Finally... Jotspot back again

After more than a year, Google managed to integrate JotSpot (wiki service) into their other services. You need a Google Apps account in order to use it, which I apparently did (with my TU Delft student account). It is very easy to use, and does not differ much from regular wiki offerings, other than it is integrated with other Google apps. Including widgets into pages is very very easy.

Wik.is (Deki Wiki) will upgrade their technology soon as well, which is probably even better than JotSpot.

The new wiki site can be found on:

http://sites.google.com/

2 Free Online Courses

Last year, I did a free online course called "Introduction to Open Education", a very successful experiment by David Wiley. Now, I saw on his blog a posting about another free course he set up about Blogs, Wikis, and New Media:

clipped from newmediaocw.wordpress.com

Innovation continues to occur on the internet at an extremely lively pace. What was once the realm of email, FTP, Gopher, and the Web is barely recognizable a mere 10 years later. Keeping up with the speed of innovation and maintaining a familiarity with the most recent tools and capabilities is handy in some professions and absolutely critical in others. This course is designed to help you understand and effectively use a variety of “web 2.0″ technologies including blogs, RSS, wikis, social bookmarking tools, photo sharing tools, mapping tools, audio and video podcasts, and screencasts.

Another interesting course, with a much different setup, is the course by Andreas Meiszner (Open University); The ne(x)t generation learner - Skills you need in lifelong learning knowledge and information societies.

The course is supposed to be an open and participatory learning experience that involves practical ‘hands-on' sessions where your learning activities and the things you create will become a part of the course. This is to say that future course participants should be enabled to benefit from your achievements and build upon the things you started, instead of starting from scratch.

The course will allow you to act not only as a learner, but to become an active contributor and co-creator. You will be asked to establish your own course learning projects or to join into course learning projects of others; and you also will have a voice to tell us what you think this course still needs.

clipped from www.netgeners.net

The objective of this course is for you to become a knowledgeable ne(x)t generation learner that:

1. Is able to update his skills and knowledge self-dependently within a lifelong learning context


2. Knows how to take full advantage of the web to support your own learning, to collaborate with others and use the tools required to do so


3. Is capable to find sources at the web and to critically evaluate and analyse them


4. Is aware about available free online and desktop software solutions that facilitate learning, knowledge exchange and collaboration


5. Knows how to find online communities, to engage in them for personal support, and to and understands the way they function


6. Has the today's required soft skills; like to communicate, collaborate and engage in discussions with others, defend your own work and thoughts and present them, know how to manage a project, or how to resolve conflicts

Further information is available at:

• NetGeners.Net website
• NetGeners.Net course leaflet at scribd
• NetGeners.Net introduction at slideshare

I think I might do another online free course, because my previous experience was quite rewarding. The persons that have set up these courses have really put an effort in creating and assembling good resources. The subject matter is really relevant, and I am certain participation will turn out to be quite valuable.

OpenED.. I present: the NEW OpenED WIKI!

I made a wiki for cultivating your ideas, words, and motivations about Open Education. As described in my last post, I have made a wiki, because I think David Wiley's wiki is not suitable for future use. Dedicate all your Open Education efforts on this wiki, and post the link on your blog!

PS. The wiki is yours, is mine, is everyone's. I have not made it to make money or fame, just to let the course on Open Education become something bigger. Hopefully.

http://opened.wetpaint.com/

Current text on homepage:

• This wiki is the result of the course "Intro to Open Education" by David
  Wiley. The objective of this wiki is to form a space for people interested in
  Open Education: you will find (links to) great resources here.

  Educators wanting to create their own course on Open Education: you will
  find tips and experiences. Probably this will be a space useful for anyone that
  has something to do with education. Do not think that this is not your space,
  because it is! Please change it according to your own needs and viewpoints, but as in real life, respect other people and institutions.

OpenEd week 15 - Wrap up.. reflections and future thoughts

Week 15: Wrap Up

Wow. What an experience. I thought I knew something about Open Education, having read a number of papers, and reading on my blogs on a daily basis. But this course surely has been a great learning experience. Thank you David for the initiative, and my fellow bloggers for the content and comments.

