I have always found myself to have a love-hate relationship with Wiki’s. I mean, it’s hard not to love the massive amounts of information that can easily be found on a Wiki page; however, I absolutely hate working with them and I have a hard time trusting everything I read on them. However, putting my personal feelings towards Wiki’s aside, I think they can be and already are a valuable tool for teaching and learning within a collaborative classroom – there are many Learning Management Systems, such as Blackboard, that have collaborative Wiki spaces already built into the tool in order to promote collaboration within a class.
So, if I hate working with Wiki’s (and this is mainly do to the fact that I find it challenging to display the content in a desirable way), then why do I think they can be such a valuable tool for collaboration? Well, simply put, they offer a place where a number of users can jot down ideas and edit the contents of a page. So, for any given project, Student A can start adding content to a Wiki page and subsequent students can add additional information while also editing the content that has already been added/modified on the page. They act as a living/working document and may be accessed controlled so that only specific users can edit any given page. Furthermore, as soon as the Wiki page is saved, the other group members will have access to view the changes and continue editing the page. . .this is so much simpler than circulating around a word document were any number of versions can be getting worked on at the same time!
In A systemic and theoretical view of knowledge building using Wikis (Cress & Kimmerle, 2007), such theories as externalization and internalization were discussed in reference to the creation of Wiki’s. While I agree that these are true, that our understanding of concepts is further developed as we put on paper – or put in a Wiki in this digital age – our thoughts and we make additional connections linking what we are saying through a deeper thought process and through the additional information that is supplied by our peers/colleagues, it is essential that we supply references to our source material to ensure the validity of our statements.
We are taught we cannot believe everything we read on the Internet, so that makes me somewhat hesitant to believe everything that I read on a Wiki page. To truly feel confident in the material on the Wiki page, I consistently look for a list of reference materials as to where the knowledge was obtained. I think it is also important and essential to keep in mind that a Wiki and the connections/perceptions that are found on a Wiki page are reflective of how the Wiki author felt – after all, we never know who really is behind the editing of a Wiki.
When it comes to creating a Wiki page in a learning environment, I do feel that students will strive to present the most accurate of information because they will not want to appear unknowing, incorrect, or inferior to their peers. So, they will work to back up what they are presenting in the Wiki with reference material and valid information. Additionally, Wiki pages can allow for the creation of topics, a table of contents, and discussions to occur. These tools further promote the educational understanding and history of ideas/topics.
Wiki’s can be powerful tools for collaboration, especially since global collaboration can be encouraged, as proved by the Flat Classroom Project by Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis. Instructors can track and assess the contributions per student to a Wiki project to ensure equal participation is occurring and that all group members are contributing to a site. But, the fact remains that Wiki’s are a dynamic page, what you find today might not be there tomorrow and we must be careful regarding what we believe as true. By teaching our students to question and verify the accuracy of what is found on the web, our students can utilize Wiki pages for collaboration as well as a starting point to guide research and development.