Using wiki to create a learning community for chemistry teacher leaders (original) (raw)
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Computers & Education, 2013
Many teachers have little opportunity to share and discuss their practice in the course of a normal school day beyond chance meetings in the staff room. Such a lack of opportunity can leave many teachers feeling isolated. However, online resources are continuously providing teachers with greater opportunities to engage with other teachers. This research studied early-adopting New Zealand science teachers' perceptions and integration of one such online resource, a wiki, for professional development. The wiki was developed to support teacher portfolios consisting of mediums called Content Representations (CoRes) and Pedagogical and Professional-experience Repertoires (PaP-eRs). Initial interviews were conducted with six teachers and were followed by case studies of three of these teachers. Data included pre/post interviews, field notes from feedback on observations, and teachers' use of the wiki. Findings discuss important factors organised around three themes in relation to teacher perceptions and engagement in knowledge sharing on a wiki: technology competence, technology utility, and technology resourcing.
Wiki bears great potential to transform learning and instruction by scaffolding personal and social constructivism. Past studies have shown that proper application of wiki benefits both students and teachers; however, few studies have integrated wiki and collaborative learning to examine the growth of science teachers' Technological, Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK). This study introduced a wiki-based TPACK growth model and examined nine elementary and middle science teachers' knowledge growth in a graduate-level course. Data sources included reflective journals, wiki data and interviews. Results showed that with wiki, science teachers learned to design more understandable and lively science teaching content, and they collaboratively generated creative instructional strategies. Furthermore, wiki and collaborative learning helped in-service teachers exchange and elaborate ideas related to the development of TPACK. Implications, suggestions and future research directions were put forward regarding wiki, TPACK and in-service teachers' professional development.
Pre-service teachers ideas of collaborative work when using a wiki to construct a lab notebook
Due to the potential benefits of the wikis, they are increasingly gaining popularity in educational settings. In the educational context they have been used for various purposes such as managing research projects, publishing course materials and completing writing assignments. This type of Web 2.0 tool provides a number of useful functions, such as creation of content by multiple users, tracking history of users’ actions, comparison between different editions and roll-back to earlier versions of the wiki, allowing teachers to monitor learners’ co-authoring process. Because of these functions, wikis have been claimed as facilitators of collaborative writing, group discussion and interaction. However, wikis are not inherently collaborative. After a brief review of the relevant literature on the importance of interaction in the learning process this communication presents some preliminary results on the use of wikis by pre-service elementary school teachers. The implementation of virtual lab notebooks hosted within a wiki environment in the scope of a course on biology is described. Students´ perceptions regarding the implementation of the wiki are explored, namely its challenges and potential benefits. In order to achieve this goal, participants were asked to write a reflexive essay about their use of the wiki. A content analysis on this data followed. An additional goal is to understand the kind of interaction promoted by the wiki. For this purpose, the individual contributions to the wiki that occurred during the learning process were analyzed and categorized. Follow-up interviews were conducted to gain insight into students’ decision-making process. The results are discussed in view of identifying factors that may lead to a more successful integration of the wikis in science lessons and to improve pre-service teachers’ confidence in using Web 2.0 tools for pedagogical purposes.
Experiences of Using Wiki as a Participatory Learning Tool in Teacher Education
American Journal of Educational Research, 2016
Wikis have potential for facilitating learning in the online environment but studies have identified varying degrees of success. The implementation of a new learning management system at the university provided a context for course instructors to explore the potential of web2.0 tools to facilitate collaborative learning. This research sought to understand teacher education students’ experiences of working collaboratively using a wiki as the participatory technological web2.0 tool. The research study involved pre-service education teachers enrolled as either on-campus or distance (flexible) students in a compulsory first year curriculum paper. A quantitative and qualitative methodology was used to determine learner perspectives on working within a collaborative learning space. Working collaboratively using a wiki as a participatory technological tool was new to most pre-service teachers. Results from this study indicated that their experiences towards collaborative learning remained ...
Wiki as a Professional Development Tool
2008
This paper examines how wiki technology can be used to support teacher professional development. Wiki is a type of interactive web site that allows users to contribute content and editing to the site. This technology can be used in a number of ways, but in each case the contributions of the participants are the key source for information on the site. Wiki technology can provide a space for the social construction of knowledge of a community. The study looks at wiki use in the teacher professional development and by a class of high school students. All users had some concerns about the process but most viewed it favorably. Teachers were much more reluctant to edit each others' work than the high school students. Recommendations for future use include strong scaffolding of the process in the early stages on what to contribute and when to edit pages.
