by A Forte · Cited by 286 — Andrea Forte, Amy Bruckman. GVU Center, College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology. 85 5th Street, NW Atlanta, GA 30332 aforte@cc.gatech,
162 KB – 7 Pages
PAGE – 1 ============
From Wikipedia to the Classroom: Exploring Online Publication and Learning Andrea Forte, Amy Bruckman GVU Center, College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology 85 5th Street, NW Atlanta, GA 30332 aforte@cc.gatech.edu, asb@cc.gatech.edu Abstract: Wikipedia represents an intriguing new publishing paradigmŠcan it be used to engage students in authentic collaborative writing activit ies? How can we design wiki publishing tools and curricula to support learning among student aut hors? We suggest that wiki publishing environments can create learning opportunities that address four dimensions of authenticity: personal, real world, disciplinary, and assessment. We have begun a series of design studies to investigate links between wiki publishing experienc es and writing-to-learn. The results of an initial study in an undergraduate government course indicate that perceived audience plays an important role in helping students monitor the qual ity of writing; however, students™ perception of audience on the Internet is not straightforward. Th is preliminary iteration resulted in several guidelines that are shaping efforts to design and i mplement new wiki publishing tools and curricula for students and teachers. Wikipedia: This Just Doesn™t Make Sense A perplexing phenomenon has emerged online. Thousan ds of individuals have come together in one online community with the goal of building an encyclopedia of all human knowledge. This community relies on t he work of volunteers, does not solicit contributions from experts, employs no formal review process, and allo ws people to change the content of the encyclopedia at any time without even identifying themselves. The reaction of most individuals is that it simply should not work. Yet, astonishingly, it seems to be working reasonably w ell. Wikipedia is a collaboratively written, freely edit able online encyclopedia built on a wiki. The first wikis were introduced by Ward Cunningham in the mid 1990s as a platform for supporting fast, productive coll aboration online (Leuf & Cunningham, 2001). Each page on a wi ki website has an edit button that allows readers t o edit its content. Wikipedia™s authority rests in the ongoing , collective review of anyone with an Internet conn ection. In earlier studies, we found that Wikipedia contributo rs generally begin as seekers of information, but g radually adopt the practices of proofreading, fact checking, and e ventually of authoring new content (Bryant, Forte & Bruckman, 2005). The low barrier to participation on Wikipedi a has mobilized thousands of volunteer editors sinc e the project began in January 2001. As of March 2006, it has pro duced over 980,000 articles. Stylistically, these a rticles closely resemble those in a traditional, print encyclopedia (Emigh & Herring, 2005) and are generally factuall y accurate (Giles, 2005). The flexible, relatively lightweight wiki medium has allowed for social norms and ritua ls to emerge that regulate characteristics of writing on the sit e. Many studies of Wikipedia have focused on the quali ty of its content and the processes that sustain co ntent production and surveillance (Viegas, Wattenberg & D ave, 2004; Lih, 2004). These are important concerns if Wikipedia is to serve as a reliable information res ource. For the learning sciences, Wikipedia represe nts something potentially more exciting than an online resource. In Wikipedia, a kind of global learning community h as emerged; individuals from around the world are mutually enga ged in constructing knowledge. It has been observed that resources like textbooks often conceal from student s the disciplinary practices, passion and effort th at authors invest in producing texts (Linn, Davis & Bell, 2004); in W ikipedia, the process is both visible and open to n ew collaborators. In our earlier work, we learned thro ugh interviews that some Wikipedians explicitly tre at participation in Wikipedia as a learning experience: I look up and read books about the subject and I™ll look something up. It™s not that I™m doing all of this in order to develop an encyclopedia, although I am, it™s more that I™m doing this because I want to learn and you have to learn in order to con tribute knowledgeably to Wikipedia.
