wiki promotes collaboration beyond the classroom;
  • publishing online leads to an increased sense of responsibility and more accurate writing;
  • knowledge sharing on a public wiki gives students a sense of empowerment.

Nonetheless, Guth concluded that learners using a semi-public wiki, because they did not lose ownership of their pages to anonymous users, experienced a higher comfort level.

___________________________________________________

Forte, A., & Bruckman, A. (2006). From Wikipedia to the classroom: Exploring online publication and learning. In Proceedings of the International Conference on the Learning Sciences, (Vol. 14, pp. 182-188). Bloomington, IN.

Guth, S. (2007). Wikis in education: Is public better? In Proceedings of the 2007 International Symposium on Wikis (WikiSym ’07). New York, NY: ACM.

Silverstein, D. (2009). Improving student learning by encouraging reflection through class wikis. In Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Conference (AC2009-493), Austin, TX. Retrieved from: http://www.engr.uky.edu/~aseeched/papers/2009/493_IMPROVING_STUDENT_LEARNING_BY_ENCOURAGIN.pdf

Tselios, N., Altanopoulou, P., & Katsanos, C. (2011). Effectiveness of a framed wiki-based learning activity in the context of HCI education. In Proceedings of the 2011 15th Panhellenic Conference on Informatics (PCI ’11). (pp. 368-372). Washington, DC: IEEE Computer Society.

Feb 17

Week 1: Speaker: Mark Newman, CEO, HireVue


Product/Service:
Mark described a new digital tool for revolutionizing the job interview. The tool is a SaaS [System as a Service], cloud-based, on demand application that corporations are implementing to save considerable time and effort during the recruitment process. According to Mark, a number of activities surrounding the recruitment process have become highly automated over the last two decades, except one, the actual interview.

When a firm creates an opportunity for candidates to be interviewed, the recruiter creates a number of questions, emails a link to questions and invites candidates to record responses via webcam – whenever, wherever. Then the recruiter can watch, rate, share, and compare the candidate interviews at anytime! Kind of like streaming my favorite videos.
HireVue’s Digital Interview Platform™ encompasses digital interview guides, question libraries, real-time evaluation, and feedback tools. According to Mark, the platform, improves consistency and quality of interviews, permitting the recruiters to perform 10X faster, 9X cheaper, and significantly better. Once prescreening of candidates takes place, the short list of potential candidates can be moved around the firm to other stakeholders, who view and rate in their own time. Upon finalization, a candidate or suite of candidates may be invited to a face-to-face interview, or a more detailed asynchronous interview with new questions to be answered.

His Story:
Mark is Canadian, and has a wry sense of humour that someone like me, who is also Canadian, can really appreciate. Mark told some great stories of his startup days, mentioning the close, cramped quarters he and his original team shared for a number of years. However, the firm has now grown substantially. Mark mentioned how 2012 was a turning point for the firm. For the fiscal year ended January 31, 2013, HireVue’s revenues grew by ~170%, it added 140 new customers (an increase of more than 100% over 2011) and it received > 150 renewal/add-on transactions from existing its customer base.
Mark proposed a number of suggestions to the audience. He said that if you talked too much about an idea, without action, you might as well give it up. You must act and build to its achievement and success. He commented on how life is an adventure, and if you are fearful of acting upon your goals, then you will not contribute, learn, or experience your potential.

A second story he told resulted from an audience member’s question asking how to prepare for an interview. Mark mentioned first to “be yourself” use the STAR model to frame responses to the interview questions:

  • S – Situation: Describe a situation from your work or personal experience that would hook the interviewer and demonstrate your capabilities/skills.
  • T – Task: Outline the tasks that were involved, so the recruiter understands the context.
  • A – Action: Indicate the actions you took to solve the situation that challenged you.
  • R – Results: Specify any measureable results that could be attributed to your actions.

Mark demonstrated excellent storytelling skills and certainly was very humble about his success.

