Recently, PEW Internet and American Life Project reports suggested that more and more Millennials (people born in or after 1982) are gravitating towards online tools like instant messaging and blogs, as well as games and file sharing. According to this research, the youngest generation focuses on facilitating communication and interaction online. (See also 2005-2006 Undergraduate Computing Survey: The Millennials Are in Residence in this issue.) In part responding to this tendency, the VPUE Academic Technology group has been thinking about the unique characteristics of the Millennial Student and how those translate into the college classroom. Similarly, faculty are more aware of online resources and the unique critical thinking challenges they present, as blogs, podcasts, and other communication mechanisms gain in social prominence and influence. The result has been an uptick in VPUE programmatic work exploring interactivity as a teaching and learning method, as well as as a cultural force. (See also Academic Technology Specialist Program Expands in this issue.)
Social Software - The Wiki
As part of these efforts, the VPUE ATS group has recently been devoting more energy to investigating social software, most notably wikis. "Wiki" means "quick" in Hawaiian. The name itself suggests its appeal. In a wiki, multiple users can edit a web page directly through the browser, easily making changes or adding new material to each other's work. This collaborative aspect makes wikis an ideal teaching tool for getting students to work together closely on projects. The most famous example of a wiki is the Wikipedia, the "free encyclopedia" written communally by internet users everywhere and alternately celebrated as collective wisdom and reviled as unedited slander.
CTL and SCIL Evaluate the Wiki: Wikis, blogs, and other interactive tools figure prominently in the Center for Teaching and Learning's outreach to faculty and TAs. ATS Jeremy Sabol has been working in partnership with researchers Dan Gilbert and Helen Chen from the Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning (SCIL) to develop a framework for evaluating how wikis can support learning communities, and for determining whether a wiki is the right tool for a particular course. This team is also trying to gather more information about how wikis are used at Stanford, both in and out of the classroom. If you're using wikis in your work, please let them know! To contact this group, or learn more about this project, visit:
http://stanfordwikis.stanford.edu
Jeremy has also been experimenting with various open-source wiki tools for implementing at Stanford. Each tool presents tradeoffs between usability and functionality. To see a "short list" of promising wiki tools, go to http://ctlwikis.stanford.edu/. Jeremy and the rest of the ATS team note that as IT Services rolls out support for user implementation of php and MySQL it will become even easier for folks to set up their own wikis, blogs, and other interactive spaces.
Freshman and Sophomore Programs and the Wiki: Dena DeBry and Carlos Seligo in Freshman and Sophomore Programs report that some Introductory Seminars have been experimenting with using a wiki for projects such as student journals, collecting and sharing resources, and keeping a log of ongoing projects. Students have picked up on how to use a wiki very quickly. One class, South Africa: Contested Transitions, taught by Joel Samoff used a wiki to jumpstart student introductions.
Other Uses of the Wiki: In Introduction to the Humanities (IHUM), this past fall The Human and the Machine, taught by Michael Shanks, Henry Lowood, and Jeffrey Schnapp (also the co-directors of the Stanford Humanities Lab) along with section leaders Darko Sarenac, Erin Ferris, Rob Wessling and Victoria Szabo (also the IHUM ATS) used the commercial CourseForum software to power multimedia project development. Students posted initial ideas, collaborated online about their ideas, commented on each others' work, and presented their final projects through a wiki interface. Art and Ideas did the same in Winter Quarter, with Ferris taking the lead in wiki use, along with teaching team members Alice Rayner (faculty) and Sarah Cervenak (teaching fellow). In addition, the IHUM Teaching Fellows Research Community is exploring the use of wikis to share their own scholarly research and plan their annual conference.
Social Software - The Blog
Another important type of social software VPUE ATS's are researching is the blog. Blogs differ from wikis in that their owners retain more editorial control over their content. However, they are still easy to add to and among some students have overtaken web pages as a way to represent themselves online. Lina Yamaguchi, ATS for Undergraduate Research Programs (URP) recently introduced Rantum Scoot: A Collaborative Blog on Writing and Research to the Web at http://www.stanford.edu/group/howiwrite/blog/. Powered by Movable Type, a popular commercial blogging application, the site provides thoughts on the writing process from Hilton Obenzinger, Associate Director for Honors Writing Programs, and is part of the How I Write discussion series and media archive available from URP. Individual classes in the Creative Writing Program, IHUM and other departments are incorporating blogs as well, as a way for students to do pre-writing prior to formal writing assignments. These more restricted environments are a way for students to publish their writing and comment on each other's work without the free-for-all of a wiki space.
