Friday, March 19, 2010

Blog post (3/18 #2). Using wikis as CALL material?

It seems that using wikis is one of the possibilities for a CALL material these days. One merit of using wikis is that students can collaborate in their work anytime, and anywhere. This is a strong point which other CALL materials does not seem to have, especially in terms of writing (we can say that voicethread can be a counterpart in speaking field). It sounds like an attractive material, but we still have to be careful how we use it in language classes. One of our reading shows that the engineering students did not feel comfortable with using wikis for their class. The reasons the researcher gave why it did not work good were: the students were not familiar using wikis; they needed to have extra work besides wiki writing; engineering majors may have a negative attitude towards collaborative writing tasks. This study shows that wikis are not almighty. However, if we use it in an appropriate way, it will work good for language acquisition. To use it appropriately, we first need to know the merits of using wikis. As I wrote at the beginning, one, and maybe the biggest merit is that students can collaborate in their work. So, wikis will be most appropriate when it is used for group works (in the research, it was not used for a well designed group work, and I think that is a reason why the students felt uncomfortable with wikis). Also, easy accessibility is another merit for wikis. In my opinion, I think it will be better to assign simple tasks for wiki tasks, not very complicated and hard tasks. This is because if the tasks are very hard, learners may feel reluctant to access wikis, which will spoil one of its merits.

5 comments:

  1. I agree that that instructors have to be careful when assigning wiki projects. It is possible that students may not be familiar with wikis and this could be frustrating for them. However, once the students know how to work with wikis, they will have fun learning experience.

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  3. When teachers ask students to use any of the CALL tools, a good idea would be to conduct a small survey and gather information regarding the existing experience students have. Students should also be allowed to play around and perfom few small easy tasks before they actually begin to use a call tool for a task related to their subject area.

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  4. I agree with you that a benefit of wikis is that they allow students to collaberate with one another anytime and anywhere.
    I also agree that activities/tasks must be designed in such a way that students are able to focus on using lanugage, and not allow unfamiliarity with the technology to get in the way. If students are unfamiliar with wikis, perhaps a series of tasks could be designed using wikis. Basic tasks could allow students to get familiar with the technology, and subsequent tasks could have students using what they have learned about wikis to complete other projects.

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  5. Thank you for the comments, and I'm sorry my response is late..

    >Miglena
    That's right. Teachers should pay attention to how to instruct their students and make them feel comfortable with using wiki.

    >Maria
    I didn't think about conducting a survey of the students' experience. That will surely help teachers to know the students' background and preferences of learning.

    >Kristen
    Making series of tasks is a good idea to let students familiar with wiki. They will learn how to use wiki through learning the language with it.

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