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Wikis: Pros and Cons for Adult Learners



Wikis: Pros and Cons for Adult Learners

creating a wiki

Wikis are online platforms designed "to help groups collaborate, share, and build online content" (West & West, 2009). Wikis are meant to be a space where people can work asynchronously together on a common project.

Wikis provide opportunities for team members working on a group project to each contribute to the design. Wikis are accessible by multiple people and anyone can contribute, edit, or remove content. (West & West, 2009). This is different from a blog where typically one person controls the content. Unlike discussion threads, the text in Wikis is not linked or linear, and can appear in varying formats on the wiki page (West & West, 2009). This can allow for more creativity and expression, but less structure if an instructor was wanting a particular template constructed for the Wiki.

Warlick (as quoted in King and Cox, 2011), provided three advantages for working with Wikis:
1. Practical for allowing community collaboration
2. Political for offering freedom of participation
3. Timely for providing up-to-date content

Reportedly, Wikis do not require a high level of technical expertise (West & West, 2009). This remains to be seen as I have never before worked on a Wiki before. In addition, although collaboration is a key component for Wiki use, there is no guarantee it will be done well. For example, if members of the group vary in technical skills, the bulk of the technical work could fall upon one or two other members. If there is not alignment with the various images, links, videos, pictures, and text on the Wiki it could appear confusing and overwhelming.

Wikis can be useful for Adult Learning if it is used to support collaboration among students, and the groups work effectively together. If the Wiki is to be successful everyone involved with it must be working to make it better. For example, Wikipedia is an example of an encyclopedia in Wiki form (King & Cox, 2011) that is accessible and editable by anyone who decides to change the information, whether it is accurate or not. In many instances people with bad intentions have altered the information so that it is inaccurate, which defeats the collective good of the information. If group members are not working well together as a group, they cannot effectively collaborate on a Wiki.

References:
King, K. & Cox, T. (2011). The professor’s guide to taming technology. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. 

West, J. and West, M. (2009). Using Wikis for online collaboration: The power of the read-write Web.  San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.



Comments

  1. Anaka GorzSeptember 19, 2019 at 7:20 AM

    alikat217,

    I agree, I think wikis can be a challenge! There are some cool tricks that students can use when making wikis, but doing the HTML coding is more complicated than I expected. I am trying to push my technological knowledge this semester and learn more, but it will take some time. This is one great part about group projects - they bring out the strengths and weaknesses of each team member. If one person is good at compiling information and the other is good with technology, then each person is doing their fair share of the project. Wikis help students collaborate to create the best presentation they can.
    - Anaka

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    Replies
    1. alikat217September 19, 2019 at 12:09 PM

      Anaka,
      Thanks for your comment! I agree that group projects can bring out the strengths and weaknesses of each member. That is my concern though - if the group is not working well together then the wiki could be an ineffective tool for collaboration and learning. It's not the tool (wiki) that's faulty - it's the group members that are the issue. I think it would be interesting to see research on how wikis (and technology in general) are supportive to learning and collaboration in good vs poor groups.
      I appreciate that Dr. Kang is intentional about our group assignments for this reason. I believe he is trying to set our groups up for success so that we can get the most out of our projects together. However, I wonder what impact group functionality has on technology as an effective learning tool?

      Delete
    2. Anaka GorzSeptember 20, 2019 at 11:15 AM

      I absolutely agree on the functionality of a group. In a previous course, we had a group of 6 team members working on a wiki but one team member was completely absent from all team meetings and never participated in communication. In the end, all five of us had the same format and presentation, and the sixth member's was obviously different from ours. Fortunately, peer reviews can help with this process. Anytime students are working together, it's good to get honest feedback about how it went so that there can be improvements for future courses.

      Delete
  2. JenSeptember 22, 2019 at 1:37 PM

    Alikat217,

    I think you bring up some really good points about the challenges of wikis. My favorite example of a wiki gone wrong is during the World Cup (for soccer) the American goal keeper was having an amazing game and someone edited his wikipedia page to read "...and the greatest American since Abraham Lincoln!" It was pretty quickly changed.

    On a more serious note, I think your concerns over the delegation of work for group projects based on technical abilities are really sound. Especially in group projects, expediency often wins out when delegating jobs. A well meaning, but less technically inclined student may end up contributing less just out of a lack of experience and knowledge. And then I thought your comment about the page looking jumbled or confusing because a less experienced wiki creator tries adding in stuff really raised another good point. It would be imperative for instructors to offer aide for those students less experiences in order to ensure that the technology use is, in fact, promoting learning and not hindering it.

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