Cooperating or Collaborating: Design Considerations of Employing Wikis to Engage College-Level Students

Abstract

This chapter provides researchers and practitioners with guidelines for employing wikis to foster collaboration and active learning within and between student teams in higher educational settings. The core function of a wiki is to facilitate learner interaction with content. Such engagement is critical whether the course's instructional delivery environment is primarily face-to-face or web-based. Instructors encourage shared understanding through a spirit of investigation that embraces greater collaboration in the process. Collaboratively building knowledge about one content area by dialoguing with peers and negotiating importance in order to present the information in a meaningful way to the public is the strongest aspect of a wiki. To illustrate this, five case studies are detailed ranging from individual wikis to group consensus wikis in undergraduate and graduate-level courses, delivered in blended (i.e., hybrid combinations of face-to-face and online) and online asynchronous environments. As a whole, these studies support that wikis are not the single answer to all problems associated with collaboration and shared-knowledge in any learning situation, but they are a powerful lens for greater clarity in issues of student engagement and may lead to improved performance for diverse learners. Various experts add their views to those of the authors of this chapter; that to be effective, instructors must design purposeful engagement that embraces communication, cooperation and collaboration, active learning, feedback, and respect for differences. Likewise, students must be informed of the value of such engagement and have positive wiki models presented early in their online experiences.