So in the wake of the first session I wanted to reflect on how things have gone and use the outcomes from today to help improve the subsequent sessions.

The Plan

What I set out to do with the session on wikis was demonstrate and discuss the functionality of wikis in only a basic way and devote much of the session to the educational aspects.  Namely, what opportunities exist in use of wikis, what challenges or considerations need to be addressed, how might wikis be introduced in a meaningful way, and in particular some of what I see as the more critical aspects of wiki use – wiki spirit and neutral point of view.

At only an hour for the entire session, I was quite conscious of how tight the time constraints were.  I anticipated spending only 15 to 20 minutes on the functional aspects, and the rest on more of an open discussion in which we looked at different models, and explored the strengths and weaknesses of each.

The Reality

As it turned out, there was far more interest in the immediate technical aspects than I’d expected.  That is, getting used to what wikis could do in a functional sense, and spending a fair bit of time learning how to actually use them.  There were practical questions of visibility and editability, roles and abilities, issues of enrollment and getting students into the wiki in the first place.

At the time I was concerned that I’d begun to speed up too much, as if to “get through the content” rather than identify the needs that the participants were expressing and explore them accordingly.  In reality I think I caught myself and slowed down; I did jump around a bit more than I’d hoped to though.  The fact I was on 3 hours of sleep due to sick kids could have contributed to that just a tad.

Outcomes

By the end of the session I think everyone was fairly satisfied with how everything had went.  There was a bit of a sense that we moved too quickly, however my willingness to follow up individually and discuss things more slowly one-on-one seemed to mitigate that considerably.

All in all I’m quite happy with some of the important topics we managed to discuss.  In particular these included openness and flexibility versus more tightly restricted roles and abilities; leaning more towards good will and trust than control; when you would use wikis and what the benefits are; ways that you could actually implement them in a meaningful way; and some really interesting examples of their use in the wild.

I was particularly pleased that my emphasis on Brian Lamb’s efforts at UBC, and Ben Miller’s work at UNSW were both so well received – they’re both fantastic examples of practice after all.  The English lectures were very interested in a Wikipedia project Brian organised, in which a class identified some of the poorest quality literature articles in the site and spent the semester researching and developing them into a far higher quality.

The notion of working in a real site, beyond the confines of the classrooom, on content that would benefit many, many people really resonated with the participants.  They may not necessarily implement a similar sort of activity, but their increased appreciation for how collaborative wikis are was undeniable.

Dean Groom is currently streaming the SICTAS Symposium in Sydney via Ustream.TV (or at least he was – the feed seems to have gone down) via http://www.ustream.tv/channel/edtechshedtech

This is a very interesting use case of how a collection of different technologies can be combined to present a fairly cohesive view of a live event. We are (or at least were) able to watch the even live via Ustream, read up on the background and planning via the wiki, hold discussions via Twitter with both local participants (such as Dean) as well as others no present, aggregate and syndicate the Twitter conversations using an RSS feed for the hashtag #sictassy, collaborate on a live document via an EtherPad document and ultimately reflect on what was discussed on blogs, tying them together via a common tag.

For a semi-live feed of the Twitter discussion you can also go to the Tweetchat room (Twitter account required). Tweetchat aggregates all tweets based on a designated hashtag, and filters out everything that isn’t tagged with the same term – much like the Twitter Search Results. It also, however updates and refreshes every few seconds so you are shown the most recent tweets automatically. The room’s hashtag is also added automatically to anything you post from within the room.

Events still going though, so I’d better get back to the action.

UStream.TV feed

Flickr Set by Education.au

Screencast of Interactivity
I just recorded a quick and dirty screencast of the different elements/tools currently being used to engage in the discussion. The video is available on YouTube, Blip.TV (embedded below), or as a download.

If you would like to download it please see the podcast feed.

The framework would incorporate participatory elements including exposure to network dynamics, backchannel communication and the notion of the presenter as just one node in the discussion.  Use of new media technologies would be encouraged to facilitate and document the discussion, with aggregation, tagging, and syndication linking the disparate conversations together, and therefore making them easily referenced and synthesised later.

