This wiki course always gets me thinking. We have such a diversity of students that some thrown themselves almost bodily into working on the wiki, while others seem to be much slower to take up the challenge. This makes it a challenge for us to shape tutorials in a manner that benefits all students. How much structure do we put into computer sessions?
Currently, about one third of the students have started editing and, going by the level of interaction from some of them, are well and truly on the way to knowing what to do (ie creators of their own learning materials). The rest of the students may need to be lead more gently into the frames needed to engage in this kind of generative learning environment.
So, we’ve been discussing the mode of the presentation of information in the first tutorial and subsequent tutorials. I think the first tutorial will be the most structured. Basic wiki editing, setting up userpages, becoming familiar with the interface.
Subsequent tutorials will be more open and I think we will let students direct the activities. As the tutorial pages will be wiki pages, they can (hopefully) help to direct the activities to those things that they believe they need in order to achieve the outcomes arising from the objectives of the course.
Cool, eh?
Tags:
flexible learning, technology, wikis