Wiki-ing: “the learning iceberg”

In my previous post, I drew an analogy between the process of wiki-ing and the “structure” of the iceberg, casting light on the extreme importance of what lies “beneath the surface”, that is the cooperation of multiple authors and their continuous information exchange as the basis for knowledge contruction.

The fact that the wiki administrator, Daniel Schneider, sent a message to Sarah in order to give us a few pieces of advice that can help us to improve our wiki contributions so as to render them as much professional as possible highlights the crucial role played by collaboration in the success of this “collective work” (or rather of any collective project). As a matter of fact, Sarah took his suggestions as a starting point for asking us to fix up our wiki contributions. Moreover, we were asked to provide feedback on our peers’ contributions, giving our impressions (both positive and negative) and, consequently, some suggestions for improvement.

In my opinion, the fact that Schneider’s message triggered a sort of “chain reaction” is quite meaningful for now the interaction is no longer bi-directional, but tri-directional: we collaborate “directly” with Sarah when we discuss issues and problems in class – but also online for the rest of the week! – and “indirectly” with the wiki administrator, who “oversees” our work. I think that this “intersection of different experiences”, that is the fact that students / learners collaborate with people who are experienced in this kind of activities, is “the key to active online learning” (Salmon, 2002).

Thanks to all the hints given by Daniel Schneider and Sarah, we are increasingly aware of what we have done so far and of what we are learning. Furthermore, as I wrote in the post concerning my feedback on my peers’ contributions, the only way of achieving better results day by day is to identify problems and work on them. This is precisely what we have done during the week. In particular, we have learned to:

-be clear and concise;

-summarize our ideas, divide the text into short paragraph and use bold to facilitate the reading;

-always cite sources;

For all the reflections made so far, I think that the “shell model” may be particularly suitable for describing the whole process of wiki-ing: all the contributions – my contribution, Alice’s contribution, Marco’s contribution, Annalisa’s contribution, etc. plus Sarah’s contribution, Schneider’s contribution, etc. – form all the layers of the model, thus creating a “multi-level stratification” made up of different, but complementary ideas, thoughts, pieces of information, reflections, observations through which we can really “build” texts together and “construct” knowledge.

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