Collaborative Projects with Moodle Wiki

Collaborative group work is a key teaching component at the ELI. Moodle Wiki offers a simple way of adding this component in a matter of minutes. What follows is description of how a Moodle Wiki was used in a grammar class for collaborative snow-ball activity assigned to students as an out-of-class activity.

What is Wiki

A word is in order about Wiki in general. Wiki wiki is not baby-talk. It's actually a word in the Hawaiian language, which means "rapidly". This piece of software has been developed to allow contributions from different people easily and immediately "integratable" into one text. A well-known example of Wiki is Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia on just about everything out there, all updated by Internet users like us. Anyone can go there and add an article on a topic they think they know enough about. Similarly, anyone can go and edit an already posted article.

Personal Teaching Experience

Back to the example with the grammar class. This particular Wiki activity was used to review all the covered grammar topics in Level III. Closer to the end of the semester, a Wiki assignment was posted to the Moodle, which asked students to write a story using the snow-ball principle. Essentially, each student posts his/her contribution to develop the story using indicated grammar forms. One of the requirements is no errors in the target grammar forms, so students are encouraged to review the whole story to make sure it's grammatically impeccable.

How-To (see a demo - 1.9 MB. Free Flash player):

1. In your class, click the Turn editing on button.
2. From the Add an activity … drop-down menu, select Wiki.
3. Complete the settings for your Wiki (use yellow buttons with question marks for help). Click Save changes.
4. Now, students can go and make their own contributions by clicking the Edit tab. They can both add new content and edit the existing text.
5. To check on students' participation, click to the History tab.

If you want to go further, here's a twist that can be added to this Wiki activity. In addition to using target grammar forms, the students were to incorporate irregular verbs from an Irregular Verb Glossary that students themselves had been creating throughout the semester (see the glossary assignment). And since Moodle glossary can autolink glossed items in forums, glossaries, and other activities inside Moodle, you can immediately see the hyperlinked verbs in the story. Students can, too, click on the verbs to see their meaning and different forms.

Reflections

Strengths:

• The students did work hard to both populate the glossary with most difficult irregular verbs of their own choosing and create the actual story.
• The students tended to work in mini groups to edit the story.
• This activity was a meaningful follow-up for the irregular verbs that the students wanted to learn.

Challenges:

• Given the new nature of the assignment, the students were somewhat lost about the requirements and procedure of the assignment.
  • It would help to first explain the assignment and then follow up on it a few days later.
  • Visual support while explaining the assignment helps - use a projector showing the actual Wiki page.
  • Grading rubric had be added to make sure students understand my expectations.
• The students didn't work too hard at the beginning
  • To motivate students, a more strict approach had to be taken (70% of all homework assignments in the semester)
• Grading the students' work was somewhat time-consuming and meticulous given the many factors: a) each student's contributions, b) the use of the required target forms, c) the accuracy of the grammar forms, d) the use of the required number of irregular verbs from the glossary.
  • The grading approach could be simplified by removing some of these factors