New Wiki

I have been thinking about improvements since the start of the course, which, by the way, seems ages ago.. Still, rather than summing up all the criticisms, reflections, and positive notes, I will sum up all the criticisms, reflections, and positive notes AND make a wikipage that will serve as running document for everyone's reflections on the course. It might also serve as platform for next year's course, community place, and start page for Open Education offsprings worldwide. I do not intend to make money of the site, it will be just as much your site as David's as mine. I just do not see the "Intro to Open Education" wiki by David Wiley as a place where we will expand this subject into greater detail. Besides, I think people are hesitant to change the content or structure of his site, because it's David's wiki with HIS courses. On the "new wiki" the barriers will be low, because it belongs to no-one. I also think that this course, or rather subject, deserves a wiki on its own. David's blog and wiki will of course be mentioned on the wiki.

Please link to this wiki in your own blogs, if you agree with the fact that we need a new space to collaborate. I was thinking of starting a Connexions course on Open Education, but I doubt whether that has the collaborative and social possibilities of a good wiki.

The rest of the post includes the overall feelings about the course. I will comment on the content side, and on the process side.

About the content

I have a number of issues that can be subject to discussion:

• You can either provide content to students, or let them search for it themselves. I think the latter is not done sufficiently. For the introduction to a new concept, it is mandatory that some basic resources are pointed out, but it can be more fun to see the reflections by participants on other resources, and let people add their own resources to the course. Maybe it could be stimulated a bit more?
• I must admit that the resources were absolutely great, but it would have been interesting to read some contrasting views.
• Especially in the beginning, we (me including) produced rather similar posts summarizing the papers and not applying it to our own place and space. Maybe this is just the downside of an introductory course...?
  

About the process

Maybe even more important: the process of learning...

• Alessandro, a while ago, criticized the course, because there was too little feedback/attention compared to his efforts. There are different solutions to this problem, and I will not state them all. It would be good to aggregate these experiences and ideas on the wiki. We have seen one solution implemented during the course, a great example of flexibility! Other, more formalized changes can be implemented as well, depending on your specific ideas. Maybe a special role can be reserved for experts, such as David Wiley or others.
• I don't know is people are inclined to put more sociability in the course, but who knows..? I don't. A stronger emphasis on applying the concepts on your own personal (educational) environment. It would be interesting to have some tangible results of people introducing Open Education philosophies and ideas in their own context, or, for example, using this course or other open courses in their own educational settings.
• Include people related to an existing OER initiative, and take that initiative as course object for a week, letting people use (and contribute) resources to that initiative, and reflect on it. This is very interesting for both the responsible actor, being able to collect valuable reflections on the project, and for the participants, being practical and possibly adding value to a real Open Education project. The initiative has to be open enough, so an MIT OCW would not be the right one I think.

There are probably a million things to think about now, but I have the feeling that if I have to put some effort on the "idea generating and supporting infrastructure", rather than the ideas themselves, because they will pop up in case they are cultivated. And that needs ground.

Wiki in classroom.. Experiences and tips

Using a wiki for your course; an evaluation
This article is written after experiencing the use of a wiki for the course SPM9618 – (R)evolution in ICT Infrastructures. Hopefully it provides an overview of the positive and negative issues we encountered and will lead to a better system for setting up and successfully implementing this technology. It will have the following structure:

• Explanation course and course objectives
• Reason and intentions for using a wiki
• What is a wiki?
• Choice of wiki platform and reasons
• Implementation issues - Technology
• People
• Tips and useful plugins
• Implementation issues - Process
• Get it going
• Evaluation of TWiki use
• Other problems and issues
• Recommendations
• Wiki environment recommendations
• Process recommendations
  

Explanation course and course objectives
SPM9618 is a Mastercourse for students in the Master Systems Engineering, Policy Analysis and Management, at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. The course is usually taken by students that have chose to specialize in the ICT-domain. They are fourth or fifth year students. The course is 6 ects, scheduled in the second semester of the study year. In the study year 2006-2007 module manager Jolien Ubacht and ICT-colleague Jos Vrancken taught the course for the third time. In this edition, number of students taking part in the course has risen from about 15 in previous years to 23.

Reason and intentions for using a wiki
Several aspects of the course led to the inspiration to use a wiki instead of Blackboard as the learning environment (Blackboard is the official digital learning environment at TU Delft).

