Learning to learn a wiki way

Learning innovation

Models of learning

  • Wikiversity's e-learning model
  • Learning at Wikiversity
  • About learning projects
  • The learning projects portal
  • Interactive content
  • Learning by doing
  • Learning resources (1)
  • Learning resources (2)
  • The learning materials portal
  • Learning to learn a wiki way

Communities


Research


Strategic planning for the project

Strategic planning can be viewed as answering the Why, What, Who, When and Where questions along with the strategic part of the How questions of a project. The practical How questions can be dealt with under tactical planning. In practice this entails identifying the context of the project (intellectual, technological, economic, social, etc.), setting the goals for the project, identifying the objectives needed to achieve these goals, identifying who will be involved in the project and identifying what resources the project will need.

Why is the Learning to learn a Wiki way project needed?

Since wikis are a relatively new social phenomenon, using wikis as tools for learning is a new and evolving social practice. If Wikiversity is to succeed, we need to learn how to make the best use of wikis for learning. This project aims to be an example of how a wiki can be used for learning and to refine, develop and expand on the social practice of using wikis for learning.

This project depends on the participation of its visitors to be successful. So why not join us and share your thoughts by answering the following question?
Why do you want to join this learning project?

How could the Learning to learn a wiki way project be conducted?

This project is intended to become a piece of Participatory action research (PAR), a form of action research. PAR is a process that occurs when the actions a group takes to empower themselves through creating, modifying or developing a social practice are informed by critical reflection - a process which then prompts further development of the social practice.

PAR comprises four elements; participation, social practice (action), critical reflection and empowerment. PAR is an approach to developing or changing social practices. Social practice can be defined as recurring activities involving people working together. In a learning context, this includes practices ranging from reading (the interaction of reader and author), self study or creating a study guide to implementing national and international educational policies. These practices include learning in groups, workplace learning, curriculum development and learning within an educational institution. However not all social practices are appropriate as the subject of PAR. This is because all the people involved in PAR should be participants. To be a participant in PAR means taking part in the planning and decision-making process as well as specific tasks.

In an educational situation, PAR implies learners becoming active learning facilitators. It also implies that the subjects of the research project become its active researchers. Participation in PAR includes the choice of what social practice should be investigated. The action or intervention taken to create, develop or modify the chosen social practice needs to be informed by critical reflection. This means looking at the historical, political, cultural, economic, geographic and other contexts of the social practice before and after any actions or interventions that the participants make. This analysis is used to inform decisions on what future actions or interventions need to be taken to develop the social practice further. This whole process needs to result in the empowerment of all those involved. Crucially, it should also provide support for others to empower themselves from the lessons learned during the Participatory Action Research.

The boot strap step is recruiting participants

The project can't take place without participants. However people may be reluctant to commit time and energy in an undefined project. One way of resolving this is for an individual or a small group of people to put together a preliminary project proposal and then start recruiting participants. The project proposal can then be developed by all the participants.

The first step is to refine and clarify the aim of the project

This should involve setting and prioritizing an overall goal, specifying objectives, and drafting a preliminary review of the relevant literature.

Your participation is crucial for this step, please add your thoughts below.

The second step is to plan a set of interventions

The term intervention is used because it implies that some form of action will be taken as in Participatory Action Research (PAR). The very act of editing these project pages is an intervention. Interventions can be anything from simply reading or copy editing these pages to creating a project plan to creating and modifying learning materials. Decisions concerning particular interventions are made through consensus with extensive collaboration throughout the development of the project.

A number of methods of accomplishing this have been suggested. One approach is for someone to make edits to the project and the other members of the project to re-edit these. This process continues until a consensus is reached. Another approach is for someone to layout a proposal for an intervention such as creating a guide to action research and see if the other members will join in with this intervention. Yet another method would be to reach a consensus within the group on what interventions need to be made and then plan these collectively. This project will explore and discover various methods for interventions and how to plan them.

The term intervention is used to avoid implicit assumptions, bias and prejudices in the actions taken. PAR encourages the use of critical analysis of the subjective, political, economic, social and cultural context of all the interventions in the project. The term "intervention" (rather than "action") implies a degree of neutrality, objectivity and a consensus-driven structure. The set of interventions is planned collectively with as much participation as is possible.

