Is the Wiki the best tool for this assignment?

Is the Wiki the best tool for this assignment?

by John Harris -
Number of replies: 13

I am a middle school math teacher new to moodle.  I have just completed my first chapter done in conjunction with Moodle.  Great results.  After each chapter I used to have each student write me a 150 word letter wher they could discuss the chapter, how they felt about it, how they can improve, and how I can improve.  I wanted to bring this activity to Moodle.  I thought a student wiki would be the best platform to use becasue we could take a single letter and turn it into a year long discussion between the student and myself.  No other student should be able to view this.

On the kid's end it is working great.  I have one class out of four working on this assignment tonight. 

On my end it is not so great.  I have 68 kids in the course and only 14 have the assignment tonight. 

First, the list of other Wikis is long and random, not alphbetical or by any groups and can't be sorted.  Is there an easier way? 

Second, I have to look at each wiki to see if they are finished.  Is there a way to see a list of recently edited wiki's?  I tried logs but sometimes it says "wiki edit" and will link right ot there wiki, others times it doesn't even though a letter is there.

Third, Is this the best activity for what I want?

Thanks to all that can help!   This forum is great!

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In reply to John Harris

Re: Is the Wiki the best tool for this assignment?

by Julie Miller -

John,

You might consider the journal activity instead. To my knowledge, that's more of a private exchange between you and the student.

Julie Miller
Mukwonago, WI

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In reply to John Harris

Re: Is the Wiki the best tool for this assignment?

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

John - how about the online text assignment?

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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Is the Wiki the best tool for this assignment?

by Julie Miller -

The online text assignment would also work, but I'm not sure it has the "back and forth" that John is looking for.  I think the journal activity does?

Julie

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In reply to Julie Miller

Re: Is the Wiki the best tool for this assignment?

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

Well I'm not sure the journal has the "back and forth" any more- it seems to me to behave pretty much like the online text assignment?

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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Is the Wiki the best tool for this assignment?

by Marc Grober -

Julie,

A  wiki can be as private as the teacher wishes to make it. SO no issues with keeping other students from viewing the student teacher correspondence.

The wiki actually DOES provide for "give and take" etc if the student and teacher know how to make use of it.  Unfortunately, all too frequently folk don't know how to employ the tools at their disposal.

While the journal attracted quite a following (Howard argues I think that the devotees are enamored largely of the name) it is, as Howard argues, little more than a massaged online text assignment, and it has been removed from core moodle (you can install the contrib journal module and success has been reported with that process,  but there have also been some problems.)  It DOES provide a place for teacher feedback (as does the online text assignment), but arguably that is part and parcel of the grading interface....  certainly not the same thing as either a "discussion" meaning a one-on-one forum.

Frankly, I think the wiki is absolutely the best way to maintain a journal.  It is easily extensible so the journaler can add pages by day, by topic, by whatever. It allows for the instructor to comment and tracks the history of every page so it makes it easy to see how pages developed (giving you access to multi-dimensional "growth"), and it is easy to move about so that you can actually link to prior observations, external material etc.

But, the student and the teacher need to know how to make use of the wiki, and that is most easily started when students are first required to do weekly writing prompts, as a  multipage student wiki is I think the most elegant way to provide the student with a term's composition book that includes all the writing assignments for the term..... Once the student and teacher have worked through this usage at elementary school, all that follows is a piece of cake wink

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Marc Grober

Re: Is the Wiki the best tool for this assignment?

by Julie Miller -

Marc - this is a great forum entry and you opened my eyes to a few changes with the journal tool I was not aware of.  Yay, forum!

Seriously, you've given me (and others, I'm sure), some great food for thought about how the tools can best be leveraged, and you've reinforced the importance of keeping up with the evolution of Moodle's tools.

Thanks again for your insight.

Julie

 

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In reply to Marc Grober

Re: Is the Wiki the best tool for this assignment?

by Linda Alston -

Hi Marc,

I am trying to create individual wiki for students to make a collection smaller assignments that will become one big assignment.  The intent is for the completed assignment to be submitted at the end of the course to a workshop for peer evaluation.  In the workshop submission, if the student includes the URL to the individual wiki, will the evaluating student have access to the wiki to do the evaluation?