• First of all, it is a course where students have to work collaboratively towards a final product: the design of an analytical framework for (R)evolutions in ICT infrastructures. There were no further specifications about the final form; the product could range from an essay, a website or Wikipedia entry, a seminar, a video… anything. This was done on purpose, because students were challenged to cope with unstructured problems.
• Another reason was that in previous years it turned out that the Blackboard environment was too static for the groups dynamics, information added by students could not be adequately linked and that the freedom for the students to create contents themselves was limited.
• The third source of inspiration to choose for a wiki was the fact that wikis become common tools in professional life and we wanted the ICT-students to once experience its possibilities during their studies.

What is a wiki?
A wiki is “a website that allows the visitors themselves to easily add, remove, and otherwise edit and change available content” (Wikipedia). It is increasingly used in business and educational settings to enable people to collaborate online (time and place independent). One of the major advantages of using a wiki rather than emailing different documents: there is one central place where individuals create and improve content.

Besides online editing of texts and other content, there are other important functionalities, including version management, the (hyper)linking of pages, and the possibility to use numerous plugins, such as a discussion forum and polls.

Choice of wiki platform and reasons
Two different wiki platforms were provided by the university; the MediaWiki, which is the same platform on which Wikipedia is built, and TWiki, another open source platform extensively used within companies such as Disney, Yahoo!, Motorola, British Telecom, SAP, and many more. Because of its success in business, its flexibility, and the wide variety of extensions, plugins, and
add-ons, we have chosen for TWiki. Although the interface of MediaWiki is much more familiar (same interface as Wikipedia), this problem was assumed not crucial.

Implementation issues – Technology
This section will deal with the setup of the wiki from a technological perspective. It discusses the people that were approached and the specific plugins that have proven useful on the website.

People
For setting up this wiki Thieme contacted the TU Delft section of E-Merge, an ICT consortium of several universities and academies. Besides Thieme for the process support, another person was involved in the technical support and setup of the wiki. He helped, after the initial setup, in installing several plugins that provided the students with several tools, and enhanced the website’s interface and preferences.

Tips and useful plugins
TWiki’s possibilities to enhance the functionalities and personalize the website are abundant. In this part a few of those possibilities are discussed, and some practical tips are described as well.

The functionalities that have proved most useful in the course SPM9618 are:

• NatSkin – a so-called skin, which changes the interface of the website. Much more attractive than the original interface.
• DiscussionForum – a rather difficult to implement discussion platform.
• Polls – a plugin enabling the students to make polls.
• EndNote – also called footnote. Puts text {{between brackets}} at the end of the page with a footnote.
• WYSIWYG-editor
• Variables: INCLUDE and HISTORY

Other crucial standard elements of the wiki are:

• Statistics and Changes
• Web Sidebar
• SectionalEdit
• Personal sidebar and personal preferences
• Functions on top of page: edit… etc.

As said, the ability to personalize the wiki to your preferences are almost endless. There are more than 200 plugins and add-ons available on http://twiki.org, addressing functionality, safety, tools, interface and many other subjects.

Some of possibly relevant other possibilities are tagging of pages, especially useful in large wiki-sites, the inclusion of the content of web-pages through RSS, making spreadsheets, presentations, sectional edit (editing sections separately), and many more.

Implementation issues – Process
During the first few weeks the results of use were quite disappointing. The students did not embrace the wiki platform as much as we expected, and wanted. This chapter will explain how we have introduced the wiki to the students, and what would have been a better approach. Some other issues that are specific in collaborative projects, such as the evaluation of individual efforts and the prevention of hitchhiker behavior are discussed as well.

Get it going
In order to get the process started, and explain everyone a bit about the workings and purpose of the wiki, a presentation was given at the first lecture. This was clearly not enough, and afterwards we thought it would have been a better idea to approach the introduction to the wiki in a more practical way, for example providing the students with some exercises on the wiki, with or without supervision. The first weeks students were given a couple of simple assignments to get started:

• To get to know each other better, and to introduce the students to the basic use of the wiki, the assignment was to create a personal page, with relevant personal information, such as projects done, interests, domains, experiences, etc. The intention was also the let the students reflect on the types of knowledge and skills they could use during the team work of the module. This personal assignment was done by all of students, but some pages were limited to only the most basic information.
• Secondly, the students had to make up their own process rules for the use of the wiki, and the course itself.
• Thirdly, they had to find information about the use of wikis within education, and start a discussion about the specific use and value of it within this course.
• Fourthly, we created regular assignments to be fulfilled via the TWiki, for example writing weekly reports on the meetings by 2 volunteers, uploading material to prepare guest lectures etc. or exploring a case study in innovation in ICT-infrastructures.
• Fifth, the end report was a collaborative report written by several sub-teams, that wrote chapters for which we created specific websites within the TWiki.