This study aims to determine pre-service elementary teachers' views with regard to evaluating the effectiveness of WebQuest and Wiki activities prepared for general chemistry courses. It also aims to detect the effects of these activities on pre-service elementary teachers' levels of motivation to learn chemistry. For this aim, we used a mixed method research design. Data were gathered using focus group interviews and the 'Chemistry Motivation Questionnaire'. The sample of the study consisted of 111 pre-service elementary teachers from two different universities. The frequency of the pre-service teachers' logging into WebQuest and Wiki activities of the Moodle Learning Management Systems were monitored. The qualitative result of the study shows that both systems made cognitive contributions to pre-service teachers and attracted their interest at the sensory level. As for the quantitative analysis, the results of our study indicate that pre-service teachers had positive views toward using WebQuest or Wiki activities in courses, whereas their motivation to learn chemistry did not increase. A positive, significant relationship but at a low level was observed between pre-service teachers' motivation to learn chemistry and the frequency of logging into Wiki activities.
Using Wiki in teacher education: Impact on knowledge management processes and student satisfaction
Computers & Education, 2012
The current study reports on the use of Wiki as an online didactic tool to develop knowledge management (KM) processes in higher education. This study integrates social constructivist principles to learning where learners are pro-active and collaborative through higher order cognitive processes. The study was administered in two countries, namely Egypt and Italy, to close a gap in the literature with an aim to introduce KM processes in teacher educational programmes. These processes are seen as necessary for teachers' professional skills. Such processes are claimed to enable teachers and therefore schools to evolve in a networked information-driven global society, especially as the complexity of subject knowledge is increasing. It is also a learning experience where teachers learn how to provide their students with educational settings where technology is enabled.
Wikis, knowledge-building communities and authentic pedagogies in pre-service teacher education
Web 2.0 technologies including blogs, wikis, RSS, social bookmarking and a host of newand emerging applications are gaining popularity in classrooms at all levels of educationglobally. Such technologies are claimed to offer new ways of fostering interaction,community building, content creation and modification and knowledge building in theclassroom. However, as with more traditional forms of technology that have beenappropriated for the classroom, it is important that Web 2.0 technologies are not just used because they are the latest thing, but that authentic and pedagogically sound contexts aredeveloped for applying these new applications in classrooms. This paper reports on initialattempts to integrate wiki technologies into a pre-service teacher education course as a wayof fostering collaborative knowledge building networks within the classroom and to modelan authentic way of integrating technology into curriculum. Pre-service teaching studentswere situated in a rich, problem-based learning scenario, delivered in a blended model of face-to-face and online modes, including wikis. Research into students’ responses to the useof the wikis suggests that most students were highly engaged in the environment and thatthe use of the wiki facilitated group interaction and collaborative learning, but that thereneeds to be further work in instilling a culture of collaboration and collective knowledgecreation to realise the full potential that wikis offer an educational setting.
Croatian Journal of Education - Hrvatski časopis za odgoj i obrazovanje, 2016
This study aims to determine pre-service elementary teachers' views with regard to evaluating the effectiveness of WebQuest and Wiki activities prepared for general chemistry courses. It also aims to detect the effects of these activities on pre-service elementary teachers' levels of motivation to learn chemistry. For this aim, we used a mixed method research design. Data were gathered using focus group interviews and the 'Chemistry Motivation Questionnaire'. The sample of the study consisted of 111 pre-service elementary teachers from two different universities. The frequency of the pre-service teachers' logging into WebQuest and Wiki activities of the Moodle Learning Management Systems were monitored. The qualitative result of the study shows that both systems made cognitive contributions to pre-service teachers and attracted their interest at the sensory level. As for the quantitative analysis, the results of our study indicate that pre-service teachers had positive views toward using WebQuest or Wiki activities in courses, whereas their motivation to learn chemistry did not increase. A positive, significant relationship but at a low level was observed between pre-service teachers' motivation to learn chemistry and the frequency of logging into Wiki activities.
Pre-Service Teachers Ideas of Collaborative Work When Using
2012
Due to the potential benefits of the wikis, they are increasingly gaining popularity in educational settings. In the educational context they have been used for various purposes such as managing research projects, publishing course materials and completing writing assignments. This type of Web 2.0 tool provides a number of useful functions, such as creation of content by multiple users, tracking history of users' actions, comparison between different editions and roll-back to earlier versions of the wiki, allowing teachers to monitor learners' co-authoring process. Because of these functions, wikis have been claimed as facilitators of collaborative writing, group discussion and interaction. However, wikis are not inherently collaborative. After a brief review of the relevant literature on the importance of interaction in the learning process this communication presents some preliminary results on the use of wikis by pre-service elementary school teachers. The implementation of virtual lab notebooks hosted within a wiki environment in the scope of a course on biology is described. Students´ perceptions regarding the implementation of the wiki are explored, namely its challenges and potential benefits. In order to achieve this goal, participants were asked to write a reflexive essay about their use of the wiki. A content analysis on this data followed. An additional goal is to understand the kind of interaction promoted by the wiki. For this purpose, the individual contributions to the wiki that occurred during the learning process were analyzed and categorized. Follow-up interviews were conducted to gain insight into students' decisionmaking process. The results are discussed in view of identifying factors that may lead to a more successful integration of the wikis in science lessons and to improve pre-service teachers' confidence in using Web 2.0 tools for pedagogical purposes.