"Teaching Technical Communication with Wikis"
About the AuthorJennifer Bracken Scott is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Professional Communication at New Mexico State University. Her interests include technical communication pedagogy and classroom applications for multimedia. She presented earlier versions of this article at the 2009 Southwest Texas Popular Culture Association conference and the 2009 Computers and Writing conference.
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Considerations for InstructorsWhether students are creating their own wikis in groups or are contributing to a whole-class wiki as individuals, instructors need to keep in mind that wikis are inherently collaborative. Therefore, any assignment that utilizes wiki technology should have collaborative elements, whether students are authoring content together or simply editing one another’s work. Instructors can facilitate the adoption of wikis by ensuring that they provide students with adequate resources and give students opportunities to develop the structure of their projects (PBworks 2). As part of my wiki assignment, I required students to create a project plan after they form their groups in which they detail who is responsible for which tasks in the wiki and create a timeline for their project that includes course deadlines and their own divisions in the workload. The planning stage is arguably the most important stage in any collaborative project; the benefit of using a wiki is if students wish, they have the ability to do all their project planning in one central location, even if they are unable to meet face-to-face due to conflicting schedules. Although I recommend to students that they establish multiple means of communicating with each other, they are able to communicate through the wiki interface using the Comments feature on their wikis. I also asked that each group add me as a writer to the site so I could also use the Comments feature to give intermittent feedback on their work. Instructors who choose to teach with wiki technology should keep in mind that different students will have varying levels of access to the Internet and overall comfort with the technology. Additionally, although there is potential for students to revamp their writing process through the wiki, they will not be forced to change this process. Carr et al. describe two scenarios that exemplify the process my own students tended to use: Student 1 made seven page edits during one week. Most of these appear to have been entered by copy-and-paste from text entered in Word. There were five major extensions and edits of the page including a formal bibliography. One of the smaller changes involved a change of page title. This history implies the student used the wiki as an environment and tool to facilitate their own process writing. Instructors should also be prepared to provide students with a variety of resources they can access as they incorporate the wiki into their collaborative practices; making students aware of help documentation is particularly important. Although instructors should be very familiar with how wikis work so they can help students cope with more complex problems they encounter as they use the technology (some issues my students met were not addressed in help documentation), students should figure out the basic functions of the site on their own—in other words, asking the instructor what to do should be a last resort. Students should also have access to resources about web writing and collaboration. In my course, I used our course management software to post and send links to resources that would help students as they built their sites. Perhaps the most important factor in wiki assignments is providing ample time for students to complete the project. In my course, the project lasted approximately six to eight weeks, including the initial presentations in which students presented their topics and the final presentations of their wikis. As they plan wiki projects, instructors should consider not only the time required to learn the new technology, research topics, write drafts, get feedback, and so on, but also the time required to collaborate with peers on a project. Students may be unfamiliar with collaborative practices, so it may take them extra time to communicate with their peers and accomplish the tasks their group assigns to them. I feel it is important to state here that no technology is perfect, no assignment is perfect, and no assignment that incorporates technology is perfect. There are ways to use traditional methods and assignments to accomplish the same objectives wiki-based assignments are able to accomplish. However, I argue that the many experiences students gain in a project such as the one I assigned in my own course—collaboration, research, working with new technology, writing in a new medium, etc.—prove more valuable when students are challenged in several dimensions at the same time, regardless of their individual strengths or weaknesses. When used in technical communication courses, wikis create a more complex, challenging, and fulfilling experience for students, one that they will not forget the moment the semester ends. Links and ResourcesUnderstanding wikis
Wiki hosting sites
AcknowledgmentsMany thanks to Dr. Jennifer Sheppard and Dr. Jennifer Almjeld for comments on the multiple drafts of this article, to the English department for their continuing support, and to Marc Scott for being himself. |