Thoughtfest09

Collaborative Blended Language Learning using WikiQuests: learning Italian as a FL Maria A. Perifanou School of Philosophy, Faculty of Italian and Spanish Language and Literature, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. ThoughtFest 2009 Pontydysgu - University of Salford Manchester , UK 5-6 March 2009

Fest of thoughts and experiences………… … .sharing my journey.. … ..my story….!

Many years ago …
when I started teaching
I wanted to find the best way
to introduce my
students in the ‘real’ world of
italian language and culture
… . but how ?

… .trying to find the best way to start this
learning-teaching journey….……
it was not enough to use just some
or some
It was also difficult to take my students to Italy…………………………

… ..everything changed when I discovered the magic world of
web …..all the ‘world’ in a computer?????
Let’s find out more!!!
.…from a group work tool of CERN to…………
… .a global information-communication
space of billion of users
…… how can I use this ‘powerful tool’ in my language lessons????

What? How? When? …… lets start the exploration!!!

Α. Italian Language in Web – ‘ exploration and classification’ Educational sites dedicated to teachers teachers - learners 7 . Course plans/ material 8. Magazines/Journals 9. Information for teachers training, seminars, jobs 2 . Italian Language Courses 3 . Authoring tools for language learning material 1. Practice ( exercises , tests , etc .) 6. Portals/ Data Bases for Italian Language 4. Tandem Learning, E-pals 5. Forum s/ Discussion Lists

B . Italian Language in Web – ‘ exploration and classification’ Supportive - authentic teaching material/tools 2. e-libraries, translators, glossaries, thesaurus, dictionaries, etc 1. Magazines/ Journals 5 . e-commerce, e-business 6. Communication Tools: forums , chat, discussion lists 4. Edutainment 3. Electronic C orpus, Concordan cers 7. Authoring tools- free multimedia software 8. Portals/Data bases for Italian culture

Searching for the right teaching methodology…
Incentivise
Search
Reflect
Learn

model ?
‘ inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the internet’ (Bernie Dodge, 1995)

WebQuest Parts
Introduction
Task
Process
Resources
Evaluation
Conclusion

Problems??
Time
Space

Second phase of web: new services and software are transforming the web from a predominantly "read only" medium to one where anyone can publish
New world of social interconnectivity

… .not easy to find the right web 2.0 tools and combine webquest blended activities…
No time and space limits
Collaboration - during and outside of class structure- Student-centered learning
Content- driven users can share different material
Sharing ideas Track history
Social Constructivism- (Duffy, Jonassen, Piaget)
Trust- people and the process

What’s a wiki?
“ a wiki is a freely expandable collection of interlinked Web pages, a hypertext system for storing and modifying information – a database, where each page is easily edited by any user with a forms-capable Web browser client” Leuf and Cunningham
first wiki [http://c2.com/cgi-bin/wiki] came online in March 1995
most known wiki is t he Wikipedia the "free content encyclopedia" - the largest public wiki with nearly 469,000 articles in English alone until 2005

Wiki’s features

Wiki’s features - Pros
Wiki pages are controlled — created, linked, edited, deleted, moved, renamed, and so on — by a programming or scripting language, and stored either as plain ASCII text files or in an external relational database.
e-mail notification for every change
faceless contact -no limits of place or time
users freely create and edit web page content using any web browser with no knowledge of HTML coding
collaborative tool limited only to a selected group of users

Wiki’s features - Cons
No simultaneous editing: If that happens, one user's edits will be deleted except Twiki employs a page locking system
The page is too long to scroll
Lack of real time communication

Wiki’s general & educational USES

Wikis’ general uses
collaborative environments
collaborative online projects
active on-line communities on the web
professional network with continuing access to the content for an indefinite period of time
site of collaborative authoring of a document development
collaborative communication forums
collective content management (e.g. DocuWiki)
knowledge bases
knowledge management systems
personal information managers (PIMs)
content management for academic instruction

