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This article was downloaded by: [University of Bath] On: 03 October 2014, At: 02:08 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Interactive Learning Environments Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/nile20 Wiki uses in higher education: exploring barriers to successful implementation Ilias Karasavvidis a a Department of Preschool Education , School of the Humanities, University of Thessaly , Volos, Greece Published online: 09 Aug 2010. To cite this article: Ilias Karasavvidis (2010) Wiki uses in higher education: exploring barriers to successful implementation, Interactive Learning Environments, 18:3, 219-231, DOI: 10.1080/10494820.2010.500514 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2010.500514 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms- and-conditions

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Page 1: Wiki uses in higher education: exploring barriers to successful implementation

This article was downloaded by: [University of Bath]On: 03 October 2014, At: 02:08Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Interactive Learning EnvironmentsPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/nile20

Wiki uses in higher education:exploring barriers to successfulimplementationIlias Karasavvidis aa Department of Preschool Education , School of the Humanities,University of Thessaly , Volos, GreecePublished online: 09 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Ilias Karasavvidis (2010) Wiki uses in higher education: exploring barriersto successful implementation, Interactive Learning Environments, 18:3, 219-231, DOI:10.1080/10494820.2010.500514

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2010.500514

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Page 2: Wiki uses in higher education: exploring barriers to successful implementation

Wiki uses in higher education: exploring barriers to successful

implementation

Ilias Karasavvidis*

Department of Preschool Education, School of the Humanities, University of Thessaly,Volos, Greece

(Received 30 March 2009; final version received 23 September 2009)

E-learning 2.0 is expected to address some of the problems which characterizedthe first generation of E-learning implementations. Wikis are among the mostpromising E-learning 2.0 tools because they require active student engagementwhich facilitates constructivist learning. The present article focuses on the use ofwikis in a university education and examines the student perspectives related tothis use. Thirty-eight students participated in a study which aimed to examinestudents’ difficulties with a wiki implementation in an undergraduate course. Bydrawing on qualitative data, seven major types of problems that the studentsexperienced with the wiki task were identified. It is argued that the reason why thestudents lacked the knowledge and skills to deal with the wiki assignment isbecause they were accustomed to traditional practices. The article is concludedwith a discussion of how traditional practices and the associated learningepistemologies are incompatible with the wiki requirements which are moreconstructivist in nature.

Keywords: E-learning 2.0; wikis; student views; undergraduate education

Introduction

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 has attracted considerable attention over the past few years. As O’Reilly,(2005) noted, Web 2.0 can be defined in a number of ways. The Web 1.0 and 2.0technologies can be contrasted on several levels, one of which is technical: theaffordances of Web 2.0 tools are greater than the ones of the corresponding Web 1.0tools. For example, it has been argued that blogs have more affordances comparedto content management systems (CMS) (Kim, 2008) and wikis have considerableadvantages over threaded discussions (West & West, 2009). With Web 2.0 tools, suchas blogs, wikis, podcasts, social bookmarking, photo sharing, instant messaging,VoIP applications, RSS feeds, mash-ups, etc, the possibilities for communicationand collaboration have proliferated. The more affordances a technology provides themore opportunities there are for supporting new practices. In fact, what Web 1.0tools afforded in terms of practices is only a tiny fraction of what contemporary Web2.0 tools can afford – and this without taking into account how these possibilities

*Email: [email protected]

Interactive Learning Environments

Vol. 18, No. 3, September 2010, 219–231

ISSN 1049-4820 print/ISSN 1744-5191 online

� 2010 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/10494820.2010.500514

http://www.informaworld.com

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expand in the case of combining various tools. Nevertheless, a technical comparisonof Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 tools would be misleading for, regardless of technologicaladvances, what really makes Web 2.0 unique is the role users play.

One of the most distinctive features of Web 2.0 is the participation of users. AsO’Reilly (2005) put it, users ‘‘add value’’ to the technologies which are specificallydesigned around student participation. Web 2.0 tools allow the communication andcollaboration of students at an unprecedented scale. In fact, Web 2.0 tools do notmerely facilitate the participation of users but are actually inconceivable without it.The use of Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, social bookmarking, etc.which require user participation led to the formation of new practices in the fields ofcommunication, collaboration, business, and education. Consequently, Web 1.0 hasbeen transformed into a new, participatory, read–write web which is known as Web2.0. The participatory model upon which Web 2.0 relies is characterized by what iscalled the wisdom of crowds (Surowiecki, 2004) which in turn leads tocrowdsourcing and wikinomics (Tapscott & Williams, 2006). The impact of Web2.0 technologies has been substantial (Mason & Rennie, 2008). On the business level,the surge of interest centers around Enterprise 2.0 and Office 2.0 (Mader, 2008). Onthe education level, the focus is on Education 2.0, Learning 2.0, School 2.0,Classroom 2.0, etc. E-learning is one of the domains where Web 2.0 has had a majorimpact, leading to what has been called E-learning 2.0 (Downes, 2005).