PAGE – 2 ============
These interviews further suggested that the process for negotiating content includes features of knowl edge building discourse (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1996) s uch as proposing new ideas, requesting evidence, an d synthesizing divergent points of view: What happens is each side starts insisting that the other have clear citations for everything they™re saying and you can end up with some really strength ened articles out of these disputes. The process is really messy. It means there™s a lot of conflictŠsome interpersonal conflicts, some conflicts over content, a lot of conflict over emph asis. But in the process it means that people are exposed to ideas and information that they wouldn™t be otherwise. Collaborative publishing on Wikipedia offers an int eresting model for creating authentic classroom wri ting activities. Writing can be a powerful tool for cons tructing knowledge. Researchers of writing-to-learn have long suggested that the process of written composition c an empower students to reflect on what they know an d integrate existing knowledge with new knowledge (Emig, 1977; Britton et.al., 1975). Research also suggests that authentic activities can impact motivation and learning outco mes (Harel & Papert, 1991). Shaffer and Resnick (19 99) propose that a thick description of fiauthenticfl activities includes four different dimensions: · personal (students care about it), · disciplinary (aligned with the intellectual tools a nd practices of the domain), · real world (connected to the world outside the clas sroom), and · assessment (assessment aligned with learning activi ties). Writing assignments often address personal authenti city wellŠstudents are generally encouraged to write about aspects of a domain they find interesting. Un fortunately, such assignments frequently neglect ot her dimensions of authenticity. Disciplinary authentici ty suffers because the traditional writing assignme nt is often a contrived literate act. The purpose, content, and f orm of written artifacts emerge from students™ unde rstanding of teachers™ instructions rather than from a natural n eed to communicate a message well in a particular d iscipline (Edelsky & Smith, 1984). Moreover, such assignments often maintain only tenuous connections to the rea l world, since they are often irrelevant beyond the classroo m setting. Finally, although process is a critical feature of writing- to-learn (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987), assessment of the writing process is difficult and teachers o ften grade only the final product. Researchers and educators who have grappled with th e problem of inauthentic classroom writing have proposed publication as a solution. Efforts to inte grate student publication with school curricula hav e succeeded in motivating student writers and sustaining engagemen t over time (Wigginton, 1986). When the Internet be came a subject of educational research, student publicatio n was a natural analog. Early research suggested th at Internet publication could increase student motivation and e ven lead to better writing (Cohen & Riel, 1989). In ternet publication has been used as a way of breaking down the classroom walls and providing students with a diverse readership (Bos & Krajcik, 1998). To create authentic writing experiences for student s, we have begun a project that leverages the Wikip edia model of collaborative authorship with added suppor t for disciplinary practice and authentic assessmen t. Students write about topics that interest them and publish t heir work in an online information resource, thereb y creating a real world venue for writing. Moreover, assignments are structured to encourage disciplinary practices like citation and evaluation of information sources. Finally, teacher s are encouraged to not only assess students™ final product, but to also consider collaboration and revision as critica l features of high-quality work. This project is in its early stages. Will students respond to our innovation with as muc h enthusiasm as Wikipedia volunteers around the wor ld? How will a real world audience and purpose impact stude nts™ writing-to-learn experiences? Will the kind of social moderation that governs writing quality on Wikipedi a similarly provide social support for student writ ing? Pilot Study We have begun a series of iterative design studies (see Barab & Squire, 2004) to examine wiki tools in the classroom context and to reflexively use this evalu ation as an opportunity to improve the tools for sc ience writing. This paper describes an important first step in def ining a design and research space. To familiarize o urselves with
PAGE – 3 ============
the potential challenges of researching wiki publis hing and learning, we conducted a semester-long pil ot study. In this preliminary iteration, we sought to establish guidelines for design and to explore the relationsh ip between publishing and learning in a natural academic setti ng. Two further design study iterations including a comparison class study are planned for the next two years. For the exploratory trial, students in a freshman-l evel, college American government class published e ssays about a public policy issue using a type of wiki ca lled CoWeb (Rick & Guzdial, 2006). Participating st udents were informed of our intention to use their papers as co ntent in a new public policy online resource for st udents. They used the wiki as a staging ground to choose issues, share resources, critique one another’s research, and publish their final essays. The feasibility of asking students to interact online using wikis has been amply establi shed (Guzdial, Rick & Kehoe, 2001; Bruns & Humphreys, 2005). We se t out to understand what barriers exist with respec t to investigating students™ perceptions of their potent ial audience, their process for writing, and how in teracting online influenced their learning. We aimed to answer three basic questions about students™ experiences: 1. To what extent do students™ interactions online affect their reasoning and writing? 