Wiki comment and feedback

In EDUC 761 our class is reviewing various - Emerging Communication Tools and How They Might Influence Online Education in the Future. I have shared my experience with wiki and I have invited my colleagues to review the survey data on the left, leave a survey comment and post a comment as a reply.


Our reading and discussion in EDUC 762 has touched on peer to peer collaboration (our midterm is a good example of this), authentic and alternative assessment and recently, the challenges posed by 4 storms of E Learning that were predicted in 2004 and may already be here.

That said, after completing the survey to your left, if you would elaborate with a comment. You may reply to one prompt below or leave a comment based upon your own experience with wiki.

1. Of the benefits you identified in the survey, which is the most significant and why so you see this benefit as so important?

2. Are wiki now a part of your world as an instructor. If so, how do you use them. If not, are wiki evident in your various learning communities.

3. Share an example of peer to peer collaboration that you have used in the classroom (either face to face or online). Could a wiki have been used to support this collaboration?

4. Do you see wiki as an example of authenticity in activity or assessment? Why or why not.

I know you are all busy so thanks to those of you who take time to post a comment.

Greg@Az

Public v private - how should a wiki be constructed

A great discussion has sprung up in EDUC 762 regarding private v public settings for an educational wiki.

How do you weight in?

While here, if you have not voted in the survey on wiki use, give it a whirl.

Do the current survey results on wiki inform your comments?

I'll kick off our discussion by responding to the following excellent question:

So I wondered why your group chose to only complete a wiki to submit to the instructor knowing that your wiki could be subjected to vandalizing even with the private access. Not suggesting our classmates but, others who might obtain access.

This is a great question and really reflects back on the philosophy of the internet, social networking and community building. My response is grounded in my personal philosophy, experience with this tool and constructivist view point of learning communities.

Personal Philosophy

I am grounded in the moral philosophy of Adam Smith. Smith, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments presents a strong case that the link between individual liberty or natural liberty and society is personal responsibility expressed through virtue. The operative agent is an impartial spectator that aligns liberty with responsibility.

So my first response, is that I have tremendous confidence in my fellows.


Experience with wiki

If you think back to the survey (over on our left) one of the major advantages of a wiki is the archive functionality. Every page and page edit is saved in history. If a "vandal" were to attack any or all pages in a public wiki, the previous page would be restored and the vandal blocked from the site.

Our EDUC 762 group midterm project was a private one, a decision that I obviously find contrary to the essence of wiki, Adam Smith, Walt Whitman and inclusiveness. Having said that, the questioner accurately points out, the wiki could still be "vandalized".

But, the process of collaboration or the process of vandalizing is, I think, important to regard. Howl, was considered obscene (a form of poetic graffitti), Dali and Pollack are examples of those attacked by the cultural establishment as juvenile and "vandals" and early rap and hip hop were considered criminal. I am not saying that this wiki rises to high art, but a defining characteristic of wiki is collaboration and inclusivement (in my view).

So, I would welcome all collaboration which, at its heart could be viewed as subversive and ultimately vandalism.

A bit like the philosophy in The Leaves of Grass . . . . could Whitman have been anticipating the wiki (Me or I or our?):

What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest is Me.

or

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable.

or

Our freedom all in thee! our very lives in thee!

Constructivist view of learning

It will not be surprising that my philosophy of constructivism is founded on notions of personal liberty and responsibility, inclusiveness and a sense that, as Whitman and Ginsberg declare - are democratic and universal. The notion of American exceptionalism that was early on described in Democracy in America by Tocqueville identified five values crucial to America's success as a democratic republic:

(1) liberty
(2) egalitarianism
(3) individualism
(4) populism and
(5) laissez-faire

Perhaps these are important not only to wiki, but to the broader discussion of community building.

Click over to Public Wiki to view the wiki under discussion. The question at the beginning of this post focused on the Owyang assessment of weaknesses of wiki. Immediately above this analysis of weakness you can see a summary of strengths/benefits/uses of wiki that might inform your analysis of this topic.

