Constructing text:: Wiki as a toolkit for (collaborative?) learning

ABSTRACT

Writing a book from which others can learn is itself a powerful learning experience. Based on this proposition, we have launched Science Online, a wiki to support learning in high school science classrooms through the collaborative production of an online science resource. Our approach to designing educational uses of technology is based on an approach to education called constructionism, which advocates learning by working on personally meaningful projects. Our research examines the ways that constructionism connects to collective models of knowledge production and learning such as Knowledge Building. In this paper, we explore ways that collaboration using wiki tools fits into the constructionist approach, we examine learning goals for youth growing up in a read-write culture, and we discuss preliminary findings in an ongoing year-long study of Science Online in the classroom. Despite the radically open collaboration afforded by wiki, we observe that many factors conspired to stymie collaborative writing on the site. We expected to find cultural barriers to wiki adoption in schools. Unexpectedly, we are also finding that the design of the wiki tool itself contributed barriers to collaborative writing in the classroom.

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Index Terms

• Applied computing

  • Education

    • Collaborative learning