Feb 10

My Short Bio

Dr. Michael Sutton is an Associate Professor at the Gore School of Business,

Westminster College Logo

Westminster College Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Westminster College, in Salt Lake City, UT, USA. I am a faculty member responsible for motivating and stimulating the learners in my classes, which have included:

  • organizational behavior,
  • leadership (executive development),
  • strategy,
  • coaching,
  • entrepreneurship,
  • competitive/business intelligence, and
  • knowledge management/knowledge mobilization.

The learning I anticipate from the Lectures in Entrepreneurship course is:

  • increased knowledge and access to local and national entrepreneurs,
  • increased writing practice and rich feedback in the concept papers submitted,
  • new knowledge of using a blogging platform to express my insights, opinions, and reflections on the speakers.

My external website is http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeljdsutton/
My external blog is http://michaeljdsutton.net
My email is: msutton@westminstercollege.edu and michaeljdsutton@gmail.com
I may be contacted at 801-832-2563

I intend on being involved, engaged, and committed to this class, especially since I will be one of the two facilitator/coaches for the course, along with Linda Muir, the Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at Westminster College.

MY SECRET: For those who have been in my classes, you will have heard this; but most have not: I spent 2.5 years working as a Project Director (Consultant) for a major reengineering project to architect, construct, deliver, and train officers in the new Knowledge Management-based intelligence and administrative systems in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). Following that, I also spent a short time in the Canadian Security Establishment (CSE) as a consultant. For those unfamiliar with these organizations, CSIS is the equivalent of your CIA, and CSE is the equivalent of your NSA. Of course, I was not a spy, just a member of the civilian administration.

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Feb 7

1 Comment

Theories of Learning (Associated with Wiki Applications)

Plug and Play wiki

Barton (2008, p. 186) proposed to answer the question “What are key pedagogical benefits of wikis?” in a philosophical treatise. His conclusions, which suggested a starting point for this section, were:

  • Wikis demonstrate, in a clear and obvious fashion, how knowledge is a function of communities engaged in ongoing discourse.
  • [Wikis also] demonstrate and build upon the interconnectness of knowledge and illustrate plainly that no discourse exists in isolation from other discourse.
  • …wikis make the fundamental importance of rhetoric clear to students.

Ironically, Barton, using an undergraduate course in Computers and English as a case, described the challenges of deploying a knowledge-based tool in the classroom in support of knowledge creation, representation, sharing, and diffusion. Barton proposed that his learners needed to incorporate service learning and civic action within their wiki activism. He felt learners needed to inculcate the concept of “giving back to their community” in order to become shapers of the public space.

Wikis … offer a democratic alternative to the mass society… Wikis are truly mass-produced, many-to-many writing spaces whose very design prevents the corporate control structure so prevalent in the ‘culture industry.’ They allow the people to participate directly in making meaning.” (p. 192)

Visions of the world, society, and self appear to undergo transformation through the text and images projected by the different publics. Wikis, in Barton’s opinion could become an ideological tool for changing society beyond the classroom.

Inquiry into the issues of applying wikis in the HE classroom is widespread, crossing many disciplines and subjects. Vie and deWinter (2008, p. 111) proposed a number of pedagogical reflection questions on the issues of ownership and collaboration within classroom wikis:

  1. [What is] the way in which traditional authorship is upset by wikis?
  2. How can wikis be used to explore fostering the challenge of collaboration?
  3. How can wikis encourage students to move beyond traditional notions of ownership and academic writing and into more collaborative, public discursive activities?

Cubic (2007) highlighted the value of a framework for supporting the use of wikis with a learning and teaching process framework. The theoretical foundation for her study encompassed constructivist learning theories of Vygotsky (1978), Gravett and Peterson (2002), and Novak and Patterson (1998). Cubic described 13 lessons learned from the two case studies. Cubic concluded, “…students’ engagement with wiki-based learning activities is directly proportional to the quality and frequency of tutor’s feedback and the clarity of the underlying learning and teaching process” (p. 11). The learning and teaching process frameworks consisted of:

  • Feedback-driven learning and teaching framework;
  • On-line learning and teaching framework;
  • Feed-forward JITT (Just-In-Time Teaching) process; and
  • Facilitation and collaborative learning process.

