Integrating Web 2.0 technologies in undergraduate teaching: Experiences with a wiki implementation

Abstract

The present paper presents our experiences with a wiki implementation in undergraduate education. More specifically, the paper address the issue of collaboration in the process of hypertext creation and examines the rate and dominant patterns of student collaboration. Fifty students who enrolled in an undergraduate course on learning with ICT participated in the study. One of the compulsory assignments involved the use of a wiki system for the collaborative construction of a textual artifact which aimed to facilitate the shared development of meaning. Student collaboration was operationalized in terms of joint revisions. Results indicated that the levels of student collaboration were low and that in the few instances of joint revision the predominant pattern was a cumulative one. The paper is concluded with a discussion of the importance of scaffolds for the effective integration of wikis in higher education. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.