E-learning 2.0

The importance of Web 2.0 lies in that it can address several of the problemssurfacing from current E-learning implementations. One of the most notedE-learning problems is related to pedagogy. More specifically, technology is mostlyused to support traditional modes of teaching (Laurillard, 2007) while manyE-learning environments are content-driven, being mostly used to deliver coursematerials on-line (Littlejohn et al., 2007; Naidu, 2003; Palloff & Pratt, 2007). Whilecertain constructivist approaches which engage learners in meaning-making andknowledge construction activities are evident in some E-learning implementations(e.g. on-line communities, discussion fora), transmissionist approaches are dominantin E-learning (Conole et al., 2007). From a learning point of view, the problem withsuch approaches is that they are indicative of behaviorist conceptions of learning.E-learning 2.0 requires a major epistemological shift on the part of the students. Asopposed to traditional E-learning, the role of the learners in the new E-learning 2.0era is more active and participatory: the learners are not simply consumers ofmaterial which has been compiled by instructors (Mason & Rennie, 2008; Palloff &Pratt, 2007). The added value of E-learning 2.0 is that all these forms of activeparticipation which are supported by technology are perfectly compatible withconstructivist conceptions of learning. The present article focuses on wiki systems,one of the most promising Web 2.0 tools. Wikis are increasingly being used for E-learning and have great potential in terms of facilitating learning practices that areconstructivist in nature.

Wikis and education

According to Leuf and Cunningham (2001), a wiki is a ‘‘freely expandablecollection of interlinked web pages, a hypertext system for storing and modifying

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information – a database, where each page is easily edited by any user with a forms-capable Web browser client’’ (p. 14). Essentially, a wiki system constitutes acollection of web pages with information that can be edited by anyone. Users canadd content to existing pages, restructure the information on existing pages, createnew pages, and create links between existing and new pages. While wikis have beenaround since 1995 when Cunningham developed the first wiki, WikiWikiWeb, theybecame hugely popular circa 2003.

Wikis are popular for a number of reasons. First, wiki systems enable thecollaborative creation of associative hypertexts. The lack of hierarchical structureenables users to choose which links to follow. Second, to use a wiki the user does notneed any specific operating system or applications software: a simple-web browserwould suffice. Third, the entry-level skills required for the creation of a web page in awiki system are very low: the availability of wiki mark-up and built-in WYSIWYGeditors considerably simplify the process of creating a web page. Last, a wiki systemprovides several other functions such as: tracking of edits, comparison betweendifferent versions of edits, rollbacks to earlier versions, threaded discussions per wikipage, fully customizable access, read, and edit rights, other types of media (e.g.images, sounds, video), and protected pages.

E-learning requires on-line resources and activities for exploring and using thoseresources in the context of an on-line community. Historically, content/learningmanagement systems (C/LMS) were the first technology to be systematically used todevelop E-learning implementations. The principal reason behind the developmentof LMS was to facilitate the delivery of materials from faculty to students. LMSinclude features such as user management, calendars, messaging, portfolios,document dissemination, assignment submission and grading, portfolios, forums,blogs, and wikis. The features LMS typically lack are user-generated contentcreation, virtual worlds, games, and social networking. Nowadays, several LMS tendto integrate Web 2.0 tools such as blogs and wikis. Wikis, on the other hand, servedifferent purposes compared to C/LMS as they emerged to facilitate thecollaborative hypertext creation. Wikis have features such as user management,messaging, document dissemination but lack other features such as assignmentsubmission and grading, blogs, calendars, and SCORM. Wikis can be used tosupport various types of course activities. A wiki can involve solitary work (e.g.writing a page), collaboration (i.e. the shared construction of text), communication(i.e. a threaded discussion on a given topic), and evaluation (i.e. peer review of thetexts authored). Its added value is manifested in that, by definition, it allows for thecreation of dynamic text which simultaneously represents both the finished productand the process of creating it. Finally, considering the argument that community isthe essence of on-line learning (Palloff & Pratt, 2007), wikis can be particularly usefulas they can help develop and support on-line communities of various scales and forvarious purposes. Compared to LMS’s wikis excel in two respects: (a) easy contentcreation and publishing by users and (b) creation of on-line communities. While inprinciple most LMS can be used to support both content creation and on-linecommunity building, wikis are better suited to this purpose. The main differencebetween LMS and wikis is that the former emerged as a one-to-many type oftechnology while the latter as a many-to-many. This is reflected in their respectivehistories.

