Audience
Our group consisted of three individuals engaged in adult education. Two were involved in teaching in VET and the third a trainer in industry. Our task was developed for our colleagues in the FLE subject. We attempted to develop an activity that would also appeal to our participants’ and their students – digital story-telling.
Purpose
Our purpose was to investigate the use of social software tools – we chose to organise our task in a wiki. One of the tenets of adult education is that adults need to have a reason to learn, so to make sure our audience were motivated and engaged, our task would introduce them to software they could use in their workplace. We chose strategies that would appeal to the varying learning styles, so included a podcast (for those who preferred audio) and a visual example of what the finished product would look like (for those who were more visual learners) as well as the written instructions.
Process
In our initial face to face meeting we analysed the assignment and decided on the use of a wiki for the organisation of our task. We understood that a wiki is a type of website that allows users to add, remove and edit all content very quickly and easily (Forsyth, 2006). Further to this we found that wikis are able to be used for an extensive range of tasks, from organising an online community to personal note-taking, collaborating online, creating an internal knowledge base, and managing a traditional website. (Matias, 2003)
We chose to set-up a Wetpaint wiki.
We felt it was necessary to involve the participants in an activity that entailed a short time frame but that was something they could use in their teaching either as a teaching strategy or for students to present their work.
We chose to use Microsoft’s PhotoStory 3 - a free program. We knew that the program was easy to use at a basic level and it would involve minimal time to create a product. We included a link to on-line tutorials showing how to use the program.
We agreed to include an instructional podcast – Hawkridge (2006) stated that students like audio learning because they like being ‘talked through’ tasks even on the computer. Odeo and Podomatic were trialled for hosting. Podomatic was chosen as it was easier to use. To make the audio file Audacity was used and the file saved as an mp3, uploaded and then linked from our wiki.
We linked to a series of images for participants to use to reduce the time required for the task. Alternatively they could source their own images. We gathered images from Google Images and saved them into Photobucket.
We included a sample story to illustrate our requirements.
We felt that it would be too demanding and potentially too time- consuming to ask the participants to upload their own story. It also meant that we would be required to write up the instructions and trial them so decided to request the stories be emailed to us for uploading to the wiki. The question of which hosting site to use was raised – objections to using YouTube. We looked at Google Video, but we were unable to embed our sample story in the wiki. We successfully trialled Photobucket and decided to use that for our video hosting.
Our wiki site was set up with an introductory page that had a link to the task. On this second page we had our instructions, the email address for submitting the project and a request for participants to:
Please diarise to come back to this site on 28/5/07 so you can see the final products from your classmates and complete your evaluation / feedback.
We had a third page to display the submitted work. We also asked for comments about the projects to be included.
Our final page had the link to the feedback sheet which was to be completed and emailed to our address.
When the feedback was emailed to us, we posted it onto the wiki.
Task Outcomes
Successful collaboration requires effective interaction among group members. The significance of communication, in particular, is amplified when the exchange of information is verbal or electronic. (Roberts, Lowry, Sweeney, 2006)
We wanted the task to be fun and engaging for the participants, so we decided to ask them to make a digital story about men’s fashion – we reasoned this is topic that everyone could relate to in some way. Use of social software may include for example email, photo-sharing, social bookmarking, blogs and wikis. (Ferdig, 2007).
The task was undertaken by six participants, each with an entirely different approach.
Each contributed a story based on images they sourced themselves.
Instructions required that the project be saved in a format suitable for emailing to facilitate speedier uploads and downloads. Everyone emailed their work apart from one.
All participants answered the feedback questions and emailed them.
No participants added comments about the submitted digital stories.
Feedback
Feedback was sought on several points:
User’s previous experience with PhotoStory3:
The majority of participants had not used digital storytelling, but were happy to recommend it and could see potential for its use.
Instructional clarity and content of task:
All participants found this area appropriate.
Navigation, look and feel of the wiki environment:
Overall this area was reviewed in a positive way. However a couple of the contributors found the task took them some time to perform, but admitted it was because of their own high standards of completion. One contributor suggested a rubric to indicate learning expectations.
