Weeks 13 and 14

Activity 3b

Read Minocha and Thomas (2007) ‘Collaborative learning in a wiki environment: experiences from a software engineering course’.
Reading through the article should take you about an hour and a half. It provides a very good example of planned and systematic course evaluation, where the focus is on the intentions behind the design of a course using a wiki as a key tool, and on the evaluation of the evidence about the students’ response. As you read the article make notes in answer to each of these questions:

• What was the rationale for the use of a wiki, in terms of real world practice and in terms of the learning outcomes for the course? The wiki allowed collaberation by different students in different geographical locations, different time zones and between different prganisations. It also allowed for ideas and opinions to be expressed. The wiki could also be edited at any time by any one of the stduents involved.
  'The wiki activities involve a group of students contributing requirements to the groupwiki, discussing the requirements, identifying conflicts and ambiguities within the requirements, and resolving the conflicts through discussions from the perspectives of different stakeholders, to produce an unambiguous requirements specification'. (Minocha and Thomas, 2007)
• Which areas of learning theory do the authors draw upon specifically? Salmon (2002) 5 stage model, Keirnon et al (2003) role of e-moderators and Tuckman and Jenson (1977) model of team working
• In what ways did the course designers seek to persuade students to view the wiki positively? Introductory paper on wiki's to read and analyse, provided with guidelines on hoe to use the wiki, ice breaker session to use the wiki and to get to know each other as a group.
• How effectively did the wiki function in relation to key features of the learning requirements; e.g. the need to track individual contributions, to publish written contributions, to edit a single, collaborative text and to discuss and collaborate? On the whole it was effective but there was a pressure on time when decisions needed to be made so the group could move on or when discussions need to take place. Some students also negatively criticsed others contributions
• What role did the assignments play in shaping the students’ use of the wiki? The wiki was integrated into the TMA's.
  'The wiki activities involve collaborative development of the requirements specification for the case study in the TMAs'. (Minocha and Thomas, 2007)
• What conclusions do the authors come to in relation to:
  a. the ways in which the wiki worked well? Enabled collaberation, develped communication skils and team work
  b. the main disadvantages of the wiki?There needed to be additional discussion fromats available eg forums, telephone tutorials etc
  c. the software changes that would improve the wiki for this purpose? The window was too small, there was poor navigation, alerts needed for when someone has contributed, absence of a locking mechansim