We’re done this experiment in taking literature circles online. We’ve learned lots about wiki-based collaboration in these two weeks, and believe that we’ll try something like this again.
What I Like
- I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: this has been especially worthwhile because of the opportunity to collaborate with a colleague. I really enjoy the opportunity to exchange ideas and proofread each other’s work. It created better assignments and a better unit test for the students.
- Also, it was great to see a handful of the students really exploring the wiki technology… Finding out what it was capable of and where their limitations were.
What Needs Work
- The in-class, face-to-face discussion has not carried over to our online classroom space very well. In class, students are interested in discussing their chosen novels and have some lively conversations about them but the wiki has not harnessed that discussion very well. This could be because it is designed more for facilitating collaboration than for fostering discussion. The students were very reluctant to give that one extra click of the mouse to go to the discussion page, let alone the added mouse-clicks for reading previous posts and for typing their own.
- The fact that their peers can see their work has not encouraged many students to reconsider the quality of their final work. I had hoped that more peer collaboration would enable them to see their work in a new light, but for many, they remain content with submitting minimal work. I think that perhaps if I spend more time in helping students learn how to use the wiki effectively that the positive peer pressure I’m hoping for might increase.
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