2. How does publishing influence students™ beliefs about their writing and motivation to write well? 3. How does publishing influence the content and to ne of students™ writing? Methods and Participants Investigating student publishing as a literate acti vity is challenging because the written product rev eals only glimpses of process. To some extent, using a wiki m ediates this difficulty because every edit made in the online environment is archived; however, many students cho se to revise extensively offline. Our methods stem from our commitment to understanding learning as a situated, social phenomenon (Lave & Wenger, 1991). This pers pective suggests that writing research should seek to under stand learners™ ability to adapt to the linguistic conventions of an intellectual community and identify ways to support this process. For this investigation, we conducted interviews at three points in the semester to capture students™ e xperiences and process throughout the activity of r esearching and composing their papers. We also recorded each chang e that students made to online resource lists, eval uations of resources, to their own papers, and comments on oth ers™ papers. Forty-seven students out of 127 volunteered to part icipate; however, five ceased participation before the assignment was complete and were removed from the d ataset. We conducted interviews with twelve of the remaining students. We surveyed students at the beg inning of the semester to establish demographic inf ormation such as year, GPA and gender. We also asked them to describe their attitudes toward several different writing tasks using a Likert-style scale to ensure that we interv iewed individuals with a broad range of attitudes t oward writing and feelings of self-efficacy as writers. Table 1: Description of Student Activity Online Sample 42 Students Interviewees 12 Students Average number of edits 28.45 stdev = 17.35 28.25 stdev = 15.27 Average number of pages edited 10.14 stdev = 3.95 10.92 stdev = 4.48 Average number of resources contributed 3.00 stdev = 2.13 2.33 stdev = 1.15 Average number of evaluations written 2.29 stdev = 0.89 2.50 stdev = 0.90 Average number of evaluations received 2.17 stdev = 1.22 1.83 stdev = 1.27 Students who addressed at least 1 peer comment 78.9% 80% Results Quantitative measurements of students™ participatio n on the site, such as number of edits and number o f pages edited, suggest highly variable editing pract ices (See standard deviations in Table 1). Editing trends over time indicated that the largest edits (posting whole dra fts) happened just before due dates. Smaller contri butions like sharing resources and giving evaluations were more consistently spaced out over many days preceding du e dates. These kinds of quantitative descriptions characteri ze the duration and frequency of engagement with th e site; however, we sought to understand aspects of student s™ experiences like perception of audience and the impact of
PAGE – 4 ============
online interaction. Our most meaningful data came f rom interviews with the students and examination of their online interactions. Students™ Online Interactions Helped Improve their Writing Our first research question asks to what extent stu dents™ interactions with peers on the wiki supporte d their efforts to identify and rectify problems in their r easoning and writing. The wiki environment itself o ffered no procedural scaffolding for writing a political essa y. To mediate the complexity of the assignment, it was given in five stages that included collaborative research, e valuation of sources, composition of a first draft, evaluation of others™ drafts, and revision. We expected to find e vidence of students supporting one another througho ut the writing process. One way of understanding how students infl uenced and helped one another is through the analys is of their written interactions on the site. We examined first and final drafts of students™ essays alongside eva luations that were written by their peers to identify the kind an d quantity of revisions based on peer review. We fo und that about 80% of students used peer evaluations to refine the ir papers (See Table 1). Of these, 90% addressed is sues of argument form or content. Our most interesting findings about the effects of peer review came from the students™ reflections abo ut the experience. Examining artifacts alone did not provi de sufficiently rich data to understand how their interactions affected students™ abilities to respond to research challenges. Students™ verbal descriptions of inter actions with other students revealed how these experiences affected th eir research and writing practices. For example, i n one instance, a student who chose to write about the rights of fo reign nationals in the U.S. explained that he had n ot thoroughly considered the definitions of the terms that he was using, but another student suggested he do so, whi ch led him to refine the concepts in his paper. He reported that, although he was only fia little off on the definiti on,fl he had to make that change in order for his paper to make sen se. In another case, a student described how others™ ev aluations affected his ability to evaluate appropri ate information sources: One guy liked [the draft]. Another mentioned someth ing about one of my sources having a liberal bias – I cited an ABC article, which quoted a Pentagon off icial. So instead, I could never find the Pentagon quote, but I went to a Supreme Court docum ent that cited the same thing so I could have a less biased