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.