In addition to the primary objective of cultivating discussion on the subject matter  of the presentation is hoped this framework would also serve to model and demonstrate the opportunities and affordances of new media by establishing a real world use case.

Prior to the presentation a blog post, email, or document would be circulated to potential attendees outlining the participatory nature of the event and discussing the following ideas:

• Networked Learning, Connectivism
• Backchannels, including Twitter and use of temporary chatrooms
• Folksonomy – nominate blog tag and Twitter hashtag for the event
• Live blogging, wikis
• Links/embedded versions of Common Craft videos on Twitter, blogs, wiki
• Suggest creation of a Twitter account

During the presentation, the presenter would seek to actively incorporate feedback coming through the backchannel and address any questions, comments or confusion that may emerge therein.  Among other things, incorporating and referencing the backchannel would seek to legitimise the activities in the minds of people who are unfamiliar or uncomfortable with engaging in two-levels of conversation.

It is expected that resistance and discomfort will exist – traditionally presenters are expected to be the focal of a passive audience, with any and all discussions and questions revolving around what presenters are talking about, and unrelated or tangential discussions discouraged and considered rude.  In this case it would be encouraged, with the idea being you gain a better appreciation for the thoughts and views of others by encouraging discussion while the ideas are being formulated. It would be emphasised that the presentation would be merely the inception for the conversation, and that discussion, debate and clarification would extend far beyond the end of the initial presentation.

Use of tags and hashtags will enable the aggregation, syndication, synthesis and further discussion of these ideas long after the presentation is finished.

After the presentation had finished a wiki page would be created that linked to all blog posts, wiki pages and the link to search results of the nominated Twitter hashtag.  It would also provided an initial synthesis of the thoughts expressed through the backchannel discussion.

As I said, this idea is very raw at this stage – so any feedback, ideas, and particularly experiences would be much appreciated.

Someone I follow on Facebook posted a pair of extremely insightful statements in which she confessed to being:

“…totally on facebook during class right now. hey, anything to stay awake and survive this pharm lecture.”

Shortly thereafter she received several comments of affirmation and agreement from people who have obviously had similar experiences.  To these she responded “Dude this guy is painful!”

I was immediately struck by the question: “Is this use of Facebook and laptops during a lecture the cause of the students distraction and their apparent lack of interest, or it is it instead a symptom or effect of a much larger issue.”

An Escape

It seems clear in this instance that the student resorted to Facebook as a means of passing the time during a lecture that was completely uninteresting to her.  And based on her final statement – “Dude this guy is painful” – the source of her disengagement can be clearly attributed to one element: the instructor.

Now I won’t go so far as saying that all student disengagement and browsing of websites during class time can be blamed on “painful” instructors, however I would argue that the presence of an engaging instructor is an extraordinary motivators for participation.

Richard Buckland

Moreover as the example of UNSW Computer Science Lecture Richard Buckland illustrates, the combination of an engaging instructor and empowering technology can have incredible results for student participation.

In the following YouTube video (55 minutes), Buckland discusses the motives and logic behind his decision to implement wikis in the classroom, their nature and use, and the results that have been realised as a result.

The most accurate description of his work and apparent philosophies is featured in the video’s synopsis, which reads:

“Depending on your courage and how much faith you are prepared to have in your students, wonderful things can happen when you empower them.”

Beginning around 12:40 in the recording, Buckland starts discussing his experiences, saying (13:00 – 13:57):

“The first time I did the wiki, I said ‘students, there are no notes in this course I’m afraid. I’ve just got terrible bullet points that I’m lecturing off. But you yourself will have to have notes to survive in this course, so I’m letting you edit my notes.’ And I just threw open all my lecture notes.

And as each lecture was going, I would find my lecture notes started to get fleshed out with what I was saying at that instant because people were in the lecture with their laptops. Spelling mistakes would suddenly mysteriously get corrected even before I got to the point. Sometimes people would put humorous flippant points in, in front of what I was going to say – so this is the fear, that people will muck up my notes.