quotation. (student 5) This would initially seem to be a fairly low-level change; however, later, the same student described how this realization impacted his understanding of how media sources are perceived more generally and how his research practices are changing as a result of his experienc es online. While describing his interactions with p eers who held different points of view, he explained: I know they respect, they enjoy Fox news as their r esource but I still do not respect it as a credible news resource– they opened my eyes to seeing they t hink the exact same thing about CNN, which I think is crazy but I never really thought a bout it, so it was thought provoking and I do respect that, I can understand. So I try not to quo te CNN as much and look for more neutral parties. (student 5) Online Resources Are Not Always Perceived as Public Our second question asked how publishing would infl uence students™ beliefs about their writing and motivation to write well. We assumed that students would understand the website where they published t heir writing as a public place with a potential readership. We r epeatedly cautioned them not to reveal their identi ties online because it is a public site . To reinforce the sense that their work would serv e as a resource for others, students who consented to participate in the study were explicit ly asked for permission to continue using their wor k when the site™s final design was launched. We were surprised that, despite the numerous cues about the public n ature of the site, some interviewees expressed uncertainty about its publicness. Although they were well aware that other students would read their papers (some first drafts were accompanied by disclaimers), many did not per ceive their participation on the site as public. Some interviewees suggested that their work was not important enough to attract readers. When asked to comment on the potential audience for their papers, many students™ comments suggested that they didn™t believe
PAGE – 5 ============
their writing was of sufficient quality or interest to serve as a resource for someone else. Interview ees generally exhibited a low level of confidence in the quality of their work. Sentiments such as the following wer e typical: I don™t know who would read them. Maybe other stude nts looking for ideas for papers. I can™t imagine that anyone would take our advice as expert advice. (student 7) Most interviewees did not make the connection that because the work was online, it was public. The fac t that online places are public does not mean that pe ople perceive them as such (see Hudson & Bruckman, 2005). One interpretation suggests that this reflects students ™ naïvete with respect to the privacy of online act ions. One might also construe students™ reactions as adroit cynicis mŠan indication that they understand perfectly well the enormity of the Web and are skeptical that anyone could find their ideas buried in a wiki with an obscure domai n name. Perceived Audience Plays an Important Role in Revis ion Our final research question asked how the public na ture of the site would influence students™ writing. As stated above, the public nature of the site was not apparent to students, so their perception of audie nce was limited to the class. Still, this limited audience provided su fficient diversity of readership to influence some students™ writing. One student who chose to write about gender equalit y in sports discovered that some of her peers held views that were in extreme opposition to her own. She explaine d: I chose [to write about] Title IX and it was someth ing that I felt pretty strong about because it relates to pretty much the equality of women, or it did. And I™m a pretty big feminist. (laughs) I get made fun of for being a feminist a lot of times , so, it was what mostly closely related to what I have personal experience with. (student 10) When she described the views of two classmates whos e papers she reviewed, she explained that: He was very blunt and like fiphysically women should not beŠare not athletes, it™s obvious they can™t run as fast.fl And he™s like fiand they™re mean t toŠtheir purpose is to have babies and not to run a full mile or whatever in four minutes.fl He™s like, fimen can just perform better so why waste our energy on women.fl And he™s like, fiWe should jus t put all the money dumped into the men.fl So this is the paper I was reading. (student 10) In this case, the experience led a student to engag e in precisely the kind of audience-aware writing t hat we hoped online interaction would engender: I could tell [they] were guys, just because of the way they wrote. Well, and what they were talking about too. They were also talking about Title IX. A nd, they brought out something that I found was very interesting. They brought out the point th at it™s almost like, ah, the men are starting to ge t discriminated about. I never thought about it that way before. It kind of made me a little bit more giving in my paper when I wrote it– if [those two] w ere reading my paper I wanted to make sure that they weren™t going to read the first couple of sentences and be like, fihuh, this person™s crazy, I™m not reading this.fl Because I was exactly the ve ry opposite of what they wrote. (student 10) Confronted with a real, potentially diverse audienc e, this student adopted sophisticated strategies fo r presenting her ideas. While writing, she invoked that broad audience to guide her revisions. Likewi se, the student whose resources were critiqued for being too libera l adopted the practice of invoking audience to cons ider what kinds of information resources could best support h is arguments given a diverse readership. In his int erview, he explained that he has begun using this critical pra ctice in other writing assignments, too. It is inte resting to note that, in these cases, a review of the artifacts created b y students would have failed to reveal their change d practices. The actual papers and reviews contained nothing as extr eme as the interviewees described. It appears that affective response to others™ views was what influenced their writing , especially in the case of the feminist. Her learn ing experience was only obtainable through direct quest ioning. Finally, one student explicitly stated that having an audience who can comment on what is written dire ctly supports efforts to write clearly and to write well . Interestingly, the final line of her statement in dicates that getting feedback from peers is, to this student, ultimately in service of the professor™s experience as a read er of the paper:
