Abstract
Wiki technology has become very popular during the last years and is used in many fields. It enables the collaborative creation and management of content retaining the history of changes. There is abundant wiki-based content on the web covering a large number of subjects. A significant contribution of wikis involves education. Under certain conditions, technology may enhance the learning process due to the unique features it encompasses. In this context, wikis may prove very helpful as they provide the infrastructure for collaborative learning approaches and the development of online learning communities. This chapter discusses main features of wikis, wiki features specifically required in education, and typical uses of wikis in education. Representative examples of successful wikis are presented. Future research directions are also outlined.
TopBackground
A wiki is a website whose content is created and updated through asynchronous collaboration among users. The first wiki was WikiWikiWeb and was implemented by Cunningham (Leuf & Cunningham, 2001). It became available in 1995. During the following years, the participatory philosophy of wikis was widely accepted.
Roque (2013) discerns four main types of wikis, that is, enterprise wikis, educational wikis, public wikis and personal wikis. Personal wikis are the simplest ones and are used as personal Web pages. Enterprise wikis are discerned into three categories: single-user wikis whose creator shares the content with other company employees, project-group wikis involving collaboration of a group of users in a specific project and enterprise-wide wikis concerning the whole company. Educational wikis are discerned into three categories: course wikis involving a specific course of educational institutions, knowledge wikis used by teachers to share knowledge and subject wikis that include content about a specific subject. Public wikis may be accessed and updated by anyone and are discerned into two categories: general-purpose public wikis including information about various subjects (e.g., Wikipedia) and specific-purpose public wikis concerning a specific subject.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Collaborative Content Creation: Creation of content in which the final product is the result of multiple collaborating contributors.
Online Learning Community: A type of learning community whose members employ Internet technologies to interact and collaborate. The community members have the same learning goals and closely interact and collaborate to achieve them.
Wiki: An environment enabling collaborative content creation using a web browser. The history of actions is retained enabling restoration of previous content versions and recording of users’ contributions.
Collaborative Learning: A type of learning in which learners learn by collaborating with each other. Knowledge is created through active interaction among learners and their participation in shared activities.
Distance Learning: A type of learning in which learners and tutors are in geographically dispersed locations. Often Internet technologies are employed to support learning and teaching.
Blended Learning: A type of learning that combines traditional classroom instruction with learning based on Internet technologies.
Semantic Web: An evolution of the web that will employ more advanced representations of content in order to enable effective services based on the meaning of content.
Learning Management System: A system incorporating a suite of e-learning functionalities addressed to learners, tutors and system administrators. It supports blended and distance learning approaches.
Educational Data Mining: The application of data mining approaches in educational data.
Semantic Web: An evolution of the Web that will employ more advanced representations of content in order to enable effective services based on the meaning of content.
Learning Analytics: It involves the analysis of educational data in order to enhance learning and learning environments.