Wiki in the classroom: potentials, pitfalls, plans

Introduction

● About me● Andrew Famiglietti

– PhD American Culture Studies, Bowling Green State University

– Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow, Georgia Tech – Afamiglietti on twitter/afamiglietti@gmail.com

● Examples of wiki assignments● Attempts to not only use wiki technology but emulate

Wikipedia community● http://workingtropes.lcc.gatech.edu/● http://buzzpedia.lcc.gatech.edu

Potentials

Trace Pedagogy

● Based on “Trace Ethnography”● Developed by R. Stuart Geiger (@staeiou) and David

Ribes in “The Work of Sustaining Wikipedia: The Banning of a Vandal”

● “a way of generating rich accounts of interaction by combining [...] analysis of the various “traces” that are automatically recorded by the project's software alongside an ethnographically-derived understanding of the tools, techniques, practices, and procedures that generate such traces”

Trace Pedagogy

● Students working in a wiki environment also leave traces● Examples: individual grammar edits made to a page, the record of

editing activity for a single student, discussions between classmates working on the same page, class-wide design discussions

● Traces can be used to guide & evaluate student writing● Traces are available to instructor and other students

alike● Focusing on traces focuses on process

A Recursive Composition Environment

● Students not only compose the text, they compose the environment for composing the text● Examples: collaborative style guide, license and

deadline debates, CSS for overall site design, extensions to enable new forms of content

● Both socially and technologically recursive● Traces help keep track of this recursive

process

P2P Assignment Sharing

● Following the wiki tradition of sharing, appropriation and reuse allows for collaborative assignment development by faculty● Example: My Working Tropes wiki was the basis

for Robin Wharton's Body and Being wiki

● Traces allow for the process of revising and customizing an assignment to be followed and understood

PitfallsPitfalls

Why a classroom is not a wiki community

● Students don't self-select in the same way wiki community members do● Recursive process and trace-leaving will not happen “organically”● Expect resistance to new composition mode from some students

● Students will take time to realize they have permission to change each others work

● Commitment to project will be wildly uneven● Convincing students to take on leadership roles can be challenging

Why a class emulating a wiki community is not a normal class

● A recursive process disrupts the traditional class power structure● Don't romanticize this

● Assigning work and then evaluating results will likely not be a satisfactory method

● Lead by example

Plans

Badges

● Stolen shamelessly from Alex Halavais● Assignments are broken into small, discrete

tasks that students complete to earn badges● Fits wiki process well because students can

design the larger composition process while still meeting explicit goals

● Traces allow students to document their badge-worthy activities easily

Tools and techniques for reading wiki traces

● At current, options are conventional reading of wiki logs and statistical techniques

● Better methods for qualitatively reading wiki traces need to be developed● Possibilities include: methods for visualizing user

activity, methods for comparing the state of different wiki spaces at the same time

Final Thoughts

● Wikis give us the opportunity to create recursive composition environments, and to trace student actions in that environment

● We must be mindful of our unique role as instructors in wiki assignments, and of the distinctions between a wiki community and a classroom

● Following the wiki tradition of sharing, adaptation and reuse can allow faculty collaboration on assignments