Quarter three is finally over and so is the huge wiki experiment! Since February, the students in my Media Studies class have been creating their own wikis - as part of a research project focused on corporate ethics. We spent the first half of the year studying advertising, marketing, propaganda, media representations, and doing a few case studies of some of the major corporations that we buy from.
Starting in February, students began working in small groups to research a corporation of their choice. They were required to research and present on a variety of topics: information about the history of the corporation, 1 or 2 major environmental, human rights, or other ethics violations, analysis of the corporations' website, analysis of 2 advertisements, and recommendations about how consumers may further educate themselves about the issues presented. Finally, each group produced a wiki (using pbwiki) containing multiple pages where they organized and presented their research in order to educate the wiki visitor about their corporation. The wikis included links to ads, voicethreads, original essays, photos, slideshows, screencasts, works cited pages - even a word search puzzle and a quiz show!
Since I finished the final evaluation of this big project a few days ago, I thought now would be a good time to reflect a little on how it went.
The bad news first: I am not completely pleased with the quality of the final products. They are far from polished and the students could surely work for another month to follow up on the depth of their research, improve the quality of their writing, and proofread and polish everything! That being said, I am VERY pleased with the process and the level of learning that I know took place in class last quarter. My students worked HARD. They struggled to complete all the requirements and they did not give up. Only one group out of 20 did not complete a wiki. That means that 53 out of 56 students passed my class this quarter. This is a big deal and a huge success! (Sadly, it is not uncommon for one third to one half of the students to fail in a typical quarter.)
I think the wiki format was a big part of why this assignment was so successful. For me one important test of a quality assessment is that it provides students with a challenge on many levels that keeps them sweating, yet feels personally meaningful enough to keep them committed when the going gets tough. Because they were creating a wiki, they were able to have a lot of control over their product. There is also a lot of built in choice, since they were responsible for making several creative and design decisions about the format, how the viewer accesses and navigates through the wiki, which images or multimedia pieces are to be added to enhance the presentation, and most importantly, what content is selected and how it gets presented (within certain assigned guidelines). They knew there would be an authentic audience because their wikis would be shared publicly on the world wide web once they were finished. And finally, they were held accountable by the pbwiki system of documentation (which I will discuss in more detail below because I found it to be such an excellent tool for use in the classroom).
One of the decisions I struggled with from the beginning was how to group the students. We're encouraged to create heterogeneous groups to allow students with stronger skills to assist those with less developed skills, right? But I have observed that that plan can backfire sometimes. What often happens in my classroom is that the less confident students will quietly back away and allow the most advanced student to take over and do most of the work. This is a bad learning situation all the away around. I have found that if students are allowed to choose their own groups, they will end up self grouping around similar skill level, and they will be more comfortable holding each other responsible for participating. Then, in order to complete the assignment, they will all have to work together. In the end, it is more important to me that everyone gets a chance to practice, grow and learn than it is to have end products that are all perfect. I feel allowing kids to work together where they are comfortable will get me closer to that goal. And I think it worked pretty well in the wiki group project.
In the creating of the wiki, students needed to draw on such a wide range of skills - from computer and internet literacies and knowledge of web 2.0 tools (which I've been scaffolding and practicing with them all year), to summary, research, analysis and other critical reading skills, as well as creative thinking skills. They had to tap into their organizational abilities to decide how to create the wiki pages, what to link where, and how to create the overall navigation which would best deliver their information to the viewer. This also means they had to have audience awareness and the overall purpose of the wiki in mind the whole time.
Oh, and I think it's worth mentioning again the practice of collaboration - working with a group for almost three months, and dividing up tasks, keeping each other accountable and motivated, and simply communicating consistently, are all valuable things to practice! (Oh, did I mention attendance improved dramatically third quarter too?)
Finally, I want to talk about the system of ongoing accountability and feedback the pbwiki system provided for me. Every student invited me in as a member of the wiki when they created it. That way I received an email every time an edit was made to that wiki - telling me the exact changes that were made, and which member of the wiki had made the edit! In addition, I could visit each wiki during class while the students were logged in and working, and I could give instant feedback to them as they worked. So during class, we would all be sitting with our laptops open and someone would yell, "Ms. Haug, will you go check our marketing page and see if we did it right?" I could log in, go read it, and comment or edit right on the page immediately. I could also send them links to research or information I found by posting something right on the page where it would help them out. Also, every wiki page has a record of the changes made, who made them and when. And everyone knew it. This held every individual in the group accountable for participating. I could show parents and remind students anytime of their progress (or lack of!) It felt so much more fair when assigning credit and points to students in a group - which is one of the reasons I hated group work as a student!
Alright! So even though I have gone on forever about this project, I'm certain if you kept reading this far that you are dying to actually SEE a real student wiki or two. So, I thought I'd give a little tour of a few highlights.