The underlying andragogy described by Dalsgaard (2006) asserted that social software tools, such as wikis, support a social constructivist approach to e-learning. Learners incorporate collaborative tools in order to engage in social networking activities. Consequently, learners direct their personal problem-solving process within the context of a social environment. Social constructivism emphasizes the importance that the learner must be actively engaged in the learning process. Counter-prevailing viewpoints that are professor-centric suggest that the teacher is responsible and accountable for delivering knowledge, requiring only passive learning from the learner. In this study, the motivation for engaging communities in the application and use of wikis is scoped to the educational sector alone. Often, the findings within work and practice-based environments do not stand up to the test of validity and reproducibility of empirical experiments. Content, communication, and collaboration comprise three critical dimensions to evaluate the value of learning within the social context of a wiki.

__________________________

Barton, M. (2008). Is there a wiki in this class? Wikibooks and the future of Higher Education. In R. Cummings & M. Barton (Eds.), Wiki writing: Collaborative learning in the college classroom (pp. 175-193). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Retrieved from http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=dcbooks;idno=5871848.0001.001;rgn=div1;view=text;cc=dcbooks;xc=1;g=dculture;node=5871848.0001.001%3A6

Cubic, M. (2007). Wiki-based framework for blended learning. In Proceedings of the 2007 International Symposium on Wikis (WikiSym ’07). New York, NY: ACM. Retrieved from http://www.wikisym.org/ws2007/_publish/Cubric_WikiSym2007_BlendedLearningFramework.pdf

Dalsgaard C. (2006). Social software: E‐learning beyond learning management systems. European Journal of Open, Distance and Elearning, Volume II. Retrieved on January 10, 2012 from: http://www.eurodl.org/index.php?article=228.

Gravett, S. & Petersen, N. (2002). Structuring dialogue with students via learning tasks. Innovative Higher Education, 26(4), 281-291.

Novak, J. & Patterson E. (1998). Just-In-Time teaching: Active learner pedagogy with WWW. In J. Gil-Mendieta & M. H. Hanza (Eds.), Proceedings of the IASTED International Conference on Computers and Advanced Technology in Education (CATE ’98). May 27 -30, Cancun, Mexico. Anaheim, CA: IASTED/ACTA Press. (pp. 130-133).

Vie, S., & deWinter, J. (2008). Disrupting intellectual property: Collaboration and resistance in wikis. In R. Cummings & M. Barton (Eds.), Wiki writing: Collaborative learning in the college classroom (pp. 109-122). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Retrieved from http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=dcbooks;idno=5871848.0001.001;rgn=div1;view=text;cc=dcbooks;xc=1;g=dculture;node=5871848.0001.001%3A5

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

 

 

 

Jan 20

Emergence of Wikis in Higher Education (HE)

English: Wiki Wiki bus at the Honolulu Interna...

English: Wiki Wiki bus at the Honolulu International Airport Polski: Autobus Wiki-Wiki na Międzynarodowym Porcie Lotniczym w Honolulu. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Wikis in HE were reported in the research literature since the mid to late 1990s (Dillenbourg, 1999; Godwin-Jones, 2003; González-Bueno, 1998; Warschauer, 1998). The initial occurrences of wikis on the Internet and World Wide Web were made available through online services whose purpose was group-based and team-centric collaboration, or what was called at that time computer-mediated collaboration [CMC], (Fabos & Young, 1999; Koschmann, 1996; Krauss & Fussell, 1991). As CMC tools grew in application, the emergence of the formal “wiki” came into existence.

Phillipson (2008) proposed a typology to describe different kinds of wikis within HE:

  • resource wiki,
  • presentation wiki,
  • gateway wiki,
  • simulation wiki, or
  • illuminated wiki.