Thus, we gradually moved towards using more functions of the TWiki, that gradually were more related to the contents of the course.

Evaluation of TWiki use
Some students were already used to using a wiki in other settings (e.g. own company as a brainstorm tool). These students turned out to be the most enthusiastic users at the start of the course. Less experienced students took a dislike to getting used to a new, innovative environment. We were disappointed by this reluctance to a new digital environment because we expected that students in the ICT-domain would experience less fear for new technology. On the contrary, we expected more enthusiasm as using a wiki is an innovation (the subject of
the course). The first weeks discussions on the interface and which editor to use distracted a lot and created a barrier to entry. Towards the end of the course, especially while writing a collaborative report, the use of the TWiki raised.

During writing the report, the students experienced the benefits of the TWiki more as they could quite easily reconstruct the process they went through in developing the end product of designing an analytical framework for (R)evolutions in ICT infrastructures. We must however mention that some groups of students used Google Docs first to write their chapter and then published it onto the TWiki where it could not be altered anymore. Google Docs clearly has better functionalities in editing texts and is better in case of collaborative writing.

The first enthusiastic users of the TWiki experienced a disincentive to continue putting a lot of effort into the TWiki when they realised that other students did not use it the same way. As coaches we had hoped these students to take up a pioneering role by showing the added value
of the wiki and thus inspiring others to adopt the innovation more quickly.

Although the TWiki provides every user with statistics on the use of it (user name, amount of changes performed by a user), the use of holding this against the students is limited as it does not tell you anough about the quality of the work done on the TWiki and because it can easily be manipulated (e.g. by just changing multiple comma's into exclamation marks). Moreover, we preferred to put more trust into the intrinsic motivation of ICT students to experiment with a new ICT-tool, but students seemed to be annoyed because of having to learn a new environment while having to rely on Blackboard for the other courses they took. This initial reluctance was strengthened by the discussions on the TWiki technology at the start, the students opinion that the design of the website was unattractive and the lack of a student manual. Regularly we inspired the students to have a central information manager who would take special care of the structure of the TWiki but this suggestion was not followed up by action. A next time we will make this a mandatory role.

Another reason was the inherent liberty a wiki gives to its users in combination with the vague course objectives and little direction from teachers. This was done on purpose, but the result of it was that most students just did nothing for a while. The students experienced too much vagueness at the start of the course because of its unorthodox form, so they had to invest in too many things: making a team effort, getting the assignment right, contributing to the TWiki, in
short: finding their way. We as coaches have learned a lot from this and will choose for a more balanced start next year.

At the end of the course we experienced a problem with uploading material to the TWiki,
the uploaded documents were provided with the details, but the links to the full documents did not work. This was a technological problem that was quite problematic, but there was no support from the persons who set up the wiki. We solved it by putting the material on our own server and providing the students with the links to the contents on the TWiki.

However, the students could no longer upload material themselves, which was frustrating after the effort to get it together.

Recommendations
Our enthusiasm for using a wiki in a learning environment remains unabated. The interactive nature of a wiki, the possibilities to continuously structure and restructure information, the opportunities for students to create sites and provide their own information and documents, etc. has great added value, especially in courses in which interaction is required. Therefore we hope that more staff and students at TU Delft will consider using a wiki for educational (and other!) purposes. In order to stimulate this, we have formulated a number of recommendations, dealing with technology and process issues. These recommendations are both addressed to teachers or other individuals interested in using a wiki in a course context, and for the TU Delft itself.