But in general because I trusted the students and gave them great respect…they rose to that respect. I had complete faith in them; and they did amazing things. …the notes were no longer my notes, they were theirs.”

Philosophy

It’s important to bear in mind here, that the successes that Richard Buckland has experienced with wikis has as much to do – if not more – with the way he facilitates the course and engages with students – as well as his teaching philosophy – as it does with the model for wiki use he has implemented.

Central to this is the notion of Wiki Nature, which he describes as (15:39):

“…this notion of trusting each other, having respect in each other, having pride in our workmanship…and trying to be objective.”

This ethos is clearly visible in any of the 55 full-length lectures Buckland has released on YouTube of his Higher Computing course – all of which carry 5-star ratings, and in the case of his first lecture, uploaded one year ago, has been viewed nearly 50,000 times.

Conclusion

Both of these examples featured students using portable web-based technologies in a lecture environment. This is the extent of their similarity; the remainder is stark in contrast. In the first example, students embrace technology as a means of escaping boredom and disinterest. In the second, as a means of engaging in a participatory activity that brought students and teacher closer together and undoubtedly fueled a deeper understanding of the subject matter.

When installed, a new option becomes available at the bottom of both the post and page creation forms.  Ticking this option turns the content from a standard WordPress post or page into one that is editable by the group.  You are also able to activate an option that converts any heading tag used in the page/post to a clickable item listed in a Table of Contents listed at the top of the content.

For users with sufficient access permissions (author or contributor), the edit history is displayed at the bottom of the published item.  Users then have the ability to browse back through previous instances, and track who has made the changes.

With the wiki option enabled you can continue to use other standard WordPress options, such as embedded media or the WYSIWYG editor; it just turns content typically created and controlled by one person into something that is open it up to collaboration.

Why not just use a wiki?

All this being said, I don’t mean to suggest that you abandon your wiki of choice and use WordPress instead, because this framework can only do so much.  I see the option as a valuable way to extend the functionality of a blog – particularly a group blog – to support relatively light or infrequent wiki collaboration.  If you’re likely to be heavy wiki users it might make more sense to use a proper wiki.

The significance of using a combination WordPress/Wiki is that you gain collaborative opportunities for aggregation and synthesis of group input while retaining space to facilitate individuals’ reflections and subsequent group discussion.

Educational Use Case

As an educational use case for example, imagine the group work project.  Lets say 5 students are brought together and asked to work on a collaborative project throughout the session, with key milestones and deliverables expected (e.g. project components or short essays) and ongoing discussion and communication required.  Imagine as well that each individual student is expected to post weekly reflections (to track and assist their personal learning processes), as well as contribute to a series of group developed essays or presentations.

Each student could contribute their reflections in the form of standard blog posts, with group discussion taking place in the comments area – thus enabling an instructor to track participation and formatively evaluate how the group (and each group member) was progressing.

Plugin Recommendations

As a quick aside here, there are two key plugins I’d like to recommend here, each of which I believe have both technical and educational value.

• Threaded commenting – I’d strongly recommend using threaded commenting here, as it enables a quasi-bundling of conversations around topics rather than limiting them to the default chronological layout of blog comments.  This could help establish continuity of discussion for those engaged within it as well as facilitate a quick assessment of the outcomes of the conversation – including misunderstandings or areas of confusion.
• Syndication - I would also recommend incorporating a syndication plugin that could pull in content from other blogs using nominated tags.  This would enable encourage students to contribute their reflections to a personal space in the first instance and then have the posts related to the group project automatically reposted (syndicated) on the group blog.  The importance here is in establishing continuity in each individual’s learning journey by helping them track their growth and development over time.  As such it would facilitate reflection over a much larger scale in which they could review their experiences over the course of many posts, months or even years.

Enter the Wiki

Up to this point the individual reflections and group discussions could take place using the standard WordPress blog framework – now imagine what a wiki could facilitate in terms of project planning.