The resource wiki was flexible and applied to a wide range of courses. The purpose of a resource wiki was a repository to collect a collaborative knowledgebase of information for access that could include a plethora of subjects. Notwithstanding the course goal, a resource wiki furnished a platform for collective constructivism. Learners could piggyback upon peers work in preceding courses as a large corpus of information was collected within a project. Instructors built upon previous work, such as the Wikipedia, soliciting and stimulating the creation of original, new material. On the other hand, a presentation wiki was constructed for the sole purpose of a discussion forum, where peer evaluation might occur by crafting, retrieving, and modifying information. Presentation wikis built knowledge nuggets from the learners’ individual perspectives into large communities of practice for group review and constructive criticism.

Next, Phillipson presented the framework for gateway and simulation wikis. The gateway wiki acted as a data repository for static information that could easily be referenced, once it had been fixed as facts, i.e., “scientific measurements, statistics, calculations, survey results, metrics, and any number of other data sets (p. 26).” In a gateway wiki, the fixed data was the raw material of discussion and analysis. Additionally, a gateway wiki was a platform for logging results of experiments, sharing experiences, proposing well-formulated questions, and making connections between theory and practice. A simulation wiki presents an interactive experience: it is built as a world to explore. A simulation wiki was constructed to convey decision-making outcomes, where indiscriminate, unplanned, and illogical pathways were traversed by the learner. A simulation wiki could force a contrast and comparison of internal decisions vs. real-life models. The subject of a simulation wiki could convey a doppelganger effect in terms of being a proxy for the real world problem. A simulation wiki created a foundation for constructing narrative paths. Therefore, a simulation wiki might be applicable to history projects, event tracking, or creative writing projects.

Finally, Phillipson described the illuminated wiki—a wiki directed toward deciphering or elucidating a problem. In contrasting the illuminated wiki to the gateway wiki, the illuminated wiki mutated the topic under study, tightly incorporating it into the structure and architecture of the wiki. Learners individually and communally marked up text, videos, audios, and images contained on the illuminated wiki, resulting in a corpus that integrated the original material with the discussion and comments generated by the learners. Thus, Phillipson’s proposed framework for identifying the wiki types most suited to specific course and class tasks furnishes researchers and instructors with an a la carte menu to choose an appropriate wiki tool, based upon the learning strategy and anticipated learning outcomes.

In order to segment the information derived from the collected corpus of knowledge, we decided to adopt the same categories that Conole and Alevizou (2010, p. 2) established for a major section of their literature review entitled “Changing learning and learners.” The sub-sections outlined were theories of learning [associated with wiki applications], new forms of learning, patterns of technology use, characteristics of learners, and changing role of teaching and teachers. The authors of this study felt that paralleling Conole and Alevizou’s study of Web 2.0 technology with our study would segment the material into logical elements and provide a basis for cross comparison. Over ninety percent of this chapter’s cases were not addressed specifically in the report by Conole and Alevizou.

In our next blog post, we will speak about the challenge of Theories of Learning Associated with Wiki Applications.

______________________________
Conole, G., & Alevizou, P. (2010). A literature review of the use of web 2.0 tools in higher education. A report commissioned by the Higher Education Academy. York, UK: Higher Education Academy.

Dillenbourg, P. (1999). What do you mean by collaborative learning? In P. Dillenbourg (Ed.), Collaborative learning: Cognitive and computational approaches (pp. 1-19). Oxford: Pergamon.

Fabos, B., & Young, M. (1999). Telecommunication in the classrooms: Rhetoric versus reality. Review of Educational Research, 69(3), 217-259.

Godwin-Jones, R. (2003). Emerging technologies Blogs and Wikis: Environments for on-line collaboration. Language Learning & Technology, 7(2), 12-16

González-Bueno, M. (1998). The effects of electronic mail on Spanish L2 discourse. Language Learning & Technology, 1(2), 50-65.

Koschmann, T. (Ed.), (1996). CSCL: Theory and practice of an emerging paradigm. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Krauss, R., & Fussell, S. (1991). Constructing shared communicative environments. In L. Resnick, J. Levine, & S. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp. 172-200). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Phillipson, M. (2008). Wikis in the classroom: A taxonomy. In R. Cummings & M. Barton (Eds.), Wiki writing: Collaborative learning in the college classroom (pp. 19-43). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Warschauer, M. (1998). Interaction, negotiation, and computer-mediated learning. In M. Clay (Ed.), Practical applications of educational technology in language learning. Lyon, France: National Institute of Applied Sciences.

