Transforming learning by creating wiki projects

The aim of the current study was to explore if student teachers were able to transform learning by engaging in project work using a wiki. Twenty-nine students formed 8 groups to do a project on any topic related to the social and ethical issues of using information technology. They were given a timeline and assessment rubric for the project. Data were collected from multiple sources: the contents of the created wiki group pages, the access logs gathered by the wiki site, and the students’ reflections. Students were very engaged in the project work; they systematically published a variety of relevant multimedia resources. Each student teacher also provided constructive comments to 2 groups as a form of formative assessment. By evaluating their peer’ work, student teachers not only learned the content and design of other’ project work, but were also able to improve their own. Student teachers were given 1 week to improve their project and were then required as a group to evaluate the same groups as before using the assessment rubric given by the educator. The average score that groups received ranged from 2.63 to 3.25, with 4 serving as the maximum mark. These scores suggest that the students were able to produce quality work. Their reflections also indicated that they enjoyed independently learning the subject matter when creating the learning materials. In sum, using a wiki for project work motivates students to not only explore various resources, but also adopt different technical features of wikis in order to ensure that learning materials are presentable. Copyright © 2013 CGPublisher.