Blogs can do a lot, but they don’t lend themselves particularly well to frequent edits of single pieces of content by multiple people – though it is nonetheless possible.  Wikis on the other hand are designed to facilitate and track frequent edits by multiple people.

Each group could be asked to create a series of pages to document the planning, implementation and outcomes of a series of activities or key milestones.  Not only would the wiki plugin enable group editing, it would quickly show who had contributed each individual change and enable the group to revert to previous versions of the content if the need arose.

Diigo and Twitter

In addition to the blog/wiki framework outlined above there are a couple of additional activities that could be used to facilitate the group’s efforts, each of which could be tied back into the blog.  This would serve to both expand the collaborative opportunities, as well as provide even greater insight into the dynamic that was developing between group members, the content they were discussing and investigating.

Diigo - The creation of a Diigo group for tracking useful reference material would enable the group to amass and bookmark a collection of resources (websites, journal articles, blog posts, YouTube videos, etc) that could be used during the project planning, research and/or implementation.

Diigo also supports automated posting of bookmarked resources to the group blog.  This includes the annotations provided by the student adding the bookmark.  Effectively students could aggregate the links to these resources (and their notes about them) on the group blog, thereby retaining its status as a singular planning site.

Twitter - The use of Twitter as an open channel for discussion, sharing of links and networking with subject matter experts, other students or teachers around the world would provide an avenue for informal or brief discussions on topics that contribute to the progress of the project.

Additionally through use of hashtags (identifiers that categorise content using # followed by a descriptor – such as #learning or #unswphysics1001), students could quickly differentiate Twitter posts that relate to the project from those that don’t.

Hashtags are also searchable in Twitter, making it easy to view and even syndicate all posts that have been tagged with the same term. Using the same syndication plugin mentioned earlier, it is conceivable that the search results from the hashtag could be automatically posted on the group blog as well, thus documenting the group’s efforts even further.  This theory needs to be confirmed however.

The Result

In this use case, by the end of the session the group would have used the space for planning, reflection, discussion, review and evaluation in a manner that established a singular space for the group’s attention – as opposed to one site for a group blog (or even multiple individual blogs) and another for a group wiki. Additionally, through monitoring of blog reflections, comments, and wiki edits, the instructor could monitor each individual’s contributions for the purposes of clarification and instruction while the project was underway as well as summative assessment at session’s end.

Resources

Links to the sites or plugins mentioned in this post are included below:

• Diigo - http://diigo.com
• Twitter - http://twitter.com
• WordPress.org – http://wordpress.org
• WordPress Wiki Plugin – http://wp-wiki.org/
• Threaded Commenting – Threaded commenting comes native to WordPress version 2.7.  See the Discussion settings in the Dashboard area
• Syndication Plugin (“Feed WordPress”) – http://projects.radgeek.com/feedwordpress/

Via George Siemens, I’ve just run across a post by ReadWriteWeb (Lardinois, 2008) concerning a decision by RNA Biology to tie article publications into Wikipedia.  RWW indicates:

“RNA Biology has decided to ask every author who submits an article to a newly created section of the journal about families of RNA molecules to also submit a Wikipedia page that summarizes the work.”

This decision is incredibly significant and I hope will inspire other academic journals to follow suit.  At the risk of sounding naive, radical, or both, I’ve never understood the obsession with  restricting access to information and publications.  Significant research is taking place across the academy – and has been for hundreds of years – but as a member of the general public, you’re really hard pressed to know what it is, let alone how to find it.

I once discovered a paper I’d co-written that I can’t in fact gain access to, despite actually contributing to its creation.  Granted this was many years ago, but the fact remains – at least in my mind – that restricting access to information limits is potential impact and instead hoards the information amongst a sort of echo chamber of academic discussion, many of whom are already familiar with the subject.

I’d go so far as to say that limiting access to information devalues it’s significance, and undermines it’s value to society.

