Our reading from this week describes collaborative intelligence as a process in which “peers offer structured feedback to each other, available knowledge resources are diverse and open, and the contributions of peers and sources to knowledge formation are documented and transparent.” Its use “builds soft skills of collaboration and negotiation necessary for a complex, diverse world. It focuses on learning as a social activity rather than learning as individual memory.” Like collaborative intelligence, collaborative learning has the educational benefits of “motivation, social cohesion, development and cognitive elaboration” (Judd, et. al, pg.3).

Wikis are an online hypertext publication collaboratively managed and updated by its own audience, usually via an internet browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects, and could be either open to the public or limited to use within an organization for maintaining its internal knowledge base (“Wiki”). Most are familiar with Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that allows you to look up virtually any topic one can think of.Wikipedia is available to the public and is able to be edited by the public as well, very much making it a collaborative effort. My employer has our own internal version of Wikipedia, where we can search any term and pull up all related searches. It is run and maintained by my employer, but there are individual contributions by employees in the form of comments, screenshots, and other things like external website links to allow information to be constantly updated.

Wikis are “widely promoted as collaborative writing tools” and are gaining in popularity in educational settings” (Judd, et.al, 2009, pg.1). We already use wikis for personal use (my favorites are for the TV show Seinfeld, and the Harry Potter book and movie series) and business use. Wikis are a good medium for collaborative work, especially in distance education courses. It has the open and diverse access that students/peers require for updating information in a collaborative workspace on the internet. There is no set schedule that has to be set, and various pathways within one wiki can be updated at the same time. In most cases, participation is completely optional and will still come from a small number of contributors. Non-participating students state lack of time, work pressures and lack of interest in technology as some reasons that hold them back from contributing (Judd, pg. 4). Other findings suggest that wikis are “not inherently collaborative and that additional components are required to promote participation and collaboration among students. Lack of incentives (such as the absence of formal assessment) and insufficient support for group work are often cited as barriers to the effective use of wikis” (Ibid).

Wikis support collaborative learning because they can enable groups of students to work together to solve a problem, complete a project, etc. They also promote active learning, promote open dialogue and encourage community building, and can prepare students for the 21st-century workforce by developing digital literacy skills (researching, editing, updating information). Wikis support multiple forms of media (URLs, videos, audio, etc.), it encourages peer review, and it allows you to view contributions and editing history to catalog entries and information (Kurt, 2020).

Do you use Wikis currently for business or personal use? How so?

References:

Judd, T., Kennedy, G., & Cropper, S. (2009, November 30). Using wikis for Collaborative Learning: Assessing collaboration through contribution. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ895446.

Kurt, D. S. (2020, February 6). Wikis in education: How wikis are being used in the classroom. Educational Technology. https://educationaltechnology.net/wikis-in-education.

Wikimedia Foundation. (2023, March 15). Wiki. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki.