Today we have Liz Smith, from the School of Advanced Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering, to share some of her experiences using wikis to support student project work in different courses.
We have used wikis in Engineering for the past couple of years. A couple of examples include....
In 2008 we used PBwiki with the common first year course Sustainable Engineering Practice. The students used the wiki as a place to create an online portfolio of assigned tasks. The tasks were focussed on developing the student's understanding of the engineering profession. This included collecting three on-line news articles on engineering and sustainability and commenting on each article and how it related to sustainable practice; collecting two on-line job advertisements for graduate engineering positions and summarising the attributes for which the employer was looking; developing a career plan map and discussing how the student planned to manage their ongoing professional development; reporting on the industry speakers who presented throughout the course and preparing a resume. Each of these tasks was approximately 200 word equivalents.
For more information on how we used PBwiki and what the students thought about it, check out our paper:
http://www.ojs.unisa.edu.au/index.php/atna/article/viewFile/378/288
And here are our presentation slides from the ATN Assessment conference 2008:
This is not an advertorial for PBwiki, it is just my wiki of choice. There are plenty of wiki tools availble, a good comparison of the different wikis available can be found here:
We have used wikis in Engineering for the past couple of years. A couple of examples include....
In 2008 we used PBwiki with the common first year course Sustainable Engineering Practice. The students used the wiki as a place to create an online portfolio of assigned tasks. The tasks were focussed on developing the student's understanding of the engineering profession. This included collecting three on-line news articles on engineering and sustainability and commenting on each article and how it related to sustainable practice; collecting two on-line job advertisements for graduate engineering positions and summarising the attributes for which the employer was looking; developing a career plan map and discussing how the student planned to manage their ongoing professional development; reporting on the industry speakers who presented throughout the course and preparing a resume. Each of these tasks was approximately 200 word equivalents.
For more information on how we used PBwiki and what the students thought about it, check out our paper:
http://www.ojs.unisa.edu.au/index.php/atna/article/viewFile/378/288
And here are our presentation slides from the ATN Assessment conference 2008:
Liz Smith et al 2008
View more OpenOffice presentations from Diana Quinn.
In 2009 we used PBwiki for the second year course Mechanical Engineering Practice. The major assessment task for this course is the Weir Minerals Design and Build Challenge. This challenge is for nominally second year mechanical engineering students working in groups. To assist in working collaboratively, each group were required to use a wiki to simulate an engineering design file. In their wiki, students collated information related to the project, such as drawings, calculations, and meeting minutes.
It was hoped the wiki would help students work collaboratively. Here is a link to our example wiki http://meng2009-coordinator-2009.pbworks.com/
The benefits of using the wiki, as identified by the students include: the flexibility of uploading information at home, sharing and storing files in one location, displaying images and videos, and the ability to provide feedback on each other’s contribution. However, even with the wiki, the preferred channels of communication between group members were via phone and email, where email was the preferred method to share documents between group members. The benefits of using the wikis, as identified by the teaching staff include: indication of group progress, avenue for providing formative feedback and identification of group members who are not contributing.
Course Coordinators regularly checked each group’s wiki and provided formative feedback on its content. Students then used this formative feedback to further improve their wiki site. Although the formative feedback was appreciated, students’ comments suggest they would prefer regular summative assessment tasks based on their wiki to keep them on track.
Overall, I really like using wikis. I particularly like using PBwiki as you can create private wikis for free. Other wiki tools such as Wikispaces require you to pay a monthly amount to keep the wiki private.
After using PBwiki in 2008, I declared that I would never use PBwiki as my wiki tool again. But, since then they have updated the software so that it has more functionality and easier to use (it also has a new name PBworks). So when deciding on which wiki to use in 2009 I chose PBwiki – better the devil you know...
It was hoped the wiki would help students work collaboratively. Here is a link to our example wiki http://meng2009-coordinator-2009.pbworks.com/
The benefits of using the wiki, as identified by the students include: the flexibility of uploading information at home, sharing and storing files in one location, displaying images and videos, and the ability to provide feedback on each other’s contribution. However, even with the wiki, the preferred channels of communication between group members were via phone and email, where email was the preferred method to share documents between group members. The benefits of using the wikis, as identified by the teaching staff include: indication of group progress, avenue for providing formative feedback and identification of group members who are not contributing.
Course Coordinators regularly checked each group’s wiki and provided formative feedback on its content. Students then used this formative feedback to further improve their wiki site. Although the formative feedback was appreciated, students’ comments suggest they would prefer regular summative assessment tasks based on their wiki to keep them on track.
Overall, I really like using wikis. I particularly like using PBwiki as you can create private wikis for free. Other wiki tools such as Wikispaces require you to pay a monthly amount to keep the wiki private.
After using PBwiki in 2008, I declared that I would never use PBwiki as my wiki tool again. But, since then they have updated the software so that it has more functionality and easier to use (it also has a new name PBworks). So when deciding on which wiki to use in 2009 I chose PBwiki – better the devil you know...
This is not an advertorial for PBwiki, it is just my wiki of choice. There are plenty of wiki tools availble, a good comparison of the different wikis available can be found here:
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