User:Jtneill/Presentations/Using open wikis for teaching and learning

James T. Neill University of Canberra

Australian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ASCILITE) Learning Design Special Interest Group Webinar Friday 15 March 2024, Online

Slides (Google)

Recording (YouTube; 53:37 mins including Q&A)

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Abstract
A wiki is the simplest webpage that anyone can edit. The aim of this presentation is to illustrate the educative potential of using open wikis in education. Open wikis offer several pedagogical advantages and practical affordances for teaching and learning, yet are surprisingly underutilised. The best-known wikis are supported by the Wikimedia Foundation, including Wikipedia and its sister projects such as Wikiversity. These wikis can be used to curate open educational resources and conduct open research, as well as to engage students in learning how to work collaboratively to contribute to the knowledge commons. Student wiki projects can be conducted in any discipline and adapted across educational levels. This presentation will explore the educative potential of involving students in real-world wiki projects for learning and assessment, with case study examples.

Bio
James is an Assistant Professor in Psychology at the University of Canberra. James is a keen proponent of open educational practices and use of wikis for curriculum development and student learning projects.

Aims

 * Explain why wikis are good for education
 * Highlight wiki affordances
 * Showcase Wikimedia Foundation platform esp. Wikiversity and Wikibooks

Questions
I invite you to share about your wiki experiences and curiousities. Here's a few prompts that may be useful:
 * 1) What experiences have you had with wikis? My experience is learning
 * 2) Have you edited any wikis?no
 * 3) Do you have a Wikimedia user account?no
 * 4) What educational wiki projects have you contributed to?I don't remember but is not the first time
 * 5) What is your university's approach to using wikis?iam only in grade 8 I just need guidance
 * 6) What do you advise teaching staff about using wikis? Wikipedia is the good place to refresh mind
 * 7) What questions or comments do you have about using wikis in open education? Learning

Premises

 * Knowledge-sharing is good
 * Open education is good
 * Wikis offer underutilised utility

Wiki history

 * Internet www 1993
 * WikiWikiWeb 1995 (1st wiki)
 * Wikipedia 2001
 * Wikibooks 2003
 * Wikiversity 2006

What is a wiki?

 * Simplest webpage for collaborative editing
 * wikiwiki = quick/speedy in Hawaiian

Wikimedia Foundation mission
"to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."[[w:Wikimedia Foundation#Mission|WMF mission] (Wikipedia)

Wikimedia sister projects
Diverse ecosystem of free, open, multilingual wiki projects

Wikibooks

 * Wikibooks is for new ebooks
 * Wikisource is for pre-existing books
 * Free alternative e.g., to Pressbooks

Wikiversity

 * Pages: 149,043
 * Languages: 17
 * Active users: 764 (210 on English Wikiversity)
 * Admins 55 (11 on English Wikiversity)

For more detail, see Wikiversity languages (Wikipedia)

What is Wikiversity?
“Wikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project devoted to learning resources, learning projects, and research for use in all levels, types, and styles of education from pre-school to university, including professional training and informal learning. We invite teachers, students, and researchers to join us in creating open educational resources and collaborative learning communities.” [[Wikiversity:Main Page|Source] (Wikiversity)

Wikiversity self-tour
Some ways to explore:
 * Guided tours
 * Featured projects
 * Browse
 * Random
 * Random

Teachers can ...

 * Create, edit, and fork informal and formal open educational resources (e.g., course materials and learning activities) on any topic, size, and level
 * Engage students in contributing to learning projects

Researchers can ...

 * Develop research projects
 * Seek peer-review
 * Publish findings

Students can ...

 * Access to read and view
 * Create and edit
 * Interact e.g.,
 * Comment
 * Debate
 * Quizzes

Teaching students to edit

 * Easy, fun, and experiential
 * Students learn essential skills in 1 hour class:
 * Create user account
 * Edit user page
 * Basic markup - bold, italics etc.
 * Links - internal, interwiki, external
 * Headings and table of contents
 * Finding and embedding images

Example tutorial: Wiki editing

Administration and support

 * Local
 * User - edit, move etc.
 * Curator - delete, protect etc.
 * Custodian (admin/sysop) - + user block
 * Bureaucrat - +assign user permissions
 * Check-user - IP address checking
 * Meta
 * Stewards - + global user block, spam + title blacklist, oversight
 * Developer - + enable extensions, software changes

Wiki affordances

 * Anyone can edit
 * Policies, procedures, guidelines, decisions guided by community consensus
 * Transparent editing history / version control
 * Collaborative
 * Highly stable

LMS + Wikiversity

 * Learning management system (LMS)
 * Institutional enrolments
 * Assessment submission
 * Marks
 * Course announcements and discussion


 * Wikiversity
 * Generic open educational resources
 * Lesson plans
 * Class materials
 * Assessment descriptions
 * Student editing
 * Interactive feedback

Use iFrame embedding, any webpage including a wiki page, can be embedded within an LMS e.g.,[https://unicanberra.instructure.com/courses/11508/pages/tutorial-03-physiological-needs

Wiki challenges

 * Awareness of wikis is low
 * Motivation to teach openly is weak
 * Editing skills can be scary
 * Institutional copyright policies often archaic
 * Learning design / ed tech support lacking
 * Local championing / communities of practice needed

At first glance, it seems like wikis "can’t work" - surely the dark side would win and it would turn into garbage, but it's a bit like seeing a bicycle for the first time and thinking no way could someone ride it without falling off.

The magic of wikis is that they do work because the critical mass of people willingly contributing to improving resources outweighs the relatively small amount of bad editing which tends to be quickly rectified.

Example: Motivation and emotion
Motivation and emotion is a 3rd psychology unit at the University of Canberra with an annual enrolment of approximately 150 students:
 * Home page
 * Student-authored book chapters
 * 2023 book table of contents
 * Actively open-minded thinking (example chapter)
 * Collaborative authoring using wiki (case study article)

Conclusion

 * Wikis provide a free, no cost, flexible, way of developing open educational curricula and learning activities
 * Start small and learn
 * Go forth and wikify