Research, Reflections and Innovations in Integrating ICT in Education
The use of wikis in the writing of branching stories in a foreign language class N. Moreno * Department of Languages, Literatures, & Cultures; University of South Carolina, 701 Welsh Humanities Building, Columbia, SC 29208, USA In this study, the wiki, a 2.0 Web learning tool, was used with 17 university learners of intermediate Spanish, whose first language was English. Learners were divided into small groups, and were instructed to create an electronic children’s book in which the reader actively participated in the story plotline. Learners worked collaboratively in the creation and electronic publication of the stories on a public wiki site. Participants’ perceptions on language gains and groupwork success were collected through a post-task questionnaire. Keywords: wikis; collaborative learning; 2.0 Web applications; story writing in a foreign language
1. Wikis as a 2.0 Web learning tool to promote collaborative work Twenty-first century learners are in most cases very well versed in the “how-to” of social networking through a wide array of Internet tools. It only seems logical that language instructors should feel the need to promote those skills in an educational setting in order to maximize student(s)-student(s) interactions outside the classroom [1]. One of such 2.0 Web tools – or more specifically, “social software” – are the wikis [2]. According to[3], wiki is the acronym for “What I Know Is.” Wikis are collaborative websites in which information can be speedily added on, modified or deleted, reinforcing the claim that the term wiki was adopted from the Hawaiian word for quick. It has been found that a high percentage of young adults are familiar with the use and structure of a wiki mostly as a result of their frequent use of such popular sites as Wikipedia; almost a quarter of Internet surfers that use Wikipedia are in the age range of 18-24 [3, 4]. In addition, wikis have been identified as the writing platform that is most deeply based on social interactions since their appearance in the Web in the late 90s [2] due to its collaborative nature. When extrapolating this practice to the classroom, various positive pedgagogical applications and benefits have been established: wikis can be used as a writing practice exercise, functioning as both individual and collaborative tasks. In fact, one of the greatest advantages of using wikis lies in that the writing process occurs asynchronously, which allows each participating learner to take the time he needs to work on his part of the task without the pressure of keeping up with his faster or more proficient peers. Thus, learners are engaged in “an alternative platform for peer editing” [2], as well as in the practice of groupwork – a modality that most instructors and learners use frequently in their foreign language classes. The use of wikis also supports the notion that learning is a social process, and that as such it takes place when interaction among students is promoted [5]. It is this study´s hypothesis that this interaction and the common learning goal that inherently characterizes a wiki will promote collaboration when learners participate in the creation of branching story by means of a wiki.
2. The present study: A branching story for children In 2005, B. Dodge identified three patterns for wiki based webquests: macropedia, exegesis and branching story [6]. The branhing story variation is very similar to the concept of a book series, “Choose Your Own Adventure”, which was very popular in the mid 80s. The books are now advertised online as well (http://www.cyoa.com/main.htm) and can be downloaded on readers’ iPods. In the book version, the reader begins reading a story but does not need to page after page in order to get to the end of his adventure. Rather, the reader is constantly presented with a series of choices that determine the outcome of the plot. Each selection he makes will take the reader to a random page in the book. Following the same format as the in the book, each wiki branching story begins with a description of a plotline and then presents the first set of internal links that from which the reader picks one to set the next action in the story. Each choice the reader makes will take him to a new entry and then a new set of choices. 2.1 *
Purpose of study
Nina Moreno: e-mail:
[email protected], Phone: +1 803 777 2640, Fax: +1 803 777 0454
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Research, Reflections and Innovations in Integrating ICT in Education
This investigation set out as part of a larger study, in which three different types of wikis were adapted to three foreign language classes of Intermediate French, German and Spanish. The general objective of the broader study and of this study is two-fold: 1) to find advantages and caveats in the use of wikis in a foreign language course; 2) to examine learners’ perceptions on the quality and quantity of collaboration that the wikis do, in fact, promote. 2.2
Methodology
The pool of participants for this study consisted of 17 college students of two 2nd year Spanish classes. Data collection took place in the Spring semester of 2008 and the Fall semester of the same year. All of the participants were between the ages of 18 and 21. Both classes had the same instructor, who agreed to work with the researcher and adapted the writing task they normally had in the semester to fit the design of the study. 2.3
Research design
The students met with the researcher towards the middle of the semester to receive instructions and a tutorial on how to use wikis. They were introduced to wikispaces.com and were presented with the homepages in which their stories were collected (http://span209.wikispaces.com/ for the Spring 2008 course, and http://fall2008span209.wikispaces.com/Grupo1 for the Fall 2008 course). At this first session, learners were also asked to form groups of 4-5 members, and were given time to brainstorm ideas for the main plot of their children’s book. Figure 1 shows the blueprint that was presented to the participants as a model structure for their branching stories. A copy of this blueprint was given to each group, so they could start the task of delegating and dividing the writing tasks among the members in each group.
