With the proliferation of online tools out there to use in your class, sometimes you’ll be wondering which is the right one to use. Don’t make the mistake of looking to the tool first, and then trying to shoe-horn an assignment into it: you’ll likely end up with an incoherent assessment item that students have trouble making sense of. Instead, consider what you want to achieve and then find the best way to make it happen — if that means not using a webtech tool, then fine!
But for the moment, here’s a bit on what ‘The Big Three’ tools of forums, blogs and wikis can achieve in class.
Discussion forums should be saved for exploration of a topic, where challenges to thinking are put up and questions raised. Discussions should proceed with new information being added in each reply, and questions ensure that this happens; ‘cheerleading’ posts, where participants only encourage and don’t question, do not move the conversation forwards. Check out the article Challenges beat cheerleading from eCampus Today for more info.
Blogs are best used in getting students to reflect on a topic through the blog posts that they make. Blogs aren’t about discussion, per se, but more about what Susan Lowes calls “cumulative talk” — students can make comments that respond to the original posting without having to follow a thread from the beginning. Blogs are about process and the development of a point of view on the subject matter. Blogs help you track students’ thinking over time, through both the posts and comments that are made.
Wikis, on the other hand are all about collaboration and teamwork — they’re about the end product and they should be used to show changes in writing and to evaluate how students have synthesised research or subject matter. Wikis can tell you how students are constructing their knowledge on a particular topic, and how they are creating documents to express that knowledge.
For a really excellent comparision between blogs and wikis, visit WikiAndBlog at Bemidji State University.
Let me know your experiences with trying to make sense of the difference between these tools and how to use them in class.
Tags: Blogs and blogging, Discussion forums, Learning online, Lifeline, Wikis and wikiing
March 18, 2009 at 7:59 am |
Quote: Wikis, on the other hand are all about collaboration and teamwork…
Hmmm… actually, I think that wikis are also useful in non-collaborative thinking and learning. I’ve written a post on this:
http://www.verso.co.nz/tools/12/wikis-more-than-just-collaboration/
I think a wiki can be a very appropriate tool for reflective thinking or collaboration. Ultimately the decision to use a blog or a wiki may come down to learner preference.