Evaluating the use of wikis in student group work within Blackboard VLE

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Evaluating the use of wikis in student group work
within Blackboard VLE

• Dr Nadia Amin, Clive Vassell and Stanka Winch
• Harrow Business School
• HEA ICS Conference 2008, Liverpool

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Project Aims

• To provide a technologically innovative approach
  to group coursework delivery and assessment
• To increase integration and usage of the
  universitys existing Blackboard VLE to deliver
  and assess module content
• To evaluate the effectiveness and use of wikis as
  a group work tool in comparison to traditional
  teaching and assessment methods

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Wikis

• Growing popularity of web 2.0 and social
  networking sites, blogs, wikis and tagging
• Wiki is a new generation of collaborative tool
  enabling people to work simultaneously on the
  same documents in a timely manner.
• Turban defines wiki as a website that enables
  visitors to add, remove, edit and change content
  without the need for registration.

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Wikis within Blackboard VLE
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Project Description

• The wiki used was Teams LX add-on learning
  object integrated within Blackboard
• Three modules with 30 students in total were
  selected
• Undergraduate
• 2EBU501 EBusiness Fundamentals
• 2BUS501 Managing Business Resources
• Postgraduate
• 2BCO7H4 Managing Ecommerce
• A wiki was created for each group of students,
  with editing rights set up for each group, where
  members were allowed to change the wiki content.
  
• All students had read-only access to other
  groups wikis.
• Lecturers monitored the wikis usage over one
  semester

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Methodology

• Quantitative and qualitative analysis was
  applied to verify project results
• Students Survey all students were asked to
  complete questionnaire at the end of the project
• Monitoring of wiki usage statistics, which showed
  individual student participation
• Focus group meeting between students and tutors
• Reflective statements were sought from one
  student group

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Survey Questions

• Have you used wikis before?
• To what extent do you agree that the wiki was
  useful?
• To what extent do you agree that the wiki was
  easy to use?
• To what extent to you agree that access to the
  wiki was convenient and reliable?
• To what extent do you agree that the supporting
  material on the use of the wiki was useful?
• To what extent do you agree that he use of the
  wiki assisted with the assignment?
• To what extent do you agree that the use of the
  wiki facilitated group collaboration?
• To what extent do you agree that the use of the
  wiki was a useful learning experience?
• To what extent do you agree that the wiki was a
  useful communication tool?
• Would you like to see the use of wikis extended
  to other modules?

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Survey Results Summary

• Over 70 of students reported that they had never
  participated in wiki activity prior to this pilot
  project.
• Student sentiment about the use of the wiki was
  clearly positive
• When asked if wikis were useful and easy to use,
  over 75 replied Agree/Strongly Agree and
• Over 60 of students agreed that the use of the
  wiki helped in their coursework assignment
• Students felt that the wiki facilitates group
  collaboration, a view held by over 65 of the
  students.
• Students spoke almost unanimously of the
  convenience factor that the wiki generated by
  enabling students to work in an asynchronous way
  from different locations, e.g. homes, university,
  etc.
• Most students seemed to feel that there was room
  for improvement, for e.g. inconsistencies in
  text/picture formatting, the lack of a spell
  checker, etc.
• 75 of students reported that they would like to
  see more use made of wikis on other modules

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Wiki Usage tool
Participation for Group A User Total Page Saves Total Lines Modified 30 (112/377) 41 (809/1991) 22 (82/377) 28 (563/1991) 31 (116/377) 24 (487/1991) 18 (67/377) 7 (132/1991) Participation for Group B User Total Page Saves Total Lines Modified 1 83 (360/433) 89 (1532/1714) 2 8 (36/433) 7 (116/1714) 3 4 (17/433) 2 (35/1714) 4 5 (20/433) 2 (31/1714)
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Students Reflective Statements

• The convenience of being able to work from home
  and not having to physically meet up as a group.
• ..Being able to communicate with your group
  members, and leaving comments whilst doing your
  work. So every time someone else logged on they
  could see the comments and take the work from
  there. Another one was it was easy to access
  and easy to update anytime you wanted. It was
  easy to use and you didnt need to have many
  skills to use the wiki.
• My personal experience of using the wiki was
  excellent.
• The use of wikis will help groups to see who is
  performing well and which individual is not
  participating and maybe looking for a free ride
  in the assignment.
• ...I was surprised to learn how this could be
  both an exciting and beneficial method of doing
  coursework and group work in particular.
• I think that the use of wikis within groups
  benefits both the group members and the tutors
  alike.

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Focus Group Comments

• Students found the use of the wiki valuable and
  interesting and were pleasantly surprised by the
  benefits it offered
• It was really convenient for group members to
  communicate with each and leave messages through
  the comments facility provided by the wiki.
• Students felt that while the wiki reduces the
  need (and frequency of) group meetings, it does
  not eliminate the need for face-to-face meetings.
  Group meetings and personal contacts are still
  needed especially at the onset of the coursework
  assignment.
• Students also commented that wiki participation
  statistics do not necessarily reflect the actual
  contribution that an individual makes to the
  group work. Nevertheless, it was felt that it can
  be used to identify free-riders.
• From a technical point of view wikis were seen as
  being easy to use, although some formatting
  problems were reported.

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Conclusions

• The project has helped to achieve the following
  key outcomes
• Improved collaborative interaction between
  students in a group setting
• Increased module content awareness, participation
  and performance by the students
• Improved ability of staff to assess individual
  student contribution to group work
• Improved student team working skills that are
  essential in the workplace
• Improved assessment evaluation and feedback from
  course staff.
• The university needs to ensure that the wiki
  software works reliably and that the software is
  kept up-to-date.

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Acknowledgement

• We wish to thank the Higher Education Academy,
  Information and Computer Science subject network
  for supporting this project under the General
  Development Fund 2007/8
• and
• all students at Harrow Business School who
  participated in this project