Wikideas galore!

November 25, 2005 by Doug Worsham

This semester LSS is helping several language instructors use wikis for collaborative and interactive writing assignments. A wiki is a website that makes it easier than ever before for students to publish work online, read and comment on the work of their peers, collaborate on written documents, and build shared pools of information. Here are descriptions of three of the wiki projects supported by LSS this semester.

If these descriptions inspire you to start your own wiki project, or if you just want to learn more about wikis, feel free to set up a meeting with Doug Worsham (doug@lss.wisc.edu). You can also find more information by visiting http://lss.wisc.edu/~doug/wiki or filling out our wiki information form.

Italian 203 – Interactive Guide to Italian Cities In Italian 203, students used to write three or four sentences about a city in Italy and turn in their sentences as a homework assignment. Now, they use a class wiki to collaboratively build a comprehensive travel guide to Italian cities. The travel guide for each class has entries for about 20 Italian cities, covering topics from local food and festivities to sports, industry, and transportation.

Robin Worth started the wiki project in her Fall 2004 section, and it has now expanded to become a central part of all sections of the course. Worth reports a number of benefits to using the wiki as a collaborative workspace. She says that wikis are preferable to “traditional printed texts” because “the information is constantly updated and readily accessible to all.” She also likes how wikis encourage student-centered learning within the context of the course, noting that “a well-designed wiki project can simultaneously provide structure and accommodate personalization.” As the students learn together on the wiki, they all see “the results of the ongoing, semester-long research projects of multiple learners … combined in one, large tangible product.”

Chad Shorter, another Italian 203 instructor, adds that wikis encourage a process approach to writing. He says that wiki writing “allows for more meaningful peer review throughout the project instead of just critiquing the final product. This way the questions and comments of the other students actually help in creating a better final project." Worth and Shorter both cite the cultural benefits of the wiki project, explaining that students have shown a “growing interest in Italian culture and in cities beyond just Rome, Florence, and Venice.” Worth says that “of the 18 students who participated in the initial trial wiki, at the end of the course, 6 asked for letters of recommendation to study abroad in Italy and all, unsolicited, cited the wiki as a motivating factor for wanting to study abroad.”

Norwegian 201 – Dialog Journals Peggy Hager has used dialog journals in her Norwegian classes for several semesters because they are a great way for students to share information on a variety of topics, interact in the target language, and concentrate on communication (rather than just form) in their written work. Best of all, they also help students learn more about each other and form a stronger learning community. Unfortunately, managing a traditional dialog journal project can be a major endeavor. Peggy explains that

a dialog journal is, traditionally, a spiral notebook. Each journal focuses on a different topic, and there are enough journals for each student in the class, plus the instructor. Example journal topics include food, movies, Norway, hobbies. For homework, students write a paragraph every day in one of the journals. Students are also encouraged to react to the journal entries written by other students. Each class, the students exchange journals.

Exchanging journals in class is a great idea because it allows students to write on a different topic each day as well as read and react to entries on the same topic by classmates. However, Hager points out that it also causes problems: “Students would be absent or forget their journal and this would throw everyone off.” This semester, Hager has replaced the spiral bound notebooks with a class wiki. She says that having the journals in one place on the web makes it easier:

The project has now become much more fun and less messy with a WIKI … It saves trees and classroom time. Everything is now done outside the classroom and I can easily monitor progress.

French 203 – Choose your own adventure mystery novel Practice foreign language writing and have fun while doing it? That was the goal for Gretchen O'Dell and Sandra Simmons, two instructors in French 203, as they embarked on their wiki project this semester. To achieve their goal, O'Dell and Simmons devised an ingenious project for their classes. The students worked together in groups to write a “Choose Your Own Adventure” mystery novel in French.In a “Choose Your Own Adventure” story, each chapter ends with the main character making a choice between two or more options. The readers get to make the choice, and follow the story line to the next chapter. Thus, each “Choose Your Own Adventure” book can be read many times, each time with a different ending.

In O'Dell and Simmons project, each group collaborated on a chapter of the story and decided on the choices the main character would make at the end of the chapter. Other groups joined in and wrote chapters corresponding to each choice. All in all, each class wrote a story with eight possible endings. They also included pictures of the various characters and locations mentioned in the story. The wiki made it easier for each group to collaborate on their chapter, and link their work to the chapters written by other groups. As one student wrote in a class evaluation, “the WIKI was a great way to do this project. It made it very easy to navigate through other people's stories.” Another student commented, “The idea of a choose-your-own-adventure novel worked really well for the way the WIKI functioned, in terms of linking pages to one another and the order of group assignments.” Students in the class commented that the focus on creativity and personal expression was a great benefit of the project. One student wrote that “The project was fun because it involved something outside of the textbook and workbook.” Another commented, “I liked the format and type of story we did; I thought it was fun to relate to the other stories, plus it forced us to actually READ them.”

Would a wiki work for you? Ready to start your own wiki project? Want to learn more about wikis? Feel free to set up a meeting with Doug Worsham (doug@lss.wisc.edu) or fill out our wiki information form. You can also find continually updated information on wikis in foreign language education by visiting http://lss.wisc.edu/~doug/wiki