Group Activities in the IL Classroom

One practice that comes out of collaborative learning is group work.  Many smart people have provided the technology to enhance group work by developing online tools like shared workspaces or groupware - like wikis - that promote collaborative work. 

Some examples of students' attitudes using shared workspaces (TikiWiki, in this instance)

• Helps support teamwork

• Facilitates and encourages the sharing of resources

• Easy and continuous access

• Easy to update and share updates with group

• Limits repetition of information

• Reduced number of paper copies

• Facilitates monitoring of group or individual progress

• Resources available even if group member doesn't show up

- Nicol, Littlejohn and Grierson (2005)

Wikis as Groupware

• Pages can easily be updated in real time

• WYSIWYG editor (in PBwiki) available

• Pages can be edited collectively

• Easy addition of links, images, files, or widgets

• Track history of changes

• View recent changes

• Revert content to earlier iteration

• Alerts users to changes

• Search content by keyword

• Access can be set to public or private

So we decided to try using wikis in Examples of Student Work to stimulate collaborative learning...