Work your way through the following questions to start a series of short discussions. Please summarise your responses in the reply box below, making reference to the question number in the response.
(see the wiki page for assistance if you get stuck)
- What is the difference between a wiki and a normal website?
- In what situation might you use wikis for an assessment?
- If you decided to use a wiki for an assessment, how would your institution be able to help?
- What problems can you foresee in using wikis for assessment?
How do we encourage students to keep engaging with a wiki after the assessment?
2) assessments via wikis can be enhanced by allowing students to discuss and agree on assessment criteria at the start of the course (eg quality of contributions, involvement in comments, inclusion of external media etc).
Question 4.
Using Wikis for assesssment is a great idea but students may not be motivated to engage if the assessment does not contribute towards final course grades.
Assessment outcomes should ideally be private to the student being assessed but Wikis may compromise the privacy required.
Interesting anonymous 🙂 we take a different approach where assessment criteria are widely discussed during the first class and agreed by staff and students.
Potential problems of wikis:
Moderating can be difficult – need to check the information being written.
Some students might not engage with the technology need to give them training and info.
Some students more enthusiastic than others.
Q1 a wiki is made up of user generated content where a normal web page is created by a single user or group.
Q2 a wiki mighte useful for peer learning, especially where students can link the wiki to other resources that they have found.
Q4 The biggest problem is likely to be monitoring and moderating – finding time and being able to do this on a regular basis. If using it as a formal assessment platform then ensuring that students make regular contributions, particularly if this is a group activity.
if a student posts on the wiki can they edit it later? Are all students happy with publishing the assessed written word?
4.
Various issues – particularly where students can edit each others’ work without permission. For group assessments, the live document that is effectively created can be a valuable tool, but for individual assessment, the idea of an editable document seems unnecessary, and even unfair. Are there issues related to plagiarism where people can claim work is theirs when it isn’t.
This seems to be the biggest barrier to engagement with this technology, the issue of ownership and the competitive nature of students. No student will feel entirely comfortable posting comments,thoughts or work if they feel another student who has not been as engaged can benefit from their work. How do we get round this.
4) need a community feel- people need to trust easy other- develop ground rules.
Joint-working no hierarchy otherwise not everyone will contribute.