Wiki glossaries or dictionaries: several examples

From iProjekt

Current revision as of 17:53, 21 November 2010

The use of a wiki for creation of a glossary or dictionary on a specific topic of a lecture (or for the entire course) is one of the simplest but also most effective collaborative learning activities for students. Also, this online activity can be used for several consecutive courses or academic years. For instance, the online glossery or dictionary that was created on a certain topic in one academic year can be supplemented with new terms/concepts in the next academic year or by another group of students of a related course. Also, the definitions and illustrations that were created by one group os students can be expanded and inmproved by a new generation or group of students. This online activity with a wiki is based on cognitivistic principles of teaching/learning and stimulates peer-to-peer learning.

The advantage of this e-tivity for the use of a wiki is that in case of large groups of students (50 or more) an online glossary or dictionary with 100-300 entries can be created very quickly and can be used as a supplement for other online and offline learning material for the course. This e-tivity empowers the students and helps them create a sense of resposibility. Also, it may help in developing interest in the course topics since many of the students could be interested in the definitions and/or illustrations that their collegues have provided for various course related terms/concepts in the online glossary or dictionary.

The disadvantage of this activity is that students may tend to copy & paste content for their contributions from other locations on the web. We found that plagiarism occurs quite often with use of a wiki. Also, the use of a wiki by students may require that a separate wiki engine is placed on college server for each course. The maintenance of the server and upgade of wiki engine may require additional resources, as well as the creation of separate accounts for the students.

A good example od a wiki "dictionary" is the one created for the course Computer-Mediated Communication. However, for the list of terms/concepts related to this course we used the special wiki page named "All pages" (link). The students were asked to choose and explain the concepts that are related to the content of this course. They created more than 150 descriptions of various terms/concepts of variable quality. It must be noted that their wiki contributions were rewarded with course credit (1-2 points).

The screenshot with all terms/concepts and other pages (in Croatian language) in the wiki of the course "Computer-Mediated Communication" is presented below.

We also used a wiki for the course "Organizational communication". In this case the wiki was used both as a glossary/dictionary and for presentation of essays on specific course related topics. This was done by the students of the first year of university study. We also used the wiki for the course "Customer relationship management" in the third year of university study. Since there was a problem with plagiarism in student work placed on the wiki in both courses we abandoned its use for those courses in such form.

The screenshot with all terms/concepts and other pages (in Croatian language) in the wiki of the course "Organizational Communication" is presented below.