Thanks to my classmates over in EDUC 762 for prompting this excellent discussion.

Reflections after week one in EDUC 761 - Collaborating Communities

My opportunities to grow as an educator are continuing at UofW Stout in the Graduate Certificate Program in E Learning and Online Teaching as I get to "kick it up a notch" in EDUC 761 Collaborative Communities. This is the 4th class in the 5 class sequence, last fall I completed Introduction to E Learning and Instructional Design. Three weeks ago I began EDUC 763 Online Assessment and, so far the excellent material in EDUC 761 is very complimentary to what I have previous completed and what I am concurrently studying.

The first week reinforced to me that I need to be aware of my tendency to embrace engagement and neglect detail. The co instructors for EDUC 761 constructed a module zero to give all participants an opportunity to learn about communication "rules" and other suggested approaches for the course. I flew through this and, found that as I began our first module, I needed to reflect back on a number of approaches for engagement and discussion.

After 2 days of splattering the discussion board, I went back to module 0, reviewed the "rules" for discussion board use and the returned to the online discussion board in a manner that was more in line with course expectations in terms of both content and form.

I had the opportunity to have a number of off line discussions via e mail with both co instructors and several classmates and was impressed with the kindness and tolerance reflected in those discussions.

The reading for the week was an excellent primer for beginning to think about online learning communities. The author of How to be a Great Online Teacher and my co instructor made a point about humor in communities that I completely agree with. However, my agreement with the use of humor needs to be tempered by moderation. Just like in EDUC 760 with Den O Connor, EDUC 763 with Susan Manning and currently in EDUC 762 with Datta Kaur, my humor was . . . . not well considered. I guess what may "work" in person, needs to be filtered in the online world. Thankfully, my community in this class is kind, tolerant and forgiving.

The readings for this class were a great reinforcement of both why I aspire to become an improved online facilitator and the assumptions and practices necessary to achieve this goal.

Tomorrow's Professor Blog

Tomorrow's Professor Blog is a joint project between MIT and Stanford and appears to archive messages and comments from a similarly named mailing list.

Thanks to Naomi Story, director of the MCC Center for Teaching and Learning for pointing out the mailing list and blog.

The Feb. 6 e mail (will appear on the blob Feb. 20) directly related to a discussion over in EDUC 761 Collaborating Communities and in part reads

Tomorrow's Teaching and Learning

The Rules of Engagement: Socializing College Students for the New Century

By Neil F. Williams

Introductory comments by James Rhem, publisher, NT&LF.

Professor Williams had contributed a nice piece on "shared quizzes" earlier and so his name on an article was encouraging, but requiring students to exchange greetings with him at the door and creating a formal rule about covering one's mouth if one yawned? These, among others, seemed beyond the pale of college teaching.

Did students really need this level of coaching in manners?

And if they did, was it a college professor's job to continue raising these children?

What do you think?

Reflective Journal 5

This post is a reflection of my work in both EDUC 762 - Online Assessment and EDUC 761 - Collaborative Communities.

A great week. The two applied activities in EDUC 762 Online Assessment were outstanding and I will certainly incorporate both into my online instruction. Our small group module 2 over in collaborating communities was also a wonderful way to experience a technique that might well facilitate online community building. In a wonderful way, these two classes are complimentary and are synergistic. (I hope that this syntax and structure is appropriate. As this is an open blob, if you are a Noam Chomsky fan [I am not] feel free to correct or clarify)

My EDUC 762 activity involved a participant/student evaluation and revision of the final project rubric. This was fantastic. I was very interested in the reaction of my classmates to both the post I made over in the class course site. I suspect that, as the semester winds down, they are feeling pressure and stress.

I find that, acting as a student in a class like this, I am able to more identify with the pressures and confusion that my students may experience.

