Collaboration and Learning with Wikis

Hughes and Narayan (2009) investigated perceptions of undergraduate and graduate students on educational use of wikis. They used wikis for creating a key-term glossary and for creating an assignment archive. Interestingly, they found that "frequency of editing and changing wiki information occurred less often than posting original contributions ... students would perceive the wiki as a static information collection and dissemination tool rather than a dynamic, knowledge-based learning community" (p. 67)

This is an important issue in educational use of wikis. There are several reasons why students do not edit or change information that others created.

- Tasks promoted adding information, but did not require editing and changing previous information. --> I have investigated this issue with Jae Jin Lee and Dr. David Jonassen. Tasks play an important role in co-construction of knowledge in wikis.
- Students might not be able to negotiate the changes of information in the wiki.
- Editing others' writing might make students uncomfortable. They migth not want to make conflicts with peers. Costs of changing texts written by peers may be higher than its benefits.

What else reasons can prevent students from co-constructing knowledge in wikis?

Hughes, J. E., & Narayan, R. (2009). Collaboration and learning with wikis in post-secondary classrooms. Journal of Interactive Online Learning, 8, 63-82.