Wikis have been used for supporting various types of educational activities on-line: collective learning (Carr, Morrison, Cox, & Deacon, 2007; Cress & Kimmerle,

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2008; Elgort, Smith, & Toland, 2008; Forte & Bruckman, 2006; Minocha & Thomas,2007; Nicol, Littlejohn, & Grierson, 2005; Wheeler, Yeomans, & Wheeler, 2008),collaborative knowledge building (Cress & Kimmerle, 2008; Raman, Ryan, &Olfman, 2005), enhancing student interaction (Lund & Smordal, 2006), on-lineteaching and assessment (Bruns & Humphreys, 2005), peer assessment (Xiao &Lucking, 2008), collaborative writing (Lundin, 2008; Ma & Yuen, 2008; Trentin,2009), reflection (Ras, Carbon, Decker, & Rech, 2007; Yukawa, 2006), generation ofteaching materials (Shih, Tseng, & Yang, 2008), and wikibooks (Ravid, Kalman, &Rafaeli, 2008).

As a rule, the evaluations of wiki implementations in higher education tend to bemostly positive (e.g. Elgort, Smith, & Toland, 2008; Ravid, Kalman, & Rafaeli,2008; Robertson, 2008; Theng et al., 2006; Wheeler, Yeomans, & Wheeler, 2008).The use of wikis has been associated with better course performance (Ma & Yuen,2007; Ravid, Kalman, & Rafaeli, 2008; Rick & Guzdial, 2006) and more positivestudent attitudes towards collaboration (Rick & Guzdial, 2006). As is generally thecase with Web 2.0 tools (Mason & Rennie, 2008), regardless of the potential offeredthe challenges abound. For instance, wikis are not widely used in higher education:Blin and Munro (2008) reported that in a total of 792 active courses at DublinUniversity, only 1% of the courses involved wiki activities. Generally speaking, onthe basis of the empirical research available two main categories of problems can beidentified: (a) student resistance and (b) mode of work.

Student resistance

Students do not always welcome wikis. Rick and Guzdial (2006) report that studentspreferred to get a reduced grade than use a wiki system and collaborate on-line.Students appear to favor individual work over on-line collaboration using wikis. Forinstance, Ma and Yuen (2008) report that only half of the students were satisfiedwith the use of a wiki for collaborative writing. Although a wiki necessitatescollaboration among students, significant numbers of students in the Elgort, Smith,and Toland (2008) study stated that they could have done the assignment better ontheir own. Additionally, limited student participation appears to be a recurrentproblem: Cole (2008) reports that after 5 weeks into the course the students had notcontributed anything to the wiki. Other studies conclude that some students arereluctant to use the wiki for on-line course work (Carr, Morrison, Cox, & Deacon,2007; Cole, 2008). On the other hand, even if students do use wikis, the use per sedoes not ensure collaboration. For example, Elgort, Smith, and Toland (2008)examined the sites the students in their study had produced and concluded that,while on some occasions students had worked as a group, on others moreindividualistic approaches were evident.

Mode of work

Students report that shared editing can be very complex (Ma & Yuen, 2008).Minocha and Thomas (2007) found that the synchronization of the contributionsmight be a problem especially for distance education courses. Wheeler, Yeomans,and Wheeler (2008) reported that the students were resistant to having theircontributions changed by others. Along the same lines, the criticism of fellowstudents is not always perceived as constructive (Minocha & Thomas, 2007).

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Additionally, student contributions might not always be appropriate. For example,depending on the wiki implementation, students might make planned individualcontributions to the wiki and as a result fail to read much content created by others(Wheeler, Yeomans, & Wheeler, 2008). As the authors report, this pattern ofbehavior is far from optimal since students tended to read only the pages they hadcontributed which negated the objective of collective learning through contentgeneration. Finally, the issue of approaches to learning is critical when it comes towiki-related work. For instance, Vratulis and Dobson (2008) report that the studentsstruggled to orient themselves toward a paradigm of learning which was beyond themethods of instruction to which they had become accustomed.

