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Article
Wikis for group work: Encouraging transparency, benchmarking, and feedback
Australasian Journal of Educational Technology (2017)
  • Amir Abdekhodaee, Swinburne University of Technology - Australia
  • Dr Anne-Marie Chase, Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER)
  • Bella Ross, Monash University
Abstract
Technology is recognised as playing a part in the changing landscape in higher education; altering delivery modes and providing flexible opportunities for learning. Research into the use of wikis has shown that they provide many opportunities for student learning and the development of twenty-first century skills, however, there has been limited success in their use for collaboration. In this exploratory research, we report on a group wiki project in an engineering management unit at an Australian university. A wiki was introduced to replace the existing group report assessment to add transparency to the task. Each group had their own wiki and students were required to provide feedback to other group wikis which enabled transparency of students’ report development and group progress. The research aim was to investigate student perceptions of using a wiki. Students found the wikis helpful for benchmarking their activity against their peers. Students stated that peer feedback had improved their work; however, much of the feedback given by peers was too brief to be constructive, and provided too late to be useful in guiding their work. This paper will be of interest to academics interested in using wikis in their teaching to develop feedback, transparency, and benchmarking.
Keywords
  • Wikis,
  • Student assessment,
  • Educational technology,
  • Feedback,
  • Peer evaluation,
  • Higher education,
  • Engineering
Publication Date
2017
DOI
http://dx.doi.org/10.14742/ajet.2829
Publisher Statement
No part of AJET may be reprinted or reproduced without permission from the publishers, except that authors (or an author's employer at the time of publication) may make multiple copies of their own articles (subject to identifying each copy as an article which was published originally in AJET). Further details in Copyright notice.
Citation Information
Amir Abdekhodaee, Anne-Marie Chase and Bella Ross. "Wikis for group work: Encouraging transparency, benchmarking, and feedback" Australasian Journal of Educational Technology Vol. 33 Iss. 5 (2017) p. 15 - 31 ISSN: 1449-5554
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/anne-marie-chase/14/