Wiki’s educational uses
The beauty of wikis is …. shaped from within-not imposed from above ’ (Lamb, B. 2004)
Traditional instruction instruction of collaboration / shared construction of knowledge
class communication site
collaborative knowledge base
place to post assignments for peer review
tool for process writing
place for co-authoring professional books
an environment for group projects
collaborative use of wikis is for problem-solving in small or large groups
teacher can trigger, stimulate, monitor, guide online as well as offline activities conducive to learning, determine problem areas for students
increases participation and student involvement
natural tool for distance education (DE) interactive activities - course information
effective platform to help electronic and online learning
ideal place for learning
effective tool for building virtual learning communities

Wiki’s use in Foreign Language Learning
Georgia Institute of Technology (2002) English classes wiki environment-CoWiki
-collaboration, comments on each others work
Public college in Tapei, (2007) 2 weeks study, ESL essay writing on a Wiki
-building an instructive or constructive instructional model with Wiki in a rigorous manner requires more empirical evidence
Senior high school students in Taiwan (2005) Collaborative system of EFL composition writing.  Wiki platform - peer-reviewing  Link grammar - automatically checking students' papers 
RSS reader to periodically retrieve articles from the platform published in BLOG.
- exchange of skills opinions when writing the article
- link grammar helped teacher ’s concentrat ion on students' higher level skills instead of correcting mechanical problems.
University of Zagreb Engwiki project 2007-08 2 tertiary-level (ESP) courses
Web-oriented learning activities (e-tivities) supplement the traditional language course
 use of wiki-based e-tivities for LL / evaluation of the e-tivities for teachers to use them in CALL
- positive outcome of the use of the wiki &usefulness of the e-tivities
West Virginia University, 2007 The Effects of Wiki-and Blog-technologies on the Students. Performance when Learning the Preterite and Imperfect Aspects in Spanish
- test of pre-existing knowledge  same performance level blog/wiki
-not any difference in satisfaction levels in use of blog/wiki

Case study

Case study- Developing italswebquest
a particular area not sufficiently explored
use of Web 2.0 tools - wikis in teaching and learning Italian as a foreign language in higher education.
implementation of a wiki as a language learning environment of collaboration & as a language course management system at the same time
The most innovative aspect of the study is the
development of a blended language learning model which combines blog activities with webquest projects that take place in face-to-face lessons and online in a wiki as a language learning platform and course management system at the same time

Research Questions
RQ1 – Can the wiki technology be used successfully in teaching/learning Italian as a FL at the university level as an environment of collaborative learning that can increase motivation, participation and collaboration among students?
RQ2 – In what ways and in what frequency the students used wiki during the ‘italswebquest’ project?
RQ3 – Have the students affronted any technical difficulties in using the wiki tool as a communication tool or as a tool for collaborative writing for their webquest projects and if yes how this affected the process of their language learning?
RQ4 – The idea of mixing online warm up blog activities and webquest projects using a wiki online environment in combination with face-to-face lessons had a positive impact on learners’ satisfaction levels comparing to their prior learning experiences of traditional language class?

Methodology 1
Participants
- 25 advanced students - future Italian language teachers
-Dep. of Italian and Spanish Language and Literature, Univ. of Athens
- Year of study different year of Italian studies
- Technology literacy None or limited experience with technology
- Gender 23 females 2 males
- Age 70% early twenties - 30% 25 to 50 years old
Period fall semester 2007-08, four week research
Course description “Introduction of Internet and Web 2.0 tools in the language classroom”
1 st part theoretical and practical introduction to the use of internet in education, the Web 2.0 tools and their educational use in the language teaching/learning (basic computer skills, Web 2.0, creation of WQ projects)
2 nd part a series of blended lessons , focus on different cultural italian topics cinema italiano ,citta’ italiane
4 lessons= 2 online/ 2 face-to-face lessons alternatively for each topic, 2 weeks