Focus of the study

What the above problems clearly suggest is that the success of any wikiimplementation in higher education might be undermined if we fail to take intoconsideration (a) what the wiki task demands of the students and (b) students’perspectives about the usefulness of the wiki for their learning. Especially when itcomes to the latter, understanding students’ point of view is of critical importancebecause it can reveal how students respond to the technological innovation, what itmeans to them, how conducive to their learning they perceive it to be, and whichproblems they experience. The present article draws on qualitative data from anongoing, longitudinal design-research project which seeks to develop effective wikipedagogies in undergraduate education. The article aims to (a) identify the problemsundergraduate students experienced with a wiki task and (b) discuss these problemsin terms of E-learning 2.0.

Method

Subjects

In the winter semester of the academic year 2007/08, 50 students enrolled in anundergraduate course on learning with information and communication technol-ogies (ICT) that the author taught in his parent institution. Due to drop-outs in thecourse of the semester, the number of participating students was reduced to 38. Thissample was a convenience one given that the course was compulsory for 5th semesterstudents. The students were in their 5th semester and were blended learning novicesas they had followed only two blended learning courses in the past. On the otherhand, the students reported that they were very familiar with social software,especially social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Hi-5. Moreover,while they were all familiar with wikis, Wikipedia for the most part, they had nevercontributed to wikis or participated in wiki-based practices.

Task

The course constituted an introduction to learning with ICT and had two mainobjectives. First, it aimed to introduce learning theories and how they impacted onthe design of educational software. Second, it aimed to render students capable ofdesigning and implementing a learning unit using educational software. The courseinvolved two mandatory assignments which the students had to complete, one ofwhich was the wiki task.

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The wiki task has been designed so as to address some of the problems which hadbeen identified by previous research. First, to address the issue of sporadic wikicontributions (Cole, 2008; Rick & Guzdial, 2006), student participation in the coursewiki was compulsory and amounted to 30% of the total course grade. To ensureminimal participation one of the requirements involved the creation of five wikipages related to course concepts by every student. Second, to address the problem ofminimal on-line collaboration (Elgort et al., 2008; Rick & Guzdial, 2006), it wasdecided that each student would also contribute information to five pages created byother students. Third, considering that scaffolding is one of the factors which mightdetermine the degree of successful wiki use (Cole, 2008; Elgort, Smith, & Toland,2008; Guzdial, Rick, & Kehoe, 2001), two specific written genres were privileged:encyclopedia entries (definitions) and frequently asked questions (FAQs). Finally, asa wiki cannot be effective if it is simply an add-on to a course (Choy & Ng, 2007;Cole, 2008), the wiki assignment was designed so as to be a precondition for thesecond assignment. More details about the rationale underlying the design of thewiki task are provided elsewhere (Karasavvidis, 2010).

Wiki

Moodle (http://moodle.org) was the LMS used to host the on-line part of the blendedlearning course that the students attended. MediaWiki (http://www.mediawiki.org)(2008) was the server software specifically customized to host the course wiki. Allstudents who had enrolled in the course were granted both read and write access toall user-contributed pages. The students could create new pages, contribute text,edit pages, view the history of edits, rollback changes, link to other wiki pages andexternal sources, search pages, and participate in on-line discussions. A few pagescontaining instructions and other important course information which were createdby the author and the teaching assistant were locked in order to prevent accidentaldeletion.

At the beginning of the course, the students were introduced to the wikitechnology during a 3-h lab session. An experimental wiki installation completelyresembling the one used for the purposes of the course was used for familiarizationpurposes. The students enrolled and experimented with all technical aspects such ascreating new pages, editing existing ones, linking to other wiki pages and externalsites, uploading and inserting images, rolling back, and discussing.

Measures

The examination of student perceptions of the wiki involved both quantitative andqualitative measures. Given the focus of this article, we draw mostly on qualitativedata. When the course was completed, 15 students were randomly selected forinterviews. The interviews were semi-structured, lasted approximately 25–40 min each,and were tape-recorded for subsequent analysis. The interview questions focused onaspects of the wiki which hindered student learning and caused inconvenience.