In my view, wherever possible research needs to be shared as openly and widely as possible.  This is how society benefits, this is how learners benefit, and indeed this is how researchers benefit.  By making information freely and openly available we are able to collaborate more effectively, progress more quickly, and develop a much greater sense of collegial and scholarly community.

If an aim of education, research and learning is to make the greatest difference with the greatest impact, then perpetuating a policy of the hoarding of information amongst a selective group of people is in direct contrast to this and should be rallied against.

Opening this information up to Wikipedia and thus beginning to broach complex topics with the general public is an important step towards distributing the knowledge more widely.

Almost certainly there will be those who decry the prospect of opening up scholarly research to a cloud of anonymous editors, some of whom may have no existing expertise in the subject.  Yet this is a key, very effective way to break out of the echo chamber and indeed start to engage with the wider public community.

References:

• Lardinois, Frederic (2008). “Scientific Journal to Authors: Publish in Wikipedia or Perish”, ReadWriteWeb, 18 December 2008. Accessed 16 January 2008 from http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/publish_in_wikipedia_or_perish.php

Update: This wiki project has been discontinued due to a combination of lack of usage on my part, as well as an influx of spam.

I’ve been meaning to launch a wiki for quite some time and have finally got ’round to doing it. After going back and forth on a platform for ages I’ve finally settled on a fairly customised instance of Drupal that I’ve outfitted to feature many of the same sorts of wiki functionality people are accustomed to in MediaWiki. The wiki is now available at: http://wiki.techticker.net or via the Wiki link in the top menu of this blog.

At this stage it’s seriously barren, but I’m hoping this will change over time. I for one will be using it for documenting my activities and am happy for others to do the same. From the Welcome page:

This wiki has been created to provide a collaborative space for educators, students or anyone else with a vested interest in the empowerment of learning. While it is anticipated that much of the content will have an emerging or educational technology bent to it, this is by no means a requirement. Learning theory and related subject matter is wholeheartedly encouraged as well.

There are many other Open Education endeavours like this one out there and I don’t mean to undermine them or detract from their purpose. Realistically this is a fairly personal project that I’m throwing open to other people. I’m just happy with the progress I’ve made tonight and wanted to give others the opportunity to use the tool if they find it beneficial.

I’d like to thank Ubuntu for sharing their Code of Conduct under a Creative License, because I’ve taken the liberty of adopting and adapting it for the TechTicker Wiki – view the details and register for an account here.

One of the major benefits of Drupal is its extraordinary extensibility. There are several thousand modules out there that have been donated by the Drupal community, and each one offers different sorts of functionality that you can add to your site. I’ve gone with a fairly streamlined approach for the moment – largely because it’s too easy to end up with a bloated site. Nonetheless there are a lot of possibilities out there. So if you start to use the wiki please bear that in mind.

To any interested parties, the wiki can be found at: http://wiki.techticker.net/

The video is a fascinating look into the organisational structure and sociology that is Wikipedia and is clearly indicative of a community with strong roots in open source and free software philosophy. There are numerous points and notable quotes from the presentation that support this notion, many of which are listed below:

Organisation

• new methods of organisation – “work by anyone who wants to pitch in”
• servers maintained by volunteer system administrators
• free licensing for all content – including reuse, redistribution, commercial or non-commercial use
• run by “rag-tag band of volunteers”
• repeated references to the Wikipedia community and not the Wikipedia websites

Managing Quality Control

• social policy – neutral point of view policy; social concept of cooperation.
• significant real-time peer review involving notifications of changes via IRC channel, RSS feeds, email announcements, New Page page

Content Creation/Edits

• Only 18% of edits by anonymous users
• 600 to 1000 people make bulk of edits
• Contributors described as semi-professionals who hold themselves to standards that are equal to or higher than professional standards of quality

Social Rules

• Most social rules left completely open-ended in the software. Nothing in software that enforces the rules.
• Democratic “social method” for vetting accuracy of information – votes by text
• Merit-based heirarchy/aristocracy

Governance Model

• “Very confusing but workable mix of consensus…democracy…(merit-based) aristocracy…and monarchy”
• “Free Software World” notion of “Benevolent Dictator” as means to ensuring openness and freedom won’t “undermine the quality of the content”

Final Thoughts

• “Our wiki model is the way we work but we’re not fanatical web anarchists.”
• “The passion of the community is for the quality of the work; not necessarily for the process that we use to generate it.”