Perception of viability of wiki use re: purpose of social software:
Mixed responses - one commented " There is a lack of social construction of group cognition. It will help if we are made to critique on each other’s work, socially negotiating group meaning of men’s fashion”. We had requested that comments could be made about each contribution, but this was not followed by any of the participants. This may have been an oversight on their part or perhaps time restricted them.
Another stated the site was “… a bit cluttered; I’ve sometimes had trouble finding the instructions etc as there’s so many ads and other miscellaneous bits of info on the site. This could potentially be a big distraction for some students…” Other wikis may be less cluttered. My feeling is the clutter is not distracting for experienced internet users – specific investigation could be carried out to discern if this is the case.
Further general comments re: previous sections:
“ … I spent more time on it than I expected… but this was also because I enjoyed it”.
“I don’t have a microphone, therefore I could not narrate my task. But I enjoyed looking at those that were narrated, it really does bring a social aspect to using computer technology”.
“Thanks for this learning task, I think it’s an engaging and fun way for students to learn about men’s fashion.”
Overall impressions of appropriateness in relationship to social software:
Again the social software aspect of the task was found to be lacking as “… the wiki really didn’t seem to offer opportunity to do much as part of the activity… The wiki was just information and the respondents were asked to email their submissions. My understanding is that for a wiki to be social, the contributors should be directly editing the content on the wiki itself rather than going through an editor (or, dare I say it – a censor!)”.
However there were also other comments that supported the task as appropriate use of social software:
“It definitely used a variety of software and platforms, i/action was possible by students viewing each other contributions”.
“The Social Software allowed for a challenge but not an impossible one.
I thought the social software did what it was supposed to do… it did it well in this context.”
Recommendations
Beldarrain (2006) argues that “… it is second generation Web tools - blogs, wikis and podcasts - that promise to take interactivity to the next level. They can be implemented alone or in conjunction with other applications to create engaging learning environments”.
The usefulness of different tools in support of learning depends on which learning activities the tools should support (Dalsgaard, 2006). We included various Web 2 tools, but the collaborative value of the wiki could be improved by instigating for example, a discussion that built an understanding of historical influences on the development of current men’s fashion. According to Clyde (2005) this can be achieved in
“discussion mode, (where) individual contributions remain separate and appear in the form of a conversation rather than as a text document. Instead of adding to or editing the original document with which the discussion began, participants post their comments at the end of the document and their contributions are often signed”.
Criticism of the lack of clarity in the learning outcomes could be overcome in a more extensive project by adding a rubric to define expectations as suggested by one contributor.
Use a less “cluttered” wiki – one that does not support advertising material.
Make important information more distinctive – change font colour.
References
Beldarrain, Yoany. (2006) Distance Education Trends: Integrating new technologies to foster student interaction and collaboration.
Distance Education; Aug 2006; 27, 2; Academic Research Library pg. 139
Proquest
Access date 23-4-07
Clyde, Laurel, A. (2005). Wikis.
Teacher Librarian; Apr 2005; 32, 4; Academic Research Library. pg. 54
Proquest
Access date 23-4-07
Dalsgaard, Christian. (2006). Social Software: E-Learning beyond learning management systems. European Journal of Open Distance Learning. EURODL
http://www.eurodl.org/materials/contrib/2006/Christian_Dalsgaard.htm
Access date: 7-3-2007
Ferdig, Richard, E. (2007). Editorial: Examining Social Software in Teacher Education. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education; 2007; 15, 1;
Proquest
Access date 23-4-07
Forsyth, Frankie. (2006). Wikis - The 1 page version. http://203.30.161.32/webx?13@959.6hVPa8N3bqx.0@.1add3ac3
Access date: 20-9-06
Matias, Nathan. (2003). What is a Wiki?
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/what-is-a-wiki
Access date: 23-4-2007
Roberts, Tom, L., Lowry, Paul, Benjamin., Sweeney, Paul, D. (2006) An Evaluation of the Impact of Social Presence Through Group Size and the Use of Collaborative Software on Group Member “Voice” in Face-to-Face and Computer-Mediated Task Groups.
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?isnumber=33638&isYear=2006
Access date: 23-4-07
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