Online teaching and learning at Deakin

Notice boards are the old school way of delivering information in the university. In the past (more than 10 years ago), students are required to check the notice boards frequently for important information regarding their class time, unit or assignment deadlines. This system no longer exists. Nowadays, there is an online system which basically links the university, the lecturers and the students. At Deakin, the Deakin Studies Online (DSO) is the “communication hub” between students and lecturers. Everything related to the university, the school, the units the students are enrolled in, changes to the time table and even the marking can be placed in DSO. Like the notice boards, DSO is supposed to be checked frequently. It is no longer a valid excuse to say that the notice on the notice board is gone or blown by the wind as the announcements/ notice in DSO will be there until the end of trimester or depending on how long it is meant to be there.

Everything is online nowadays. Lecture notes, assignments, extra readings etc can be uploaded online in DSO anytime and anywhere as long as the internet connection is good. There are no more excuses basically for the students to say that their assignments have been eaten by the dog or I lost my lecture notes thus I failed. In my unit, I upload my lecture notes and any extra reading materials on DSO every week before the lecture. Sometimes right before the lecture and sometimes few days before depending on how organize I am. Students can even bring their laptops to class and read off their computer while I blabber in front of the class. I really hope for their sake that they take lots of notes and not expect everything to be in the lecture notes which are usually dot points. Do they learn more this way? The old school way is for the students to actually take notes from the overhead projector or blackboard. I guess they do learn a lot from the lecture nowadays as they don’t waste too much time writing instead of listening to the valuable information given by the lecturer.

The submission of the assignments in my unit is also done online. I have chosen Media Wiki as the media tool for submission assignment mainly due to the hands-on support we have at Deakin. The teaching and Learning staff who specialize in media wiki are always readily available for both staff and students. Group work is best done using media wiki. One of the graduate attributes includes skills such as working effectively as part of a team which is one of the specific attribute in this unit. Hence, the decision of making the assignments for this unit into a group assignment is part of the fulfilment of the Deakin graduate attribute. There are 180 students enrolled in this unit and the group assignment is divided into 18 groups with 10 team members. The purpose for such group size relates to the “real world” in the construction company where the teams are vast with different skills. Each group assigned a team member as the “project manager” for the project. The “project manager” is responsible for monitoring the progress or contribution of the other team members and the content of the project.

One of the aims or learning objectives of the unit is to develop the ability to communicate the results of the students’ research in construction technology using appropriate digital media. Due to the many advantages of media-wiki, it was chosen as a digital media tool to present the students’ research. Each group is assigned to one media-wiki which only the teaching staff and the members in the assigned group can access. One of the attractions in using media-wiki is to ‘monitor” the individual’s contribution to the assignment from the “history” page in media-wiki. Individual marks are given according to the individual’s contribution to the assignments. This is to ensure that each group members contribute equally.

The main idea of choosing media-wiki as the digital media tool for assignment submission is that media-wiki is not only a great way to collaborate and communicate ideas but also it engages students in cooperative learning activities (Teehan 2010). Wiki technology virtually enables anyone to completely edit pages without difficulty where anyone can contribute significantly to the structure of the site, simply by adding new links and new pages (Ebersbach et al. 2008).

However, communication among the group members is expected to be the major issue in a big group such as in this assignment. This is due to students from different courses where some are from construction management, architecture, associated combined degrees and civil engineering enrolled in this unit. Since media-wiki is web-based software; it allows all viewers of a page to change the content by editing the page online in a browser. This makes wiki simple and easy-to-use platform for cooperative work on text and hyper texts (Ebersbach et al. 2008). It can also be used as internationally accessible notepad or as discussion forums for general and specialized discussion. In other words, group members can discuss their assignment in the comfort of their home. However, the challenge with this is not about wiki-media per se but it is more to the level of responsibility of the students towards their contribution to their assignment and their attitudes towards their fellow group members. Elgort et al. (2007) suggest if the purpose of using a wiki in a learning context is to promote successful group cooperation some degree of ‘scaffolding’ (Elgort et al., 2008, p.207) may need to be established in the use of a wiki for a team assignment, as appropriate team behaviour cannot be assumed. Jones (2010) observed in research on student use of wikis a degree of unevenness of participation of group members, but suggested this situation occurs commonly in group collaborative contexts whether or not technology is utilized as the group medium. Difficulties relating to attributing contributions to the wiki by individual group participants are examined by Trentin (2008) and potential solutions suggested for how this may be determined.

