Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Wikis as Assignments

I attended a very useful online presentation last week by Mike Orey of the University of Georgia (via the Wimba Distinguished Lecture Series). In one of his graduate courses in education, as an assessment activity, he asks students to contribute to a wiki-book that he and his colleagues have developed: Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching and technology. The reason I am making this posting is two-fold.
  1. The concept of asking students to contribute to a wiki that will remain for future users is very interesting to me. Clearly an assignment of this nature fits into the highest levels of Bloom's Taxonomy and could even serve as a capstone assignment in some types of courses. In Mike's example, he created a privately owned wiki for this purpose; however, Wikipedia could be used as well.


  2. Mike's eBook is excellent from a practitioner’s point of view! Have a look it. It has some interesting sections on topics such as Motivation, Adult Learning, Problem-based Instruction and Learning Communities as an Instructional Model. Chock full of case studies and well referenced with supporting literature. If applicable, Mike encourages you to adopt all or part of this eBook as a textbook in your course. He's so nice (*smile*).

Kudos to Mike & friends on more than one level!

2 comments:

RAH said...

What an inventive way to incorporate wikis into classroom assignments!

This idea is wonderful because not only do the students contribute to the overall ideas and concepts, but they are creating something that they can refer back to as well as students yet to take the course. It is also great because then anyone interested can access their research.

As a graduate student in the field of instructional technology, we are constantly working with new ways to utilize technologies to enhance learning. I love this idea and the fact that it can essentially be used with any academic level.

Anonymous said...

Yes... Wiki proves very good as a collaborative learning. I've done with my students. Please visit http://intro2gl.pbwiki.com/.

Thanks.
http://agusdepe.staff.uns.ac.id/