Wiki environment recommendations
The technical support of e-merge was fine at the beginning. When asked to install a number of plugins, they did it on time. As mentioned, there was no support in the end, when it was needed, because the responsible person was unable to offer support. This was unfortunate, but since it was the first project of its kind within the university, some initial frictions could have been expected. Hopefully, in the fuure there will be more experience and institutional structures are set in place to fully support wikis at the TU Delft. Therefore, also from the perspective of increased use of wikis in the future, the recommendation to set up a specific wiki portal for anyone at the university (student, teacher, researcher) interested in using a wiki. This
portal would include

• A standard wiki package;
• standard interface, implemented and well
• standard WYSIWYG editor (NatEdit)
• standard web preferences
• standard plugins
• support when needed
• List of plugins; as mentioned in a previous section, there is a number of plugins that should be implemented to make the wiki an attractive and useful tool for collaboration. A strong recommendation would be to lower the barrier for teachers, and to include a description of the most important plugins and options on the TU Delft wiki-platform (hopefully to be implemented in the future).
• The ability to have a more attractive wiki domain, such as http://spm3210.wiki.tudelft.nl/
• List of options/plugins for persons who want a wiki for their course/project (indicate the options you want xx then implement the desired preferences by installing the relevant plugins and change the web preferences. And for the future: make this process automatic.)
• A clear explanation of how to use a wiki in a certain context, with examples.
• A wiki forum where people can discuss problems and ideas.
• A list of persons to approach in specific situations.
• A list of students who can serve as student assistants in setting up, maintaining, and supporting a wiki
• A manual for students including exercises to get started.

At this moment an efort is done to create a central wiki environment for the University of Technology that includes the needed support. It will be integrated with A-Select, meaning that you can access the wiki from Blackboard without an extra login (lower barrier). Attractive URLs will be integrated in it as well, as is done with the weblog initiative.

Process recommendations
As for the procedural part of using a Wiki, we have formulated the following recommendations, based on our experiences. These recommendations are based on the assumption that a standard TU Delft wiki environment is created, including the manual as mentioned in the section on Wiki environment recommendations above!

• Choose a wiki for specific reasons within the course: the Wiki has to fulfill a function in the course, this should not be limited to just serving a goal of merely using a Wiki, a real integration between goals, contents and learning environment has to be designed;
• Set clear goals, especially in the beginning. When some progress has been made, the people will probably be able to cope with more liberties;
• Provide students with reasons for using a Wiki instead of Blackboard, make them aware of the added value;
• Formulate the role of information manager: one student or students taking turns, who is responsible for keeping structure on the wiki and translating users' wishes into structure;
• Start with simple assignment for students to get used to working with the wiki, make a plan to work towards more complex assignments that require the use of more wiki functions (and that demonstrates the added value of the wiki);
• For coaches: be active in using the Wiki yourself. E.g. participate in discussion forums, comment on the information provided by the students, etc.;
• If possible: test your ideas for using a Wiki in your course with potential students in the course or at least test the Wiki with other users before the course starts on structure, user friendliness, clarity of the assignments;
• Make use of a student assistant or class representative to play a part in the management and setting up of the wiki. Most teachers will not have time for that, and an experienced student assistant can probably do a lot in a short period of time. This person can also help students in their initial steps in using the wiki.

We are convinced that using a Wiki is a great experience in learning environments (and beyond). We hope that we inspire more staff and student at TU Delft to join this next phase in experimenting with new ways of interactive information sharing towards innovative knowledge generation!


This text has been written by Thieme Hennis and Jolien Ubacht (TU Delft). We hope we have provided some ideas about difficulties in process and technology of using a wiki in an educational setting. Any additions, links, ideas, comments, criticisms, etc. can be posted below.

OLCOS Roadmap 2012 - Skills

In this authorative report on Open Educational Resources, education, and other related issues, skills for knowledge workers are discussed (amongst other things). Professional skills needed in a knowledge economy are acquired by using interactive, collaborative, and constructive tools as weblogs and wikis. The reason I am now blogging, and more or less used to it, is because of a course given by David Wiley (http://opencontent.org). Not because of my university, where not a single course mandated or suggested any of these technologies. (BTW. I assisted in setting up a wiki for a course, which was one of the first wikis to be used for a course on the uni :: evaluation on my blog next week)

clipped from 64.233.183.104

If students have their own Weblog they engage in a self-directed, constructive practice. As authors of postings they must make their minds up about a topic, gather, evaluate and interpret information, take a position, come up with convincing arguments and evidence, and find the right means and style of expression. And this practice is inherently social and conversational, because the students themselves experience being part of a distributed community of interest and refer to ideas and writings of others. The same is true if students work collaboratively on a thematic Wiki, where each of them can add information, edit and rework texts of others, etc. They engage in collaborative knowledge creation, which will include discussing certain assumptions, statements, information sources, etc.