The third step is to implement these interventions

Learning to learn together involves drawing related resources together through a diverse range of interests, skills, and participation levels. Intervention is a multi-directional process that is implemented from the outside in (for example, a new participant bringing in a fresh idea), and from the inside out (for example, discussing the project in the Colloquium). Implementations can range from compiling and classifying key learning materials to facilitating collaborations between and among learning groups both inside and outside of the local wiki. The project may also suggest needed projects, materials and resources for topic areas that may be lacking.

The fourth step is to critically assess and evaluate the consequences of these interventions

A means of assessing, quantifying and qualifying interventions according to their effectiveness toward the goals and objectives needs to be in place.

See Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team for an example of article quality assessment. This example is presented as a wiki-aware, consensus-driven assessment tool. This project's aim is NOT to assess Wikiversity content (though such an effort may form in the future, most likely outside of this project) but rather the effectiveness of its own interventions.

What does the Learning to learn a wiki way project hope to achieve?

  • methods of recruiting participants to Wikiversity
  • methods of recruiting participants to a learning project
  • methods of valuing the skills, knowledge and attitudes of all participants
  • ways of supporting participants in becoming actively engaged with the Wikiversity.
  • methods of planning learning on a wiki
  • a variety of appropriate learning activities and materials
  • methods of managing learning
  • a range of appropriate feedback and assessment techniques
  • methods of evaluating the process, planning, and implementation of the project
  • on your own practice as a participant at Wikiversity
  • on the role of Wikiversity

This learning project will only work if it meets the needs of its participants. You can help achieve this by answering the following question:
What specific outcomes do I want from this learning project?

Who will be involved in this project?

This project is open to everyone (as, indeed, it is the central question which Wikiversity participants hope to answer through their work). As a tactic to move this project forward, active members of the Wikiversity community will be asked if they wish to contribute.

Active participants

  1. MarkMayhew
  2. Mystictim
  3. Cormaggio 16:08, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
  4. Leighblackall 07:43, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
  5. Daanschr 13:41, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
  6. JWSchmidt 15:42, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
  7. Srinivasasha 05:39, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
  8. Executivezen 16:12 4 December 2006 (UTC)
  9. Remi 07:50, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
  10. mmizi 14.16, 17 December 2006 (CET)
  11. Saidkassem 18:36, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
  12. CQ 03:12, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
  13. Dionysios (talk), a Participant in the Wikiversity School of Advanced General Studies, Date: 2007-04-04 (April 4, 2007) Time: 024501 UTC
  14. Sj
  15. Pmhollow 18:39, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
  16. Mirwin 07:14, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
  17. --Jolie 17:27, 6 October 2008 (UTC)


How will this project fare over time?

Wikipedia_1.0: The Hardcopy

This is an open ended project. As Wikiversity finds its collective identity and builds momentum some learning and teaching patterns will become evident. The time line shows the project well under way by December 2006 and workable structures and procedures in place by 2008. The progress continues with changes and tweaks and the user base has become much more diverse than expected. A wide variety of styles have emerged and attempts to homogenize, stratify and unify have met varying degrees of success. Change is nearly constant and it is impossible to predict how the community will change or respond to change.

Unlike Wikipedia, Wikiversity has no plan to reach a Version 1.0 or any such state of perceptible completion. While Wikiversity is completely supportive of Wikipedia, it is a totally different environment for a totally different purpose. An Encyclopedia, by nature must resemble an authoritative body of highly structured factual information. A learning community has no such restriction. Learning to learn a wiki way is all about emergence. As the world and the web change, so Human communities adapt. Wikiversity's custodial style is more of a meritocracy than a beaurocracy. See Wikimedia for more about Wikiversity and the sister projects

Tactical planning for the project

Tactical planning is about answering the practical How questions of the project. This entails identifying methods of archiving the objectives identified in the strategic plan. In effect it is changing strategic questions like "Why is this project needed?" to "How can we create this project?", or "Who is involved in this project?" to "How will they be involved in the project?" or "What does the project hope to achieve?" to "How will the project achieve these objectives?".

