User:Jtneill/Publications/Wikis provide a rich environment for collaborative open educational practices: Motivation and emotion case study

James T. Neill University of Canberra

About
This chapter addresses the following primary book themes:
 * Themes
 * Authentic Assessment
 * Collaboration
 * Creation


 * Case study area
 * Undergraduate

James Neill is an Assistant Professor in the Discipline of Psychology, Faculty of Health, University of Canberra, Australia. He is an open education advocate who seeks to contribute open educational resources that are maximally reusable and editable by anyone via open wiki platforms. James is an English Wikiversity custodian and bureaucrat who has made over 70,000 edits since 2005.
 * Bio

Overview
Wikis offer a rich, but surprisingly underutilised, sustainable digital environment for collaborative development of open educational resources (OERs). Open wiki platforms, such as those hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) can be used to engage in collaborative renewable learning and assessment exercises with higher education students.

To demonstrate the potential of using open wiki platforms with students, this chapter presents a case study of an ongoing project which has developed over 1,500 online, interactive, editable book chapters about the psychological science of motivation and emotion.

The book chapter authors are undergraduate psychology students. Each student develops an online chapter about a unique topic. The exercise serves as an innovative alternative to traditional, disposable essay writing.

The project's OER-enabled andragogical philosophical and educational principles, and its approach to scaffolding and student support, can be readily adapted across disciplines and higher educational levels.

Engaging educators and students in collaborative authoring via open wikis contributes maximally flexible and sustainable OERs to the knowledge commons and develop students' 21st century digital literacy and communication skills. Open wikis provide ideal platforms for open andragogy and open educational practices.

Key stakeholders
The key stakeholders for the Motivation and Emotion online book project can be understood in terms of an onion model (see Figure 1). At the core is an inspired academic educator with values rooted in open andragogy. Second, there are cohorts of students enrolled in a specific university coursework units (in this case, 7124 Motivation and Emotion at the University of Canberra, Australia). Third, there is a broader community of people who voluntarily edit Wikiversity and its WMF sister projects and who can contribute to the development of chapters by responding to student questions, editing, and providing feedback. Finally, the broadest stakeholder group consists of users of the knowledge commons; these are people, but increasingly also automated technologies such as bots, who search for, access, and use free content on the internet. This human-digital ecosystem provides a rich, holistic environment with dynamic nutrients for immersive experiences for students and growing OERs.

Background info
This project was initiated as an alternative learning and assessment task, in response to some fundamental problems with widespread overuse of traditional, disposable essays in higher education. The project has evolved as a working proof of concept demonstration for how educators can guide student cohorts through simultaneous mass development of individually unique works in a publicly editable, wiki-based, online platform.

The use of disposable essays as a method of assessment in higher education is problematic for several reasons. Traditional essays are typically hidden during the (often last-minute) drafting process, limiting the potential for formative feedback and peer-to-peer learning. Usually an educator sets a single or small number of permissible topics, leading to repetition across students and over time, pumping out essays like a sausage factory (see Figure 2). Such cookie-cutter approaches to education can be demotivating for students and heighten the risk of academic integrity violations such as plagiarism and contract cheating.

Traditional student essays typically never see the light of day, even though their publication can potentially offer students and audiences many benefits. Traditional essays are usually written individually, whereas much professional writing in the real world is collaborative and involves version tracking, commenting, and interactive discussion. Traditional essays usually consist of "flat" text which does not make use the rich, interactive potential of the internet (e.g., hyperlinks, images, multimedia, comments). Furthermore, a general skill that students arguably should learn during higher education is how to contribute to the knowledge commons.

Traditional essay writing in higher education is increasingly problematic and represents a pre-21st century approach. With the advent of the internet, much learning can come from engaging students in making unique contributions to the knowledge commons and open wikis offer an ideal tool for doing so.

Project description
The motivation and emotion student-authored book project started in 2010, with approximately 100 to 150 students participating each year since. In this project, students author online book chapters about specific motivation and emotion topics as a major part of the assessment for a third year undergraduate psychology unit (see Table 1). The unit's learning outcomes are to:
 * Identify the major principles of motivation and emotion,
 * Integrate theories and current research towards explaining the role of motivation and emotions in human behaviour, and
 * Critically apply knowledge of motivation or emotion to an indepth understanding of a specific topic in this field.