Analysis

The interviews were transcribed verbatim and were content-analyzed using abottom-up approach. More specifically, student views were initially segmented in

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terms of the themes which emerged from the interviews. A theme was used as the unitof analysis and represented any type of difficulty that the students mentioned.Several themes related to what students disliked about the wiki emerged from thisfirst round of coding. This procedure was iterated, common themes were identifiedand grouped into broader categories reflecting aspects of the wiki that hinderedstudent learning. Atlas.Ti was the software used for the coding of the interview data.

Results

Seven major types of problems were identified from the student responses. Thethemes are presented in Table 1. It should be noted that the order of the presentationdoes not necessarily correspond to the frequency of occurrence of these problems inthe student discourse.

First, the students found the wiki to be very demanding, both in terms of timeand in terms of effort. They stated that, compared to assignments in other courses,the wiki required a more significant time and effort investment as far as the reading,writing, and editing were concerned. Keeping up with the task was one of the mostfrequently mentioned problems that students experienced. Second, the students werevery critical of the nature of the task used. They considered that creating five wikipages on certain concepts and contributing to five pages created by others was not aneasy task. They complained that, especially at the end of the semester, keeping trackof such a large number of pages was practically unmanageable and tended to give up.Third, the students complained about plagiarism. In the interviews, they stressedthat copying and pasting information from other sources – at times even withoutattribution – was a common practice. Fourth, the students reported that the wikiafforded limited communication opportunities (i.e. discussions) and their use wasfairly limited. Fifth, some of the students stated that while it was understood that thewiki was meant to promote shared meaning-making, which presupposes collabora-tion, certain wiki pages reflected more a fierce competition among students thancollaboration. Sixth, the students expressed their concern with the interpretations ofthe concepts they had drafted in their wiki pages. While the wiki was a meaning-making medium and the students were expected to collaboratively seek meaning, thestudents reported that they were often sceptical about the validity of theirinterpretations. Finally, the students reported that they hesitated to edit the textscreated by fellow students. As they stated, they were more inclined to add

Table 1. Overview of the problems students experienced with the wiki task.

a/a Problem Description

1 Time and effort investment The task took up too much time and energy2 Task requirements Creating five pages and contributing to five others was

overwhelming3 Plagiarism Copy and paste strategies emerged4 Lack of communication The communication opportunities afforded were

not taken5 Lack of collaboration Implicit competition amongst students undermined

collaboration6 Validity of interpretations Concerns about the subjectivity of meaning-making7 Reluctance to edit texts Hesitation to ‘‘mess with the texts’’ created by others

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information to a page rather than to edit the page information, much less delete anyexisting information on it. Editing information turned out to be a very thorny issueaccording to the views the students expressed: they were very uncomfortable with theidea of revising the texts written by their fellow students.

Discussion

As it was argued in the introduction, one of the most important problems ofcontemporary E-learning implementations is related to pedagogy. Technology istypically used to support traditional modes of teaching (Laurillard, 2007), many E-learning environments are content driven (Littlejohn et al., 2007; Palloff & Pratt,2007), and behaviorist practices reign (Conole et al., 2007). E-learning 2.0 is expectedto help overcome the limitations of such E-learning implementations because theactive user participation and collaboration – which are de facto required – arecompatible with constructivist learning. Wiki, one of the most prevalent Web 2.0tools, constituted the focus of this study. Wiki systems are one of the many Web 2.0tools which have tremendous potential to promote constructivist learning (Palloff &Pratt, 2007; West & West, 2009). Regardless of potential, research findings suggestthat the key to a successful wiki integration in undergraduate courses is theparticipation of users. For example, research indicates that users do not enjoyparticipating in wiki activities (Ma & Yuen, 2008), are reluctant to use wikis for on-line course work (Carr, Morrison, & Deacon, 2007), dislike on-line collaboration(Rick & Guzdial, 2006), prefer to do the assignments on their own rather thancollaborate in a wiki task (Elgort, Smith, & Toland, 2008), and tend to participate inthe wiki very infrequently (Cole, 2008). These findings suggest that the userparticipation which constitutes the added value of wikis and the constituent ofconstructivist learning is not to be taken for granted. The present article examinedundergraduate students’ perspective on a wiki implementation and identified thedifficulties they experienced. Data analysis indicated seven major types of problemswhich to a large extent replicate previous literature findings.

