Blogs and Wikis: Welcome Disruptions in the Classroom
Some say the Web is undergoing a dramatic transformation after years of steady evolution, becoming a less static and more dynamic medium. "Disruptive" technologies such as blogs and wikis have the potential to create radical rather than incremental change. As bloggers are creating rich discussion and information networks, contributors to wikis—such as Wikipedia—are upsetting the notion that creating knowledge is best left to the experts. This kind of change is underway right here on campus. With 2,300 blogs and counting, UThink, offered through the University Libraries, is now the biggest academic blogging tool in North America. And this semester the Office of Information Technology launched UMWiki, which provides wiki tools and support for the University community.
Wikis and blogs are increasingly being used for educational purposes because they support writing, collaboration, and active learning and because students and instructors do not have to learn technical skills nor transfer files to a server. There are significant differences between blogs and wikis, which makes each tool better suited for particular educational purposes. Wikis often take an encyclopedic form, while blogs typically are more like journals that can be read and commented on by others.
Tim Gustafson, associate director of the composition program in the Department of English, has used blogs in his composition classes and has recently taught a three-week topics course devoted entirely to blogs and wikis. Gustafson reports that the short course helped him better understand how to prepare students to work with the tools. Surprisingly, he learned that his students were not familiar with blogs, but some had encountered wikis. "I thought it would be the other way around."
Despite his students’ initial lack of familiarity with blogs, they quickly took to them when each was assigned to develop one on a topic of his or her choice, and often exceeded requirements in length and number of posts. Gustafson believes the initial attraction is that "blogs look sharp, polished, and publishable right away." The appeal of blogging goes beyond looks; students may feel more at ease with the format because it lends itself to the creation of single-authored texts. Gustafson further explains that even in the 21st century the figure of the Romantic author, writing in solitude, still shapes assumptions about the writing process. While blogs offer some comfort through familiarity, they also encourage student writers to stretch. Blogs are well suited for the novice writer attempting the many challenges of audience-centered writing because members of the public can view them and post comments.
Wikis, on the other hand, are uniquely suited to collaborative writing because contributors can write over a page rather than simply adding to it. Therefore, Gustafson assigned a collaborative writing project: students were to build a Wiki site for new students, one that would not duplicate information on existing University Web sites. Though students benefited from this assignment, Gustafson found that they tended to create content in an additive fashion rather than collaboratively. Part of the solution, he speculates, is to give students more time, both to develop the skills required to write collaboratively, and to adjust to a new writing environment.
While wikis create many challenges for the instructor, Gustafson certainly is not discouraged from using them and plans on using both wikis and blogs in the future. In his view, blogs and wikis are great tools "to the extent that [they] encourage students to write with a real sense of audience and reflect on writing."
Related Resources
- To learn more about using disruptive Web technologies, including blogs and wikis, for teaching and learning, see Web 2.0: Promoting Collaboration and Student-Centered Learning.