The book chapter project is scaffolded (see Table 1) to support students' editing skills, enhance their confidence, and develop content. Lectures introduce the rationale for a capstone-style, major project curated in a public space in order to develop and showcase students' writing and publishing skills and disciplinary knowledge. Tutorials teach useful skills such as creating a Wikiversity account, signing up to or negotiating a topic, basic wiki editing, and importing a template to help scaffold a chapter. Students then develop a chapter plan which is submitted as an early assessment. This exercise encourages development of wiki editing skills, headings and sub-headings, and key points, as well as identifying key citations about the topic. Students are also taught how to contribute to other chapters by editing and/or commenting. These social contributions are logged on their user page and are part of the marking criteria for the book chapter.

All book chapters have unique titles and sub-titles in the form of a question (e.g., Music and study: What effect does music have on motivation to study?). Approved topics are added by the educator, who also serves as the book editor, to the volume's table of contents. The book contents can searched and browsed via the book's home page. Topics are categorised as being about motivation and/or emotion and encouraged to align with the overarching book theme which is "Understanding and improving our motivational and emotional lives using psychological science".

In addition to the written text, each chapter include interactive "learning features" (e.g., internal and external hyperlinks, figures, tables, and quizzes). These features help to bring chapters to life and further distinguish the work from traditional essays. Finally, students develop a three-minute multimedia overview of the chapter, a link to which is featured underneath the chapter's title and sub-title.

Key outcomes
Key project outcomes are high student satisfaction, development of students' discipline knowledge and graduate attributes (such as communication skills, global citizenship, and lifelong learning), contribution of OERs, and a working proof of concept renewable assessment alternative to traditional essay learning and assessment exercises in higher education. In addition, the project addresses several of the United Nations' 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (see Table 2).

The next steps for this project are to continue developing annual volumes about new motivation and emotion topics, promoting the model to encourage wider adoption, supporting the development of educators who are interested to adapt the model, and ongoing refinement of the model to respond to student feedback and institutional policy changes.

Learning and recommendations
It is easy for educators and students to get started with developing open wiki-based OER projects. The wikis hosted by the WMF are free, stable, and open for anyone to edit. The content on these wikis are maximally reusable because the licensing satisfies the criteria for free cultural works. This case study demonstrates use of Wikiversity, which is dedicated to teaching, learning, and research, but other WMF sister projects such as Wikibooks, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, and Wikipedia may also be used, depending on the discipline and nature of the specific project.

The main potential pitfalls to navigate include educators' development of open andragogical teaching philosophies and rationales for open wiki projects, educators developing their own confidence and know-how with wiki editing so that they can support students, negotiating intellectual property rights and copyright licensing within higher education institutions and with students, and educator/student preparedness to step off the treadmill of using disposable assignments within the walled gardens of higher education institutions and their learning management systems.

Champions
Student feedback about the motivation and emotion unit and its OER book chapter project is publicly available. In 2023, 95% of students who responded to the official end-of-semester survey indicated that they were satisfied with the quality of the unit, how the staff in the unit supported their learning, and that the unit helped them with their work-related goals. A typical comment about the book chapter exercise is: "The book chapter is one of the most interesting assessment items in the psychology degree. It tests our knowledge of psychology theories and our ability to write for a different audience while allowing some exploration.".

Advice/tips
Based on experiences guiding over 1,500 students in building wiki-based OERs as part of their learning and assessment, the following advice/tips are offered to educators:
 * Develop a personal teaching philosophy which is explicit about your values. Consider explaining why you do (or don't) choose to contribute OERs and engage students in renewable, OER-based assignments.
 * Create a free WMF user account. This account will work across all the sister wikis. Then have a go at editing and asking questions.
 * Start small, tinker, build your skills and confidence, iterate, reflect, and gradually scale up over time.
 * Engage with the wiki editing community on the selected hosting platform via discussion, mentoring, and collaborative editing.
 * Share and communicate about the OERs you are involved in developing. Although they should be findable via internet search, it is also worth promoting the OERs via social media, presenting seminars, publishing in teaching and learning journals, etcetera.
 * Allow students as much control and decision-making as possible, whilst also providing scaffolding and formative feedback.
 * Communicate care and micro-encouragements towards students and back this up through helpful actions (e.g., likes, editing, and feedback). Students will often be hesitant to engage at first, partly because of previous experiences of relatively controlled, constrained forms of learning and assessment.
 * Although it may seem daunting and time-consuming to develop open educational practice skills (such as learning wiki editing skills), this initial learning curve leads to many efficiencies and benefits in teaching, research, and social impact that pay off in the longer-term.

Further resources

 * English Wikiversity
 * Motivation and emotion - Homepage
 * Motivation and emotion - Book project
 * Motivation and emotion - Unit description (7124)