Like any other new project or technology it is expected that there will be issues relating to getting started with new project or technology for the first time. Wiki technology, with its low technical access hurdles, is ideal for web-based group processes where it doesn’t require extensive training (Ebersbach et al. 2008). However, as easy as wikis generally are to use, the self organisational processes that make wikis so fascinating can be very tricky though the fundamental principle of the wiki technology is still simple (Ebersbach et al. 2008). Lecturers in research conducted by Rifkin et al. (2010) articulated a range of possible difficulties in using the ‘new media’ which included wikis. Their reservations noted the time-consuming process of acquiring competence with the new tools as well as the time commitment required to develop and assess student tasks; lack of certainty of how to evaluate the tasks; that all students have equal opportunity to utilize the online environment; whether this type of medium provides an effective learning platform; and issues relating to relative benefits of team assignments
In this unit’s assignment, groups are required to add any discussion/ideas/ communication in the ‘discussion’ page in their media-wiki. This is to ease the track of authorship from each group members. However, it was noted by Minocha and Thomas (2007) and Young (2010) students using wikis were on occasion uncomfortable editing or providing appraisal of others’ work. Wheeler et al. (2008) noted that using a wiki was not compatible with the learning style of each individual with students opposed to editing of their work and inclined to show interest only in material they had created, thereby seeming to defeat the purpose of the wiki as a group learning space.

I am looking forward to mark the assignments and see the creativity expressed by the group members in making their media wiki submission stand out among the rest of the group.

References

• Elgort, I., Smith, A.G., & Toland, J. (2008). Is wiki an effective platform for group course work? Australasian Journal of educational Technology, 24(2), 195-210.
• Ebersbach, A., Glaser, M., Heigl, R., & Warta, A. (2008). Wiki: Web Collaboration. Heidelberg: Springer.
• Institute of Teaching andLearning. ( 2010). Teaching and Learning at Deakin - Handbook for Staff 2010-2011. Melbourne: Deakin University. Retrieved from .
• Jones, P. (2010). Collaboration at a Distance: Using a Wiki to Create a Collaborative Learning Environment for Distance Education and On-Campus Students in a Social Work Course. Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 30(2), 225-236.
• Minocha, S. & Thomas P.G. (2007). Collaborative Learning in a Wiki Environment: Experiences from a software engineering course. New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia, 13(2), 187-209.
• Rifkin, W., Righetti, J., Longnecker, N., Leach, J., & Davis, L. (2011). Engage Students by Having them Publish in “New Media”. HERDSA News, 33(1), 11-14.
• Teehan, K. (2010). Wikis - the educators power tool. USA: Linworth..
• Wheeler, S., Yeomans, P. & Wheeler, D. (2008). The good, the bad and the wiki: Evaluating student-generated content for collaborative learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39(6), 987-995.
• Young, J.R. (2010). In Wired Singapore, Classrooms and Cultures Clash Over Web 2.0. Chronicle of Higher Education, 57(4), A10-A10.

Media Wiki

It is so ironic that I "forbid" my students to use Wikipedia as their reference material and yet I asked them to use Media Wiki (the concept is very similar to Wikipedia) to submit their assignments. Like most of my students, I am new to Media Wiki . Like most of my students, I am willing to learn new things. "Get with the program" , "Be technology savvy" if you like. I would like my students to feel that if I can do it so can they. The Generation Y students are "supposed" to be more computer savvy than a Generation X lecturer like me. With all the media tools available; Facebook, Twitter, My space, blogs etc. Almost all the students I asked have a Facebook page; some even have a blog or two. How hard is it to upload pictures and write something I thought? Well, apparently, it is quite hard when you have to write something technical and not about something you are passionate about or would like to whinge about. What is there to whinge about construction and structures in a commercial and industrial building? (That's what I am teaching by the way). They can't simply say what they want about the subject without researching the subject deeply and going to the site to see what is actually happening during and after the construction plus talking to the site engineer or the project manager. They need to know the terminology used in construction and the structural connections used in commercial and industrial buildings. You would learn more from looking at how things work than trying to visualize how it will work when you read something in the book wouldn’t you?

Why Media Wiki I hear somebody asked? I know there are other media tools that I can use such as Google docs but our university has hands on support teams for Media Wiki which is very useful for a novice like me and for student’s queries. I am also trying to save trees for future generation. On top of that, it cost money for the students to print their assignments especially in colours as most of the sketches and photos are in colour. Media Wiki is also a good tool for collaborative work. It enables the group members as well as the assessors to “check” who and when someone add or delete anything on the Media Wiki . Basically the students have to have a very solid excuse for not contributing to the group assignment.  It allows the students to discuss their ideas in the discussion page before submission. This is ideal for students who can’t attend the group meetings but still can contribute to the assignment with their ideas in Media Wiki. Hence, the justification of work load can be justified. Thus this is another reason why I chose Media Wiki for my unit’s assignment submission.

Will I use Media Wiki again after this? The answer is yes. I see great future in media wiki eventhough some students argue that they won’t be using media wiki when they start working. It is a good way of students to be engaged in cooperative learning activities.I feel that it educate students of different ways of submitting assignments other than the paper-based form. There is no standard in Media Wiki thus I believe Media Wiki allows student to explore possibilities of being creative in presenting their work.