Fig. 1 Sample blueprint of a branching storyline.
The duration of the entire project was one month. Each group had two weeks to write a hard copy draft of their story with its different branches. Their instructor collected these first drafts and gave her students feedback on them. Three weeks after the initial session, each group had to turn in their final drafts and begin uploading their story on the wiki. A week later, the instructor organized a special session in which learners presented their stories to the rest of the class and a panel of judges (their instructor, the researcher of this study and a third language instructor). During this last session, the audience acted as the “reader” and voted on the selection of the next plot twist in the stories. Figure 2 shows a screenshote of the first page of the branching story created by one of the groups. The first set of choices available to the reader can be seen at the bottom, appearing as hyperlinks.
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Research, Reflections and Innovations in Integrating ICT in Education
Fig. 2 Screenshot: the first page of a group’s story.
Upon completion of the task and after they shared their stories with their classmates and judges, all participants needed to fill out an online questionnaire. The questionnaire tapped on students’ perceptions about their linguistic gains as well as about the success rate of groupwork while working on the wiki project.
3. Results The responses given by the participants on the questionnaire were collected and coded. As Figure 3 shows, only the questions that pertained to the branching story wiki were included in this analysis.
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Research, Reflections and Innovations in Integrating ICT in Education
Fig. 3 Respondents to key questions (in %).
Questions 1 and 2, which examined participants’ opinion on the project showed that almost half (47%) of all learners srongly agreed or agreed with the statement that they enjoyed participating in the wiki project, and over three quarters claimed to have learned something as a result of their participation in the project. Questions 5 and 6 explored students’ perceptions on the collaborative nature of the task. The answers to question 5 reflect that about 88% of all participans think that they collaborated well with their classmates. Question 6, however, indicated that just as many students indicated that they would have preferred to work alone as students who disagreed with that statement. Questions 7 and 8 aimed to find out how useful the project was to further develop participants’ linguistic skills. An overwhelming majority (94%) stated that they were able to use the structures that they had been learning in class for the development of their stories. A similar number of students showed that they had sought help from external sources to edit their wiki stories. Questions 11, 14 and 18 tapped into participants’ perception of how well groupwork was divided among team members. Responses indicated that more than two thirds had a leader in the group who divided up the work and made sure that they were on track and complying with the set deadlines. Question 14 asked about how well the work was divided among team member; almost half (47%) agreed that it was done in an even manner. Finally, about 88% of all participants agreed that they were successful in generating a quality end product. The questionnaire also contained open-ended questions about participants’ opinion on the factors that contributed to the success or failure of their project. The answers were mostly positive, offering as causes for most of the success the cooperation and flexibility of their peers, a sense of camaraderie and in most groups, the role of one of their team members as their leader. On the negative points, some learners mentioned that too many people were involved in their groups. Other problems that were highlighted were some communication problems among group members, and the need for more time to thoroughly finish the wiki project. The most revelaing response, however, was the statement that some of our participants do not enjoy working in groups.
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4. Conclusions The wikis in the form of a branching story proved to be a positive experience in general terms; participants enjoyed working on something where they could be creative and use their language knowledge (“This project was just innovative and we learned a lot of Spanish”). In terms of gains in linguistic knowledge, learners were satisfied when they were able to use the grammar they had learned in class for this project. Future studies with a pretest-posttest design are warranted in order to correlate students’ perceptions with actual accuracy and proficiency measures. Regarding the social and collaborative aspect of the project, it is intriguing to find that although the vast majority stated to have worked well together in groups, many participants also declared a strong dislike for groupwork. The discomfort with working collaboratively in this particular project may be linked to the fact that the instructor assessed their final product with one group grade only. Those students who put more time and effort into the project may have felt that the grading system was not fairly evaluating each participant’s contribution. At the end of this month-long process, however, the learners were satisfied with their final product and were happy to know that their creative, colorful stories are now online, and could potentially reach young readers of Spanish who enjoy an interactive online book. Acknowledgements
The support by Lenora Hayes is gratefully acknowledged.
References [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
L. Ducate and L. Lomicka, Computer Assisted Language Learning, 21 (1), 9-28 (2008). B. Alexander, Educause Review, March/April, 33-44, (2006). H. Ajjan and R. Hartshorne, Internet and Higher Education, 11, 71-80 (2008). M. Madden and S. Fox, Pew Internet Project, 1-6 (2006). L.S. Vygotsky, Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978). [6] B. Dodge, http://webquest.org/index.php
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