PAGE – 6 ============
When people read what you have down– they haven™t re searched it, they don™t know anything about it and whether they understand it or not is y our whole thing. If they don™t understand it, then you have to go by whatever they say. And I think it ™s a good system because they™re going to tell you fiwell, I would understand it better if you did this.fl And then that™s what you need to do. Because the professor™s not going to have done rese arch on all this stuff. (student 8) Lessons Learned and Design Guidelines for Future Wo rk This pilot study represents the initial iteration i n a series of design studies that explore connectio ns between authentic writing experiences and the effectiveness of writing-to-learn activities. Several lessons an d design guidelines will shape our work moving forward. With respect to real world authenticity, we learned tha t audience is both critical and elusive. Even on the Internet, if we hope to influence student writers by creating a public venue for their work, exposing the very existence of a reader is something that needs to be consider ed in the design of the publishing environment. We supported authentic academic writing practicesŠca reful citation and evaluation of sourcesŠby structuring the assignment. One of our ultimate goa ls is to create flexible, lightweight software that can support disciplinary writing practices for student authors. By using existing technology and creating structur e through classroom practice rather than by loading the softw are with features, we were able to evaluate how much structure to embed in the software. Wiki software is ill-equippe d to consistently depict relationships among inform ation types; we determined that, at a minimum, the interface sho uld make clear connections among students™ writing, the resources they use, and feedback about their writin g and those resources. If students cannot find peer s™ comments or resources, they cannot learn from them. When using a wiki with a large number of students, it is essen tial to provide features for organizing the inevitable information sprawlŠour study generated over 700 unique pages. We are currently developing a sourcing toolkit that will s tandardize relationships among articles, sources an d evaluations. To align assessment with the learning activities (a uthentic assessment), we gave the course instructor information about students™ editing activity to hel p him assess their participation over the course of the semester. This information was generated from log files and w as not available to the instructor within the wiki system on demand. We are currently developing teacher tools t o organize information about class participation an d student contributions in the wiki system. Wiki as a Paradigm and Its Potential to Support Lea rning: Moving Forward Although wiki-supported information resources are n ot without problems, they signal a unique opportuni ty for student writers to enrich public discourse in a way that serves a real purpose and engages a real audience. The success of Wikipedia in engaging volunteer writers and editors to do complex and intellectually demand ing work can serve as an inspiration for creating publicatio n venues that support writing-to-learn. Despite the absence of a traditional formal review process, Wikipedia writer s produce a highly standardized form of academic wr iting (Emigh & Herring, 2005). We propose that this model can be leveraged to engage students in authentic c ollaborative academic writing activities. Our pilot work suggests that audience plays a criti cal role in creating meaningful and effective writi ng-to- learn experiences. A sense of audience is a vital p art of written communication. Academic writing is a n act of meaning making not by the writer alone or even by t he writer for the benefit of a particular reader. C reating meaning through written language is a process supported by the understanding and disposition of both the reade r and the writer (Long, 1990). Instead of viewing texts as au tonomous, immutable containers of information, we c an regard written communications of all kinds as (sometimes p ainfully) human efforts to invite collaborative mea ning making. Some students who participated in our study reporte d that they reflected on the potential audience for their writing and that it affected their revisions. These results suggest that publishing can encourage students to adopt the view that writing is one part of a collaborative process that involves both their efforts and the dispositi on and ability of their readers. Moving forward, we are creating a new wiki publishi ng environment based on the software underlying Wikipedia. Science Online will be an online science encyclopedia collaborati vely authored by high school and undergraduate students. Using design guidelines der ived from our pilot study, we are currently develop ing two extensions to existing wiki software: teacher tools for assessment and class management, and a citatio n toolkit to
162 KB – 7 Pages