The study findings suggest that the students experienced these problems becausethey lacked the knowledge, attitudes, skills, and strategies to cope with the wiki task.Treating this lack of knowledge and skills as a ‘‘deficiency’’ is unproductive and doesnot help framing the problem. We propose that our focus should be on thesystematic exploration of the difficulties that the students reported. We argue that allthe problems the students experienced hint at a more fundamental issue, namely thedominant traditional practices and the associated learning epistemology which isdefined by such practices. Students’ approaches reflect a learning epistemology whichis compatible with the delivery model of instruction which characterizes mostcontemporary E-learning practices.

More specifically, the first two problems are specific to this study and make senseonly in the context of the particular implementation. The fact that the studentsconsidered the task to be conceptually demanding indicates that traditionalapproaches to studying might not be sufficient in the context of a wiki-based task.On the other hand, students’ problems with creating five pages and contributing tofive others also indicate that, if students approach wikis as traditional courseassignments, then their practices might be substantially disrupted. Third, the factthat some students resorted to copy and paste strategies indicates that they lackedthe knowledge and skills to employ more appropriate strategies. It is highly likely

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that the main reason why students used such strategies is because they typically payoff in traditional contexts. Fourth, students’ difficulties with communication andcollaboration also suggest that most courses, be they traditional courses or blendedlearning ones, may include certain communication resources, such as discussion fora,but are not specifically designed with either communication or collaboration inmind. Fifth, as far as the validity of interpretations is concerned, while the studentswere expected to achieve shared meaning-making, they were not at home with thispractice. The most striking example by far is students’ reluctance to edit the textscreated by others. The students were used to working individually and were notaccustomed to collaborative practices. However, the essence of a wiki lies in that itallows the collaborative creation of hypertext which as a process involves writingtext, revising it, resolving disagreements through discussion, and synthesizingdifferent points of view. The core of any wiki-related work is bound to include someform of shared editing. As some of the students stressed, they considered it veryinappropriate to change the texts of fellow students and expected them to actaccordingly. The students were overly concerned that if they revised a text written bysome other student that would necessarily imply that it was ‘‘incorrect’’ at worst or‘‘incomplete’’ at best. Consequently, as the students explained, they were anxiousthat others might not take edits very well. What is utterly paradoxical is that, whilethe wiki called for collaboration, the students failed to collaborate.

The problems students reported are mostly because they have become habituatedto certain modes of work. These modes of work are to a large extent determined bythe practices in which students participate (Laurillard, 2002). In traditionaluniversity teaching these practices typically involve listening to lectures and doingassignments. Such practices are indicative of behaviorist conceptions of learning andentail that students are mostly passive recipients of information. Moreover, suchpractices are essentially solitary in the sense that they do not necessarily involve thecommunication and collaboration with fellow students. On the other hand, inE-learning 1.0, the availability of on-line resources and the opportunities for on-linecommunication and collaboration (e.g. on-line assignments, threaded discussions,etc), required more active student participation. However, this increased studentparticipation was not compatible with the standard practices that students were usedto and the corresponding learning epistemologies they held. This incompatibility didnot disrupt student practices because the on-line part of most blended learningcourses was not the dominant one: the courses continued to rely on the time-honoured face to face modes of work. Thus, problems did surface but were marginaland did not have far reaching effects. In stark contrast to both traditional universityteaching and the first generation of E-learning, the transition to the E-learning 2.0era entailed that student participation and collaboration became indispensable foron-line practices. As communication and collaboration are an essential preconditionfor Web 2.0, the on-line part of blended learning courses takes center stage and therequired levels of active student engagement increase considerably. This increasedstudent participation implies that the incompatibility between traditional andE-learning 2.0 practices also increases to a point where it becomes a major source ofinconvenience for students.

As the results of the present study clearly suggest, the students experiencedseveral problems with the wiki task because they lacked the requisite knowledge,attitude, skills, and strategies. As a consequence, it comes as no surprise that thestudents struggled in their attempt to cope with the wiki requirements. The students

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were simply not up to the task because they had become accustomed to and verycompetent at what traditional practices demand. There is no doubt that if newpractices are adopted, new demands will emerge, and students will eventuallycomply. Thus, in the long run, much like students developed the knowledge andskills to meet the demands of traditional practices, it is expected that they will alsodevelop the knowledge and skills that wiki-based on-line practices require. In ashort-term perspective, however, certain measures need to be taken to compensatefor this lack of knowledge and skill. Considering that, unlike other software tools,wikis have a flat structure which means that no scaffolds are provided, scaffoldingappears to be one of most essential measures instructors can take. This need forscaffolding is also stressed by other studies (Cole, 2008; Elgort, Smith, & Toland,2008; Guzdial, Rick, & Kehoe, 2001).