What this means then is that one of the key exemplars of vibrant community-driven collaboration I had used to show the possibilities outside of the open source and free software movements is, in fact, as firmly based in the idealism and philosophies as its more technologically-minded brethren, such as Ubuntu or Apache.

Signficantly too is the fact that the wiki engine developed for Wikipedia, MediaWiki, is open source and available as free software, with all content on their site available under a GNU Free Documentation License.

Wales’ depiction of the Wikipedia’s organisational structure and sociology is so similar to other open source projects in fact that all that was missing was a reference to Linus Torvald’s famous quote “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”

Indeed Wikipedia has become another example pointing to the possibility that most successful collaborative online endeavours are based in open source or free software idealism.

The case studies presented are absolutely extraordinary and encapsulate the power and speed inherent in the new web. Ordinary users, previously relegated to the role of information consumer only 10 years ago, are now being afforded the right of information provider, interpreter, critic and commentator – and they are doing it en masse.

A case in point from the ZDNet.com article is the period immediately following the London Bombing in 2005, when a new entry was created in Wikipedia:

“On July 7th, 2005, minutes after the bombs went off in London, an entry describing what was known at that moment (not much, admittedly) appeared in the Wikipedia. Within an hour, several hundred people had contributed content, research, or editing skills. 24 hours later, 2,500 (that’s twenty-five hundred) people had produced a 14-page article more comprehensive than any single newscast or newspaper had been able to provide. (Indeed, the news outlets themselves began using the article for background.)”

The level, complexity, and speed of collaboration on this post is staggering. This 14 page article emerged in 24-hours and featured the contributions of 2,500 people; none of whom were paid a cent. Yet somehow, they all converged on the same virtual location to successfully write, edit, research and discuss a single article without the whole affair descending into chaos.

How is un-orchestrated collaboration on such a massive scale even possible?

What is equally incredible is that, with 2.2 million articles in their English version alone (as of this post), Wikipedia has maintained similar levels of voluntary participation for years.

In doing this, the Wikipedia community has singularly shown not only that mass collaboration is possible, but that it can take place on an ongoing basis for an extensive period of time.

However while this provides 2.2 million examples to illustrate such collaboration is possible, what it doesn’t provide is an explanation of how. After all, Wikipedia is not the only website on the Internet that is driven by the contributions of a voluntary user base. Unfortunately countless wiki’s of similar beginnings have not fared so well.

As ZDNet.com indicates, the true numbers are difficult to measure:

“The problem with the public wiki phenomenon is that you only hear about the winners. The losers–the empty wikis that will never be filled–seldom make the news. It’s hard to judge how many failures there are, though the open source movement may provide a clue: For every screaming success (like Linux), there are numerous open source projects that languish, forgotten.”

The range of potential outcomes on a collaborative wiki project is vast. So how then do you set about inspiring a framework that nurtures a community spirit such as the one present in Wikipedia – or can you? How much of a project’s success or failure is due to planning, implementation and work, and how much is blind luck or coincidence?

Is it possible that in seeking to pinpoint the essence of user generated content and mass collaboration, we are destined to miss it; and that the reality is much more intangible, esoteric and fragile? Or is there a quantifiable mixture that, when concocted, produces desirable and predictable results which can be replicated?

This is one of the many questions I have which I will continue to research and document throughout the lifespan of this blog. Experiences and comments are encouraged.

References:

• “Wikinomics and mass collaboration“, ZDNet.com, 22 November 2007
• “Wikinomics 2: peer production“, ZDNet.com, 25 January 2008
• “7 July 2005 London bombing“, Wikipedia
• Wikinomics Website