How can the project recruit and keep active participants?

So far participants have either found the project themselves or been invited by other members. It would be useful to find out how participants become active members of other learning projects on Wikiversity and beyond.

To start this investigation please could you answer the question:
Why did you become an active participant of a (learning) project and how did you find out about it?

Project resources

Even though wiki learning is a new field there are plenty of examples and reports on the subject. It would be helpfully to gather a list of these resources and provide reviews or critiques with reference to this project. Mystictim 12:39, 29 November 2006 (UTC) Free-Ed.Net is a very active and prolific source of self-learning resources http://www.free-ed.net

Printed materials

World Wide Web

Wikiversity

Websites

Reports and Studies

Age. In Proceedings ICE 3: Ideas, Cyberspace, Education, Ross Priory, Loch Lomond, Scotland.

Blogs

Project artifacts

As the project progresses it will generate content for Wikiversity. If the content is short it should be entered below. When chunks of content become large enough they should be transfered to their own page and a link added below.

Group reflective blog for learning to learn a wiki way

This is a subpage and is intended to be the collective blog for this project. Rather than write to this subpage directly it is a composite page of individual's learning blog pages from the project participants. You can find out more and add your learning blog at the Group reflective blog for learning to learn a wiki way .

Investigation of information relevant to this project

Planning the project

The central problem as I see it is how do we create active learning communities at Wikiversity. I think that there are numerous solutions to this problem. I would like to explore using Participatory Action Research (PAR) as a method of finding some of these solutions. I’ve never carried out any PAR before so this will be a learning journey for me. The first step is to recruit participants for the project and find out why they want to join the project and what they want from the project. This will help to clarify the aims and objectives of the project. Please feel free to add your reasons for joining the project and what you hope to get out of the project under the headings listed below. Mystictim 00:26, 28 November 2006 (UTC) Which page does this change?

Why do you want to join the learning to learn a wiki way project?

What specific outcomes do I want from the learning to learn a wiki way project?

--Jolie 17:24, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Why did you become an active participant of a (learning) project and how did you find out about it?

  1. I've become an active participant in this learning project because I need a set of tools for creating online learning projects. Part of my motivation for this is that I would like to earn a living as an online learning facilitator. A stronger motivation for me is that this specific project and the Wikiversity in general matches many of my beliefs and desires. Doing social useful work is an important value for me. This project provides a space were I can put my skills and knowledge to good use.
    I arrived here by a round about route. I discovered Wikibooks earlier last year when I was actively searching for collaborative projects around creating learning materials. I found the discussion about deleting Wikiversity and the proposal to establish a separate project by accident. From time to time I'd come back to check the progress of establishing Wikiversity as a separate project. I signed up in August and setup this project in September. Mystictim 20 December 2006
  2. Dionysios (talk), a Participant in the Wikiversity School of Advanced General Studies, has joined the Learning a Wiki Way Project because he has a broad general interest in wiki learning. As with Mystictim (talk), Dionysios would like to earn his living online, or, at least in the case of Dionysios, to earn a major portion of his living online. And, too, as with Mystictim, this specific project and Wikiversity in general has a certain resonance with many of the core values and desires of Dionysios. And, too, as with Mystictim, Dionysios has an abiding interest in Good Work, in the case of Dionysios, the Good Work as espoused by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, William Damon, and Howard Gardner at the Good Work Project. Probably it was searching Wikiversity in the general area of Learning that led this Participant to theLearning to Learn a Wiki Way Project. (s) Dionysios, Date: 2007-04-04 (April 4, 2007) Time: 035501 UTC
  3. ... the route of finding this project was long and confusing. I still am trying to understand what is the best way to contribute and intereact with wiki, given time constraints. I have carefully read through the text, attempting to intereact with the project as directed. I am intrigued and interested in learning but somewhat concerned. most dates range from 06 to early 07. almost a full two years later- have intereations ceased? is there still a community interested in the useful topic? In an attempt at further interactions I will seek out active participants..--Jolie 17:34, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
  4. I am not decided yet to become an acitve member of this project. I found a link to this project when i was looking for ways to learn about wikiversity. --tomaschwutz 22:31, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
  5. My concerns are the same as those of User:Jolie and User:Tomaschwutz|tomaschwutz. I have time constraints as well, and I'm not sure I can be regular at this thing. I won't leave behind too long gaps, if possible, but I doubt it, and that's what's keeping me from becoming an active member in this project. --User:Scorpio April 30, 2011
  6. I was exploring wikipedia, marveling at the amount of information that has been collected. That got me to the wikimedia group, which brought me here. I am also a huge proponent of sources of free online learning. I haven't gotten involved in adding information yet (except for removing a typo), but I fully intend to.