Finally, it might be worth considering the issue of social loafing and how it mightaccount for students’ wiki practices. As it is well documented in social psychology,when participants work collectively they tend to put out less effort than whenworking alone (Jackson & Harkins, 1985). In fact, there appears to be an inverserelationship between the size of the team and the effort expended by the individualteam members. This behavior has been attributed to the fact that people can ‘‘hide inthe crowd’’ and get away with less work. As meta-analytic studies suggest that socialloafing generalizes across tasks and populations (Karau & Williams, 1993), it comesas no surprise that social loafing also characterizes online environments. Piezon andDonaldson (2005) reviewed the literature and determined several factors whichmight reduce social loafing in online groups. They make several recommendationswhich are interesting for the design of wiki tasks and might to a certain extentmitigate the occurrence of social loafing in wiki implementations.

Implications

The findings of the present study have important implications for future wikiimplementations in higher education settings. First, given that students had a hardtime coping with the wiki task, the wiki assignment should be designed so as to bemore manageable. In this respect, breaking the task up into smaller parts which aresequentially ordered might be a good starting point. Second, plagiarism might be asafe bet as an assignment strategy in traditional settings but will not take students veryfar in wiki tasks. It is suggested that students should be provided with scripts whichwould help with task structuring and regulate their initial encounters with demandingwiki tasks. Third, the problems of the validity of interpretations and the reluctance toedit other students’ texts might be resolved if we design wiki tasks which promoteshared as opposed to individual task ownership. Finally, to address the problems oflack of communication and collaboration, wiki tasks should be designed so as to beimpossible for individual students to complete without collaboration.

On a more general level, it should be emphasized that regardless of the measureswe take to scaffold student wiki work, students are accustomed to modes of workthat are very hard to uproot. Thus, students should be introduced not only to newtasks but also to the new practices that these tasks define. This means that studentsshould be given ample time to experiment and familiarize with those practices andreceive consistent support throughout the course both with procedural (e.g. how toapproach a particular assignment) and epistemological (e.g. what shared meaning-making involves and which strategies might promote it) issues. We argue that the

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development of new approaches to learning and the adoption of new learningepistemologies should be explicitly supported within each course to minimize studentproblems and maximize the likelihood of successful engagement with Web 2.0practices.

Conclusion

Mason and Rennie (2008) noted that given their limited integration into courses, it ispresently perhaps too early to say whether students would welcome learning withwikis. In a similar vein, Cole (2008) argued that student acceptance of socialnetworking technologies for entertainment purposes might not necessarily implyacceptance for learning purposes in the context of higher education. The findings ofthe present study suggest that the mode of work required by wikis puts increaseddemands on students because they are more familiar with traditional practices. Infact, students are not only conditioned to certain practices but also to the associatedlearning epistemologies that are part and parcel with these practices. Conole (2007)noted that Web 2.0 will lead to three fundamental shifts of focus: from informationto communication, from a passive to a more interactive engagement, and fromindividual learners to more socially situative learning. What all three shifts suggest isthat, in the context of E-learning 2.0 constructivist, epistemologies will take the placeof the dominant behaviorist learning epistemologies. This means that students willhave to assume more responsibility and control for their learning. They will alsohave to become more self-determined, open to collaboration, willing to share andexchange, committed to participation in on-line communities, and eager to seekmeaning-making in shared tasks. The transmissionist model of teaching whichcharacterized the first generation of E-learning (Conole et al., 2007; Littlejohn et al.,2007) will have to be replaced by a new model which is more constructivist in nature.The present study explored the barriers to such constructivist practices in the case ofwiki implementations. The findings suggest that the examination of the studentperspectives can help highlight the incompatibilities between traditional andE-learning 2.0 practices and take appropriate measures.

Notes on contributor

Ilias Karasavvidis is a lecturer on ICT in Education in the Department of Preschool Educationat the University of Thessaly. He is the head of the ICT Research Unit of the Natural Sciencesand Technologies Lab in the same Department. He holds an honors degree from theUniversity of Crete and a PhD from the University of Twente. His current research interestsinclude learning with ICT, Web 2.0 technologies, and digital media applications in theteaching and learning process.

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