Social,usability, and pedagogical factors influencing students' learning experiences with wikis and blogs.
Minocha, S., and Roberts, D.
Pragmatics & Cognition 16:2 (2008) 272-306
doi 10.1075/p&c.16.2.05min
Nardi et al, 2004 blog as a cathartic outlet including for emotions and feelings
authors define wiki as 'an asynchronous collaborative authoring environment, a readable and writeable website in which potentially all the visitors to the site can create new pages or modify existing ones'
Merrienboer and Pass, 2003 '3 main characteristics built into social constructivist scenarios......
complex, realistic, problems
group collaboration
interaction and cooperation'
'wikis and blogs enable the generation of social constructivist scenarios wherein a group of learners collaboratively construct shared artefacts, create a culture of dialogue and negotiate meanings and take decisions'
'hesitation and even resistance of students to participate in collaborative activities'
students on MCT course not expected to be aware of wikis therefore an introductory paper by Farrell (2006) plus other resources on wikis was included as part of the first TMA. These resources included as a demonstration of an emerging tool for their professional therefore practice related ( KRO motivating tactic). Also guidelines provided, guidelines for collaboration and wiki-etiquette.
icebreaker using the wiki - add biography to the wiki - little collaboration or negotiation needed for this activity.
'group knowledge becomes aggregated in one place'
'waiting for others to contribute was one of the obstacles to a positive experience'
'simple to use and access available 24/7'
technical obstacles 'navigation can be poor' 'context is poor' ' no alerts when a new contribution is made'
students reported a need for synchronous communication and that 'there needed to be someone to pull the strings together' 'for big projects ..... lack some fundamental functions e.g. version control
