Wiki Literature Review: Reflections After First Use

This blog post is merely my reflection on using a wiki as the medium for writing a collaborative literature review on electronic books (ebooks). For this wiki, I used a service called Wikispaces at http://www.wikispaces.com/. I find that Wikispaces is actually very user-friendly with its simple core design and core functionality. With little training, I was able to sign up, sign in, and accessa new wiki site. Starting a new page was easy with the (appropriately termed) “New Page” icon. Anyone with basic experience using Microsoft Word or any other word-processing software should find most of Wikispaces editing features familiar.

As a collaborative tool, I have found that sharing a wiki with a colleague can be simple as well. As long as both of you (or however many individuals you have in your group) have been granted access by the administrator (whomever started the wiki site), then you can both begin sharing
your work. I thought it was easy for each of my group members to take their digital notes and research articles and start populating the shared page. We could proofread and edit each other’s work and gather our thoughts. While this is not as synchronous as a resource such as Google documents, Wikispaces, and wikis in general, make it easy to collaborate and publish a Web page with little effort.

What do you think about using wikis for collaboration? Do you prefer a different tool?

Oh, and wikispaces offers free access. I would not want to miss mentioning that! :)

Copyright protection is one of those things in the realm of education that educators both respect and despise at the same time. They respect the fact that the authors of materials should get credit where credit is due (especially when their own works are involved), but also despise the fact that they can’t just use any and every audio, video, image, and text they find to use and to disseminate to students. Bittersweet indeed.

Let’s say for a moment that you are an educator who actually wants to adhere to copyright rules. While some copyright language is somewhat ambiguous, such as the fair use doctrine, most of the copyright guidelines are very clear. You may spend more time properly preparing material for students, or find that you cannot use that “perfect” video you had in mind for the class, but following copyright guidelines will keep you in good standing with copyright holders and show that you are taking the needed effort to follow copyright laws. A great summary of copyright rules can be found on Liberty University’s website at http://www.liberty.edu/informationservices/ilrc/library/index.cfm?PID=20100. This site includes copyright basics, information on the Teach Act provisions, the Digital Millennium Act and fair use guidelines as well as many other resources for helping you determine the proper use of copyrighted material.

Another widely accepted method for copyright protection for digital resources is Creative Commons licensing. This allows copyright owners to establish specific restrictions/allowances on their content that is easily viewable by following a link with the Creative Commons logo. Hence, the consumer knows right away what they can and cannot do with the digital content. For more information on Creative Commons, visit http://creativecommons.org/.

What are some of the biggest difficulties you have when it comes to copyrights in your courses? What resources have you found helpful to keep you in line with regard to copyrights?

Distance education is growing and becoming increasingly prevalent – especially in higher education. Creating distance education courses and programs is crucial to the livelihood of institutions, but creating courses and programs that are actually effective is even more essential.

Drawing from the work of Dewey and collaborative constructivism, Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000) proposed the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework to define effective distance education in higher education. They say that the most effective distance education experience requires the presence of three elements, cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence. Cognitive presence is defined as “the extent to which the participants in any particular configuration of a community of inquiry are able to construct meaning through sustained communication” (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000, p. 89). Social presence is “the ability of participants in the Community of Inquiry to project their personal characteristics into the community, thereby presenting themselves to the other participants as ‘real people’ (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000, p. 89). Teaching presence is the “design and the facilitation that guides the cognitive process for the purpose of personal and educational meaningful learning outcomes “(Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000, p. 89).

The CoI framework has helped to shape the way I understand and approach effective distance education. Though I do not function as an instructor in an official capacity, I do work as a Web designer for educational materials and learning units. I find the CoI research to be valuable in my work in developing effective distance education lessons for students. For educators, this research provides practical implications for online teaching and assessment. For example, Garrison and Anderson suggest that educators address students by name and be conversational in discussion forums to create social presence. For administrators, they explain how the framework can be applied to policy development, strategic planning, and provision of leadership.

Future research with the CoI framework could look at the effectiveness of courses that implement it versus those that do not. Additionally, further research could look at new educational technologies and their potential for addressing cognitive, social and teaching presence.

Whether you, as an educator, administrator, or instructional designer decide to apply the CoI framework to your courses is up to you, but do take time to analyze research and seek to improve educational effectiveness in distance education. The future knowledge of students depends on it.

What is one theory that has positively affected you and/or your students in distance education?