Jan 17

Object Modelling Framework

OPM Exemplary Text by Dori

A colleague of mine, Joe Gollner, recently suggested some fascinating

to me. We are both affectionados of Object Process Methodology (OPM) by Dori and Crawley. I am attempting to architect a software product for constructing Knowledge Management frameworks, using a modelling methodology like Unified Modelling Language (UML).

Joe wrote a short overview of it on his blog and provides links to some key online resources. . This post also includes a link to a post that was written to try to set the stage for introducing OPM.

Has any reader located worthwhile modelling frameworks you could suggest?

Jan 17

Foundational History of Wikis in the Higher Ed Classroom Environment (Pt. 2)

Wikis evolved as learning platforms when instructors applied the tool to the goals of adult learning. Wikis demonstrate the transformative effect learners have on personal responsibility (experiential and self-directed) vs. hierarchical command and control (professor-centric) classroom situations. For example, a project-based, low-residency MBA program founded upon a wiki of business topics (information), motivated learners to apply self-learning and personal mastery of the elements required to create a business plan, when browsed and applied to specific business problems (Sutton, 2009a, 2010a). The information is mobilized into actionable knowledge by the learner, due to the network of links within the corpus of topics. The learner finds a path through the information in order to articulate and weave a story from the underlying topics. Moreover, because of the HE environment, wikis demonstrate a capability for construction of Higher Education (HE) learning organizations that replace the status quo with nontraditional learning (Barkley, Cross, & Major, 2005; Fuchs-Kittowski & Kohler, 2002; Millis & Cottell, 1998; Raman, Ryan, & Olfman, 2005).

A wiki may be metaphorically compared to the behavior of a tornado or maelstrom, pulling text and media from collaborators together into new configurations, where editing and wordsmithing can shape data and information into new knowledge that would not have been visible in solo, personal sources. Static information, when reworked by a community of learner-authors can take on the life of a dynamic entity (vis-à-vis Wikipedia, to name the most prevalent today).

Wikis are under continual improvement and technological development. The wiki has become a utilitarian electronic notebook tool, where the knowledge of the whole evolves to be greater than the knowledge in any single actor. Grant, Owen, Sayers, and Facer (2006) outlined fundamental shifts taking place in the relationship of practice-based knowledge with creativity and innovation, (an element where HE could benefit significantly with applications of wikis in educational environments):

… our relationship with knowledge is changing, from one in which knowledge is organised in strictly classified ‘disciplines’ and ‘subjects’, to a more fluid and responsive practice which allows us to organise knowledge in ways that are significant to us at different times and in different places. … New forms of collaboration tools are also emerging, where people can work together to build new documents or products. (p. 3-4)

Traditional disciplinary boundaries of knowledge and learning quickly erode, because the learner personalizes and appropriates knowledge nuggets from a multitude of sources, regenerating new knowledge in the process. Wikis encourage new engagement patterns with classmates, knowledge, and learning. For example, Christensen and Eyring (2011) described the innovative nature and success of new competency-based, experiential, and project-based BBA and MBA programs founded upon a wiki knowledgebase coupled with faculty coaching of learners at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, UT. Learning, knowledge production, and diffusion practices were being inexplicably altered by the presence of the wiki. Learners in the Bill and Vieve Gore School of Business project-based programs adopted more collaborative and less solitary methods of inquiry and collaboration.