The analysis of Bloom's taxonomy informed my thinking about the topics I was reading about in both classes. In particular, the notion that level of taxonomy can affect both authenticity and act as a cost to "cheating" and a benefit to "not cheating" is one I will need to continue to reflect on. In fact, the complexity of the connections between Bloom, "cheating", online community building and authenticity are compel me to follow my classmate Bill Demory in remaining humble and seeking further development.

I continue to be amazed at the discussions in my two classes and the way that they are intersecting.

For example, a classmate over in EDUC 761 wrote this week

I certainly feel at a disadvantage in the beginning of an online course. I usually refer back to the Introductions frequently at first and I try to interact with two to three people a day. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm sure open to them

I responded

I find myself in the same position you describe . . . for the first week or so. Then I can associate the tone and texture of the discussion postings with my classmates. If you think about our class, classmate A's postings are distinctive and unique and very different from, say classmate Bs postings. Instructor X's approach to posting is much different from Instructor Y, at least to my ear in terms of tone and approach.

Having said that, I have found that in wiki discussion threads or in other platforms such as moodle or VoiceThread, the poster's picture appears next to the post or reply.

This is very, very helpful - although it raises other issues, which are currently being discussed by a number of us offline now. Further information about this issue or a platform for you to post your own thoughts is over on the public blog
E Learning for Educators

(note the shameless effort to promote public discussion over here)

I think that the exchange above (another shameless act - imitation of the format of two books on online learning by Pratt/Palloff and Lehmann) is significant as we all consider the issues of authenticity, diversity, our own teaching style and online community building.

Pros and Cons of student centered communities

This outstanding question was posed by the co instructors of EDUC 761 Collaboration Communities one of the course in the sequence for the UofW Certificate in E Learning and Online Teaching. I am blogging about in response to this excellent question.

Background Information

Vygotsky's constructivist theory, which is often called social constructivism, has much more room for an active, involved teacher. For Vygotsky the culture gives the child the cognitive tools needed for development. The type and quality of those tools determines, to a much greater extent than they do in Piaget's theory, the pattern and rate of development. Adults such as parents and teachers are conduits for the tools of the culture, including language. The tools the culture provides a child include cultural history, social context, and language. Today they also include electronic forms of information access.

We call Vygotsky's brand of constructivism social constructivism because he emphasized the critical importance of culture and the importance of the social context for cognitive development. Vygotsky's the zone of proximal development is probably his best-known concept. It argues that students can, with help from adults or children who are more advanced, master concepts and ideas that they cannot understand on their own.
Source:

http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~ichen/ebook/et-it/social.htm

Working from the definition above:

Cons:

Time, the social constructivist approach, just like all learner centered approaches, is much more time consuming for the facilitator for a number of reasons. This approach implies instructional design for multiple learning styles, multiple paths for learning, a variety of access points and, at the community college level, more than a nodding acquaintance with learning theory.
A second con lies in the assumptions about both the learner and culture. A pessimist might argue that both are ill prepared for the demands of liberal arts and rigorous inquiry.

Personal experiences of con

Since beginning the UofW Stout certificate program in E Learning and Online Teaching I have attempted to redesign the online courses I teach at MCC. This had been unbelievably time consuming process and trying to do this while teaching has been a challenge.

Given the time demands, I do not have a course ready for delivery in revised format, further illustrating the challenge or negative impact of time demand on course revision.

This brings up another negative from my experience. I am the only economics faculty member in my department pursing this line of analysis for my delivery of courses, either online or in person. All the other economics faculty are content centered and I mean, real, content centered. This merely reflects the nature of the discipline, but increasingly I find I have less in common with the economists in my institution and more with the philosophers. Ah, perhaps this is as much a positive as a negative.

Another negative is the heterogeneous makeup of my students. While some are clearly subject to the assumptions of androgogy some of the more optimistic assumptions of this theory and social constructivism may not apply to the more academically immature learners.

Pros

Learning about social constructivism and the related issues of a learner centered approach to instruction have simulated my thinking about how economics can be taught. It lead me to a great analysis by David Colander The Complexity Vision and the Teaching of Economics and has presented a set of instructional challenges that I find to be very interesting.

Greg