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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Is the Wiki the best tool for this assignment?

by Julie Miller -

Mary, thanks for this update.  I will have to take a look at the journal now and see if my old views of it being back-and-forth still work.  It used to, but now I will check.  THANKS!

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In reply to Julie Miller

Re: Is the Wiki the best tool for this assignment?

by John Harris -

Thanks again for everyon eputting so much thought in to this.  From what I read in Mary's book (great read if you haven't seen it) I do beleive the forum is the best format. 

So the other questions still remain.  What the best way for a teacher to manage the "replies" back to the students.  You can't sort, group, or alphabatize the list...as far as I can see.  Any suggestions.  I checked four books and this forum wihtout luck.

I also want to mention that the kids LOVE the wikis!

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In reply to John Harris

Re: Is the Wiki the best tool for this assignment?

by Marc Grober -

John,

You have stumbled into the curse of western education; grading!

There are ways to manage grading with Moodle wikis, but it all comes back to what you are trying to acocmplish with the assignment and what the grade is too reflect.

If you want to help students develop writing skills,  then a wiki is absolutely the way to go.

If you want the kids to create a letter in a word processor and then provide that letter to you to review, then you probably want to look at the pdfassignment or the new openoffice assignment, or just do the upload assignment. These will provide in varying degrees the opportunity for your students to provide the assignment and some will even allow them to decide when to submit it to you for grading.

As far as managing wikis,  I am not sure I understand your problem. Are you only concerned that you want to know when it is submitted?  If so what I do is create an assignment that covers the wiki.  The student is required by the online assignment to let me know when their wiki assignment is "completed" and that gives me a handy dandy way to provide some ridiculous grade for the wiki assignment without having to twiddle the gradebook.  I can use my own rubric for the grading (and when I have to do this I use a simple  scale.) Now I can both comment in the student wiki as well as comment on the assignment, and if I think the student is dogging it I can reject the assignment submission, and provide comment in the assignment as well as in the wiki

The same kind of thing coiuld be done with a forum,  but a forum makes no sense in my mind as far as your underlying task,  which is to write a letter.  And grading a forum is also a ridiculous occupation.

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In reply to Marc Grober

Re: Is the Wiki the best tool for this assignment?

by John Harris -

I see your points.  I am very lucky with this assignment that this is just for the kids to write whatever they want on how to make the class better.   Grading is not done. 

I will try to be more specific:

1- When the student responds the first time after the assingment, I can go look at the wiki and respond myself.  I had a student respond back a second time (not assigned, they just wanted to continue the discussion).  How can I tell they did this.  I can't keep checking all 68 students all the time to see if someone left a post.  Can I get an email?  A message? Something?

2-If one of my classes (of 14 students) finishes a chapter on a Thursday, their wikis are due the next day.  To look at them I go to a list under "other wikis" to see a giant list of all 68 students that is not in any known order.  In fact, the order changes.  Can I seperate that class?  They do have their own group.  However if a select group, the privacy settings change.

I hope I am articulating myself better...thanks for hanging in there with me.

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In reply to John Harris

Re: Is the Wiki the best tool for this assignment?

by Paul Ganderton -

Hi John,

Might I take a different tack. Why do you want to grade? Are you getting marks for the stufents or trying to spread the learning around? I'm not trying to be flippant here because both are good ideas but I use another method that might be worth considering at least.

I want my (senior) students to both learn and teach each other. I use the forum extensively for this. Someone posts an idea and others comment. I believe you can grade forum posts (although I don't do it). It has the downside that everyone can see the work but opens up the class discussions (probably need some ground rules before they start). If you want a more private system then the assignment type noted above is excellent.

Also from left-field, what about a blog?

Hope this helps,

Paul

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In reply to Paul Ganderton

Re: Is the Wiki the best tool for this assignment?

by John Harris -

Thanks, Paul.  No grading is done for this.  It is simply a letter from the kids to me that I do not want shared with other students.  The students discuss how I can do better and how they can do better.  Sometimes they add a personal situation in the letter that may explain why performance at school could be down.  For all the above reasons, I do not share the letters with other students.

 

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