In our next installment, we will discuss the Emergence of Wikis in Higher Education.
_____________________
Barkley, E. F., Cross, K. P. & Major, C. H. (2005). Collaborative learning techniques: A handbook for college faculty. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Christensen, C. & Eyring, H. (2011). The innovative university: Changing the DNA of higher education from the inside out. San Francisco: CA: Jossey-Bass.
Fuchs-Kittowski, F. & Kohler, A. (2002). Knowledge creating communities in the context of work processes. SIGGROUP Bulletin, 23(3), 8-13.
Grant, L., Owen, M., Sayers, S. & Facer, K. (2006). Social software and learning. [Opening Education Reports]. Bristol, UK: Futurelab.
Millis, B. J. & Cottell, P. G. (1998). Cooperative learning for higher education faculty. Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press. [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0897749901/]
Raman, M., Ryan, T. & Olfman, L. (2005). Designing knowledge management systems for teaching and learning with wiki technology. Journal of Information Systems Education, 16, 311-320.
Sutton, M. (2009a). Project-based, Competency-based, Blended Program Innovation in a Learner-centric BBA Degree. Paper presented at the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education (CNIE) 2nd Annual Conference, Ottawa, ON.
Sutton, M. (2009b). A Manifesto for the Preservation of Organizational Memory Associated with the Emergence of KM Educational Programs. In J. P. Girard (Ed.), Building Organizational Memories: Will You Know What You Knew? (pp. 225-243). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. [http://www.igi-global.com/book/building-organizational-memories/112]

Jan 7

Foundational History of Wikis in the Higher Ed Classroom Environment (Pt. 1)

[Image from: Mt. Lebanon School District]

In late 2012, a colleague, Dr. Afsaneh Hazeri, and I were informed that our book chapter on wikis in higher education had been published. The chapter is “Using the Wiki as an Experiential Learning Tool to Engage Students in Undergraduate and Graduate University Courses”, In Charles Wankel, Patrick Blessinger, (ed.), Increasing Student Engagement and Retention Using Online Learning Activities (Cutting-edge Technologies in Higher Education, Volume 6), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp. 195 – 225. [This chapter is (c) Emerald Group Publishing 2012 and permission has been granted for this version to appear on my blog. Emerald does not grant permission for this chapter to be further copied/distributed or hosted elsewhere without the express permission from Emerald Group Publishing Limited.]

I will excerpt some of the relevant material to share with my blog readers, and intend on sharing other elements of it over the next few weeks to help establish a context for the use of wikis in higher ed. Wikis are most often applied in the classroom as experiential learning tools, let us look at how this came to be. Wikis are a collaboration software tool that gained notoriety and spawned a revolution, such as the phenomenon of Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org).

In Wikis: Tools for Information and Collaboration, Klobas (2006) outlined a very succinct history of the wiki, beginning with a description of the Portland Pattern Repository established in 1995 by Ward Cunnigham, a virtual location for creating a sense of community and sharing information. Klobas goes on to mention SunirShah’s MeatballWiki founded in 2000, along with Jimmy Wales’ Wikipedia, which was launched in 2001. During the next five years, other commercial tools emerged in the marketplace: Socialtext, Confluence, JotSpot, etc. Currently, there are probably over 100 different wiki engines, with a range of names (see Table 1 below).

@wiki InterWiki PHPWiki WackoWiki
ClearWiki IpbWiki PikiePikie WagnWiki
Corendal Wiki JAMWiki PmWiki Wetpaint
DokuWiki LittleWiki QwikiWiki Wikia
EclipseWiki MediaWiki ScribbleWiki Wikidot
EditMe Mindtouch Seedwiki Wiki-Site
EditThis.info MoinMoin Swiki.net Wikispaces
eTouch SamePage Netcipia TikiWiki Wikka Wiki
FlexWiki Ogham UseModWiki WikkiTikkiTavi
GetWiki On-Wiki VeryQuickWiki XWiki
Ikiwiki PBWiki ViaWiki XwikiWiki
InstikiWiki PerspectiveWiki VimKi ZwiKi

Table 1: Representative Names of Wikis (not exhaustive)

Wikis became popular during the last decade as a software technology and a location (website) to collect and share a broad range of data and information, from recipes, travel information, and corporate project information to curricula, music lyrics, and movie material. Succinctly stated by Mader (2006), (Using wiki in education: p. 4), a luminary in the field, the

“wiki is simply a website in which users can create and collaboratively edit pages, and easily link them together.”

The wiki pages can normally be accessed and used by individuals with little or no formal IT training. Wikis encompass a suite of common features that have been easily exploited for experiential learning (Klobas, 2006).

