In this section we provide some of our own thoughts on the experience of using this tool.
JP - I found the initial stages very scary - being faced with an empty wiki with no pre-determined way forward was a bit unsettling; unknown fellow collabotator was unnerving.
However, once we got settled into using the tool we both found our own way of working and I found the experience very interesting. My initial ideas had been to develop such a tool within some of our classes at Divinity to foster collaboration and at the same time develop a valuable resource. From working on this assignment I have gained valuable insight on this:-
need to give the students simple exercises on how to use the tool right at the start
need to set very specific tasks to give focus
editing other peoples work is difficult - how to do this without giving offense. I wonder in our blended-learning environment whether the group dynamics can be created face-to-face to allow this to happen
as with any collaborative work sharing the workload is hard - one of the benefits in working in groups is to pool on individual skills but ensuring everyone does contribute needs some thought
how much should the tutor/teacher modify errors - a question that holds across all student focussed learning
hard to determine a stopping point - temptation is to keep going
style of writing - for me anyway it seemed appropriate to adopt a more informal/even chatty style; does not fit in with the traditional form of academic discourse - is this good or bad?
found it easier to work within a traditional framework for setting the work out (introduction/conclusions, etc); students not so bound may feel more free to explore other ways. Even within our fairly traditional layout I tended to move between the different parts as thoughts/readings dictated.
In terms of the future I would like to make use of both weblog and wiki technology. For us I can see weblogs being useful where individuals are given tasks; they then post to the weblog their findings and fellow students can add comments. Wiki use may be at a later stage in the class/course development where students are given a group task to work on together.