May 30, 2004
Oh Lord, How I Hate Reading Educational Research
The Weblogs in Higher Ed blog points to this paper in The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning called "Educational Wikis: features and selection criteria." It isn't a very useful article, and they make a hash of defining wikis. They start out ok:
According to Leuf and Cunningham (2001), creators of the original wiki concept, “a wiki is a freely expandable collection of interlinked webpages, 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” (p. 14). Content can be directly linked to that found in other wikis (interwiki) and in Web documents.
Browser-based access means that neither special software nor a third-party webmaster is needed to post content. Content is posted immediately, eliminating the need for distribution with the associated risk of virus transmission. Participants can be notified about new content, and they review only new content. Low graphic use results in pages that load quickly. Access is flexible – all that is needed is a computer with a browser and Internet connection. Modular construction means that wikis can be simple or complex to meet user needs and skill levels.
But then go off the rails:
Mattison (2003) states that “a wiki can be a blog, but a blog does not have to be a wiki.” Wiki use is often compared with blogging. Blogs, or weblogs, are chronological online journals written mainly by individuals (although group blogs exist), to which readers post comments.
The main differences between the two approaches relate to notification of new content, editing format, and structure. Blogs typically use RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to sort information and alert users to new content. Wikis usually use email notification. For students, an advantage of blogs is the use of ‘What You See Is What You Get’ (WYSIWYG) editing. Wikis usually employ a simplified markup formatting (although there are also WYSIWYG wikis). A disadvantage of using markup is the lack of standardization across various wiki programs (Mattison, 2003).
The essential difference between a weblog and a wiki is the presence or absence of collaborative editing. If other people can change my words through their browser, then it is more or less a wiki. If they can't, it isn't. The distinctions they draw about notification, editing, and even structure are artifacts of specific implementations and are likely to become even less significant going forward.
Blogs are arranged chronologically, while wiki structure can be based on hierarchical subject divisions through new page creation and internal and external hyperlinking. These features make wikis highly suitable for educational use. Blogs are more structured; wikis are more flexible. Most wikis include a search feature; many blogs do not. Once a blog addition is posted, it often cannot be edited. User communities are found at both blog and wiki sites.
Most blogs are arranged chronologically and by some kind of subject divisions. Wiki software doesn't generally enforce hierarchical divisions. More commonly the software allows a soup of interconnected pages, which may end up looking like a hierarchy if that's how the user's shape their work. That's what makes it "flexible." Again, the search feature is just an artifact of some current implementations, not really significant. And I've never seen a blogging application that doesn't allow you to edit your posts after publishing them.
Since the authors lose track of the essential feature of wikis, collaborative editing, the rest of their discussion of specific features comes unhinged. The question should be to be "is collaborative editing of web content a useful process in distance education?" Not, "what features do we need in our wikis?" If we don't want collaborative editing, then the question becomes "what features do we need in our content management system?"