Methodology 2
1st on-line lesson series of online blog pre-online warm up activities -introduction of the cultural topic of WQ project, duration 1 week
2 nd face-to-face lesson (lab) introduction to the webquest project
presentation of all the steps of the WQ project
division of the class in groups of four
distribution of the different roles
Collaborative work, presentation of a final work at the end
3 nd on-line lesson wiki class italswebquest , a password protected environment
tutor responsible administrator of the space, monitor- control the progress of students work, see the variety and level of student contributions
1 common class space – get informed on material, activities, FAQ
5 different group spaces of work and collaboration discussion areas
4 th face-to-face lesson (lab) oral group’s presentations of the final group work by one representative (ppt presentations not obligatory)
class discussion
Publication of the final groups’ works on the wiki environment (read, comment, add)
WQ tool Wiki tool

Results

Results
RQ1
+ great collaboration attitude and a gradual increase of students’ motivation and participation
+ group wiki space: collaboration on writing the final wq groups discussion area: communication process of their work
+ Use of Italian language - on line interactions S1: This is a great experience for me.
RQ2
+ communication on their group work
+ download tutor’s notes
+ getting information on course’s activities
- not everyone asked guiding questions for problems occured
- use of wiki environment during the face to face lessons
- technical difficulties - impact on frequency of wiki’s use
- bigger participation during the last day before the f2f lessons
+ most used successfully the basic potentials of wikis
- 15% used wiki’s most potentials (ex.downloading videos)

Results
RQ3
- Technical problems: logging in, simultaneous editing - lost time / stress
- 70% blog tool more friendly in use
- 50 % would continue to use blog for personal reasons but no wiki
+ Very good experience
+ Wish to experiment wiki tool in future classes
RQ4 implemented blended learning scenario
+ 88% very high satisfaction levels , despite difficulties of wiki’s use because No limits of time & space , collaborative class work, communication italian
+ Communication stud-stud, stud-tutor

Conclusions
Implementation of a new methodology Blog+WQ+Wiki to advanced level of Italian language students
Face-to-face lessons + online using a wiki as a platform of collaborative language learning
Positive attitudes towards the use of wiki as an online language learning environment of collaboration.
Interest and participation
Further quantitative results will be presented - analysed in a future paper
Hope that other foreign language students &teachers will continue the discussion and inquiry started here

References
1. Steve O'Hear: Web's second phase puts users in control. The Guardian, Retrieved 20/06/2008 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2006/jun/20/elearning.technology8
2. Richardson,W.: Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classroom. Sage, Corwin Press (2006)
3. Eijkman Henk: Web 2.0 as a non-foundational network-centric learning space. Journal: Campus-Wide Information Systems, 2008 Volume: 25 Issue: 2 Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing Limited pp. 93 – 104
4. David Mattison: Quickiwiki, Swiki, Twiki, Zwiki and the Plone Wars Wiki as a PIM and Collaborative
Content Tool. Access Services:Archivist British Columbia Archives, Cananda, Vol. 11 No. 4 — April 2003
5. Bo Leuf, Ward Cunningham: The Wiki way: quick collaboration on the Web. Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, (2001), pp. (14), (30)
6. http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
7. http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About .
8. Augar, N., R.Raitman and W.Zhou: Teaching and learning online with wikis. In R.Atkinson, C.McBeath, D.Jonas-Dwyer & R.Philips (Eds), Beyond the comfort zone: Proceedings of the 21 st ASCILITE Conference.(95-104) (2004).
9. Axel Bruns and Sal Humphreys: Building Collaborative Capacities in Learners: The M/Cyclopedia Project, Revisited. Build Proceedings of the the International Symposium on Wikis, Montréal, 21-23 Oct. 2007.
10. Theony, P.(2005). Twiki. Retreived June 20, 2008 from http:// www.twiki.org
11. Duffy, Peter D. and Bruns, Axel: The Use of Blogs, Wikis and RSS in Education: A Conversation of Possibilities. In Proceedings Online Learning and Teaching Conference 2006, pages pp. 31-38, Brisbane, (2006).
12. Beldarrain, Yoany: Distance Education Trends: Integrating new technologies to foster student interaction and collaboration. Distance Education, Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group, Volume 27, Number 2, August 2006 pp. 139-153(15)
13. Slykhuis, D. & Stern, B.: Whither our Wiki?. In K. McFerrin et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education International Conference 2008
14. Andreas Lund, Ole Smørdal: Is There a Space for the Teacher in a WIKI? WikiSym’06, August 21–23, 2006, Odense, Denmark.
15. R Godwin-Jones: Emerging Technologies: Blogs and Wikis: Environments for On-line Collaboration. Language Learning & Technology, 2003 - llt.msu.edu
16. Lamb, B.: Wide Open Spaces: Wikis, Ready or Not. EDUCAUSE review (2004)
17. Mejias U.:Teaching social software with social software. Innovate 2 (5). (2006.) http:// innovateonline.info/index.php?view = article&id =260 (accessed July 24, 2006).
18. Chao, Joseph T., and Kevin R. Parker.: Wiki as a Teaching Tool. Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects (2007): 57-61. MSU, Plymouth, UK., 10 July 2007. Keyword: Wiki.
19. Collaborative Software Lab.: A catalog of CoWeb uses. 2000 ftp://ftp.cc.gatech.edu/pub/gvu/tr/2000/00-19.pdf (accessed May 24, 2008).