Clarifying the aims of the learning to learn a wiki way project

Perhaps begin with a Wikiversity member commitment to the accurate documentation of information provided within the Wikiversity knowledge relay, as well as providing all necessary works citations that support posted documentation. Also, make a goal to build standards of liability in maintaining a positive reputation concerning academic fortitude. Making a commitment to assist others in setting and reaching their educational learning goals through positive peer encouragement, friendly competition/and or challenges, offering peer-based tutorial support..but not requiring a participation quota for any reason. to create a volunteer based member task group to assist in defining the overall tasks yet to be accomplished, outlining future objectives, finding new creative learning methods, to collaborate, research and compare what has, and has not worked in the past for similar entities; making sure to avoid repeating any previously established 'learning blunders'. --Ifroggi 09:19, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Try using the Requirements Writing Workshop as a framework for identifying the user goals, functions, and structures of your proposed system. I'd appreciate your feedback. TWFred 15:53, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Participations

A nearly two year gap in active participation cannot be ignored. since the heart of this project is participation; intended action must be stated, interaction solicited and conversation continued.

I will begin a general search for how wikidiversity projects are led. does the leader have a permanent role in the evolution of his project? does the leader pursue the stated project to completion or solicit, wait for, or delay project completion on participants? Does an interested individual have the moral and ethical right to alter or extend underlying aims and intended interactions? What is the moral and ethical duty of a intended participant to a slowly progressing, or unprogressing project? --Jolie 17:55, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Those are wonderful questions, and I'd be very interested to know the answers, myself. The Jade Knight (d'viser) 03:39, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Planning for Useful Interventions; A personal experiment

I will be restarting this project. I will begin an investigation into a topic of interest to me; I will then perform an action by stating a summary of my investigation on my home page, here in Wikiversity. I will track any occurring interventions and analyze them. how helpful are they?

One natural question, is that when one is learning; at what point and in what way is the most useful writing generated. Are question useful? do questions generate more interventions?

Since expertise is a quality that cannot be ignored, the person beginning the investigation should wield some expertise in this area. Thus, I being a chemist at a gasoline refinery will be investigating gasoline and specifically the social impact of gasoline. I intend to write my beginning statement about gasoline around noon, tuesday OCT 7.

(it would be nice to coin a word that describes the process of stating information on a wikipage for the purpose of creating conversation and eliciting participation from the wiki community.)

Any way, once this done feel free to interact. the next step is tricky. not only do I need do know how many people interact I need to know how many people COULD interact with the Topic.

What you have interacted MORE if the statement was said differently? did you have an opinion and point of view that could have been stated? did you feel that the statement engaged you? lots of people have something to say about gasoline, and its effect on your behavior and our society.

I think that the statement might fail to elicit expertise in the wiki community in:

please score the post for the four characteristics (1-5) 1 being the worse and 5 being the best.

should you want you can score this entry, please put scores (as well as comments) on the discussion page. Make sure you indicate what statement you are scoring. I will make sure each statement has a bold heading.

I will track questions/statement ratio; complexity of the post; size of the post; and keep track of how many intereactions, the average score, and charactererize any posted comments.

I will analyze the average score in an attempt to describe the posting style that yields the best wiki intereaction.

thank you for your help. again please feel free to give any suggestion for improving or altering the new experiment. --Jolie 13:47, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

This article is issued from Wikiversity - version of the Friday, February 12, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.