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Promoting collaborative learning in engineering management education

through the use of wikis

Fiona Saunders

The University of Manchester

Fiona.Saunders@manchester.ac.uk

Twitter: @FionaCSaunders

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The importance of collaboration

Engineers must collaborate to deliver increasingly complex engineering projects

Group working used to teach these collaboration skills

Challenge facing HEI’s is how to teach these skills in larger class sizes.

Can wikis help?

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What is a wiki ?

Collaborative web sites that allow multiple users to quickly add, edit and restructure content related to a particular topic

Commonly used for joint writing of documents, or as a central information repository

Wikis – pros, cons and pedagogy• Pros: Simple set up, web-enabled collaboration, open or

restricted access

• Cons: Proliferation of low level content, poor structure and navigation

• Pedagogy:

– Wikis enable shared construction and structuring of knowledge

– Consistent with constructivist pedagogy

– Wiki flexibility, tracking changed by individual users and the positive interdependence of students working together to achieve a common goal lead to increased collaborative learning

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Wikis at The University of Manchester• Semester-long course on financing infrastructure projects

• 250 full-time PG students

• Delivery mode: face-to-face lectures, supplemented by VLE

• Assessment: developing a wiki on a real-life infrastructure project

– Students self-selected into groups of 5, chose a project and created both structure and content of the wiki

– 50 wikis created including The Channel Tunnel, Delhi Metro and Athens International Airport

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Examples

The technology

• Confluence wiki tool running within University’s VLE Blackboard

• Each group had home page and ability to add additional pages to the wiki

• Considerable effort put into wiki familiarization activities e.g. sandpit wiki, “How to guides”, technical discussion forums and wiki tutorials

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The findings: The use of wikis

• enhanced student learning and improved collaborative working

• helped students build relationships; improving cohort cohesion

• the best wikis are now project case studies, accessible to future cohorts

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Benefits of the Wiki: The students' views

39%

8%31%

19%

3% Collaboration

Communication

Construction ofknowledge

Developed IT skills

Made coursework easier

Lessons learnt

• limitations in the selected wiki technology and its link to Blackboard

• staff workload not significantly reduced (proportion of time spent on one-off set up activities)

• grading individual contributions to the wiki was poorly implemented

• inadequate tutorial time for those students who were struggling with the wikis

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• developing collaboration

• increasing knowledge and understanding of core subject matter

– particularly in large cohort teaching where logistical pressures often conspire against the delivery of effective learning

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Inspite of this – wikis were shown to be an important tool for