References
20. Richard P. Schuler, Nathaniel Laws, Sameer Bajaj, Sukeshini A. Grandhi, Quentin Jones: Finding Your Way with CampusWiki:A Location-Aware Wiki CHI 2007, April 28–May 3, 2007, San Jose, California, USA ACM 978-1-59593-642-4/07/0004.
21. Schwartz, L., Clark, S., Cossarin, M., & Rudolph, J. Educational Wikis: features and selection criteria. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 5(1). (2004).
22. Doolan A. Martina:Collaborative Student learning and the Role of the Tutor: Using online Web 2.0 technologies (Wiki) to enhance traditional face-to-face teaching and to improve the HE student learning experience UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE
23. Sheung On Choy and Kwok Chi: Implementing wiki software for supplementing online learning The Open University of Hong Kong ,Australasian Journal of EducationalTechnology 2007, 23(2), 209-226.
24. Shu Ching Yang and Yi-Ju Chen : Technology-enhanced language learning: A case study Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 23, Issue 1, January 2007, Pages 60-879
25. Rick, J., Guzdial, M., Carroll, K., Holloway-Attaway, L. ,Walker, B. Collaborative Learning at Low Cost: CoWeb Use in English Composition., Paper presented at Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, (CSCL 2002 Boulder, CO. ) , 2002 Retrieved June 2008 from http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu:8888/csl/uploads/24/CoWebInEnglish-CSCL2002.pdf
26. Wang, H.-C., Lu, C.-H., Yang, J.-Y., Hu, H.-W., Chiou, G.-F., Chiang, Y.-T., et al: An empirical exploration of using wiki in an English as a second language course. Proceedings of the Fifth IEEE In-ternational Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT’05), Kaohsiung, Taiwan: July 5-8, 155-157. (2005). Retrieved November 2006 from http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/10084/32317/01508634.pdf?arnumber=1508634
27. Chang, Y.-F. & Schallert, D.L: The design for a collaborative system of English as foreign language: Composition writing of senior high school students in Taiwan. Proceedings of the Fifth IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT’05), Kaohsiung, Taiwan: July (2005).
28. Andreja Kovacic, Goran Bubas, Miran Zlatovic: E-tivities with a Wiki: Innovative Teaching of English as a Foreign Language. University of Zagreb, Faculty of Organization and Informatics, Croatia. EUNIS 2008 VISION IT - Vision for IT in higher education June 24 - 27, 2008
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30 . Daniel Alex Castaneda: The Effects of Wiki-and Blog-technologies on the Students. Performance when Learning the Preterite and Imperfect Aspects in Spanish . Dissertation submitted to the College of Human Resources and Education
at West Virginia University, Department of Technology, Learning, & Culture, Morgantown, West Virginia 2007.
31 . Duffy, T. M. & Cunningham, D. J.: Constructivism: Implications for the design and delivery of instruction. IN: Jonassen D. H. (Ed) Handbook of Research for Educational Communications and Technology (pp.170- 198). New York: Simon & Shuster Macmillan. (1996)
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Thoughtfest09

by MARIA PERIFANOU on Feb 18, 2010

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