The online services for a wiki application can execute from a local server or a remote server as a cloud-based computing application (Software as a Service—SaaS). A critical element of a wiki is the capability to store and sequence the history of each edited page, permitting an edited page to revert to a previous revision, if the user makes a request.

Wikis also engage the collaborators in a set of discussions and exchanges, stimulating the formation, modification, and potential transformation of the data and information amongst a group of contributors, readers, and editors. The formation (capture) and modification (alteration) of the data are easier concepts to grasp than transformation (transmutation), which is the mobilization of information into actionable knowledge by the user learner (see knowledge mobilization [KMb].

In the next blog entry, I will discuss how wikis evolved as learning platforms.

 

Jan 1

Cactus 1
1 Comment

Genesis Post

The Knowledge Cactus is a new, unique, eclectic social media channel that I wish to use in order to kick-off this New Year. Knowledge Cactus, which I have given the moniker KMQ, will begin quietly and modestly. The goal is to provide a venue for knowledge acquisition, codification, creation, exchange, production, and diffusion on topics associated with a range of ideas encompassing my vocations and professions:

I have blogged for a while, but in obscure locations without the time commitment necessary to flesh out my ideas in-depth and lacking the visibility I need to promote my attempt at innovation and creativity. I want to take greater ownership, responsibility, and accountability for preparing “thought threads” to weave a mosaic with other thought leaders I respect. Of course, only you, (the reader), will be the judge and jury that determines whether my goal will be rated as a success.

I have chosen the title Knowledge Cactus for a number of reasons. First, my wife and I now live in a high desert region, and we absolutely enjoy the challenges of the ecology associated with deserts. Second, the study of knowledge has gradually become my passion over the past 45 years. I want to convey my thoughts on this abstract concept and grapple with others trying to inculcate knowledge in some fashion within their work lives and learning experiences. Third, cacti were the first plants I cultivated in my living quarters after leaving home; and I always found the geometry, texture, and colours to be intriguing and fascinating.

The cactus is defined as “Any of various succulent, spiny, usually leafless plants native mostly to arid regions of the New World, having variously colored, often showy flowers with numerous stamens and petals” (ETYMOLOGY: Latin, cardoon, from Greek kaktos) [American Heritage College Dictionary. 4th ed., (2004). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin]. In my imagination I picture “knowledge nuggets” as abstract concepts I seem to express metaphorically as cacti, i.e., succulent plants containing juices worth the effort of getting past the ‘firewall protection’ of the spiny thorns and needles that protect the inner core of its being. I will continue to use the cactus as a metaphor throughout my writing here.

Finally, the last reason I chose the title Knowledge Cactus was that I discovered a range of fascinating websites portraying cacti when I looked to see if the domain name had been acquired yet, [http://cactusfacts.com/ and http://www.cactuslimon.com/, to name only a few].

The cornucopia of cacti-based websites will yield wonderful photos (with attribution of course) that I can include with my missives, like:

Echinopsis Haku-Jo Cactus

Photo 1: Echinopsis Haku-Jo Cactus

[Source: http://www.cactuslimon.com/images/Echinopsis%20Haku-Jo.jpg]

I am currently an Associate Professor at the Bill & Vieve Gore School of Business,

Westminster College Logo
Westminster College Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Westminster College, in Salt Lake City, UT, USA. I am a faculty member responsible for motivating and stimulating the learners in my classes, which have included:

  • organizational behavior,
  • leadership (executive development),
  • strategic management,
  • coaching,
  • entrepreneurship,
  • competitive/business intelligence, and
  • knowledge management/knowledge mobilization.

This is my personal blog. The opinions I express here do not necessarily represent those of my employer, Westminster College. The information I provide is on an as-is basis. I make no representation as to accuracy, completeness, currentness, suitability, or validity of any information on this blog. I will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its use.

My external website is http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeljdsutton/. My external blog is http://michaeljdsutton.net

My email is: michaeljdsutton @ gmail.com. I may be contacted at 801-832-2563.

 

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