Design Experiment 4: PBworks

PBworks is essentially a “wiki,” in fact PBworks started out as a wiki (a “wiki” is a website that enables editing of content by its users, think Wikipedia).

PBworks specifically is a “work space” that allows for collaborative editing of pages and files. Businesses, corporations and legal firms mostly use the platform to facilitate tech support, however as educators let’s think about the possibilities wikis could afford in the classroom.

Wikis have the ability to offer educational affordances that are unique in that that they can truly be a collaborative educational experience, allowing the students to not only discuss content but to PROVIDE content.
Different than how wikis used to be work, it appears PBworks has significantly reduced the learning curve needed to create and/or use a wiki. With a simple click a user is able to share, tag, and contribute to the page in addition to inviting others to view the page. I am always advocating for simplicity with technology and I appreciate how PBworks has incorporated this concept into their design. 

I think my effectiveness as an educator would absolutely be enhanced by using a wiki (side note: this experience has most definitely persuaded me to incorporate the use of a wiki in my courses). However, I think getting students to engage in the online environment would be a bit tricky. Learning a new website, researching and providing their own ideas on topics is a different pedegological approach than most students are used to (or maybe ready for). As much research that exists promoting alternative teaching styles that contrast the traditional lecture and as much as students claim to hate the lecture teaching style, I believe they have been trained in this style of teaching and educators would experience a bit of resistance in students engaging in this pedegological approach. I however truly believe that for students to be successful and effective in life after school, a life that literally buzzes with online technology, they need to experience this teaching style and classroom experience.

Concerning my own courses? I could easily incorporate facilitation of learning objectives from an Animal Rights/Animal Welfare lesson (among many others I teach) into a wiki page. A primary learning outcome would be for the students to be able to identify major veins of thought in the movements, compare and contrast the movements, identify major political legislation pertaining to the ideas, and persuasively defend one or the other.

The students would be able to accomplish these learning outcomes with the use of a wiki by sharing information they believe and information they find concerning the movements. They would be exposed to differing opinions and have the opportunity to distinguish between fact, opinion, and sensationalism.

Secondary objectives (objectives they meet simply by participating) would include the ability to effectively contribute to collaborative online platforms, identify credible websites, and learn how to reference material.

Using a wiki to accompany a course allows the instructor to make positive and effective use of distributed cognition and distributed learning by using the power of the group's collective cognition in order for them to learn from and with each other and allowing the students to use whatever resource(s) they deem appropriate to facilitate their contribution to the lesson.