Action Research

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An Enquiry Into The Use of Wiki Sites to Promote Independent and Collaborative Learning Action research for the Transformation Teachers Program Teresa Greer TTP Action Research • Haringey Sixth Form Centre • December 2007/January 2008 Teresa Greer • email: [email protected] • Haringey Sixth Form Centre 1 image by Bill Moseley under a creative commons license

Transcript of Action Research

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An Enquiry Into The Use of Wiki Sites to Promote Independent and Collaborative LearningAction research for the Transformation Teachers Program

Teresa GreerTTP Action Research • Haringey Sixth Form Centre • December 2007/January 2008

Teresa Greer • email: [email protected] • Haringey Sixth Form Centre 1

image by Bill Moseley under a creative commons license

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Table of ContentsRational Justification and Context! 3

Focus of Research 3

Purpose 3

Importance of Enquiry 4

Evidence 5

School based 5

Haringey Data 5

Research Paradigms! 6

Data Collection Method 6

Ethical Issues 6

Target Group, Needs Analysis! 7

Student Information 7

Departmental focus 7

OFSTED 8

Action Plan! 9

Time Line 9

Type of Activity 10

Resources 10

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Progress and evaluation 10

Impact and Findings! 11

Ease of Use 11

General Usefulness 13

Enjoyability 13

Collaboration 14

Web 2.0 14

Helpfulness 15

Exams 15

Continue using the wiki? 15

Student SWOT 16

Students Comments 18

Participation 18

Conclusion 19

Progression From Here 19

Final Abstract! 21

Bibliography: Web and ICT tools! 22

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Rational Justification and ContextWho we are and why choose a wiki?

Students prepare the visuals for a slidecast to embed on standback.pbwiki.com

Having long been a fan of the tools provided by the internet for generally making everyones

life easier I was especially keen to target some of this usefulness to students learning. There’s

a wealth of impressive organisational tools out there, from virtual to do lists

(www.rememberthemilk.com), to handy calendars (www.google.com/calendars) and not for-

getting numerous opportunities for social networking (www.twitter.com) or social bookmark-

ing (www.delicious.com). The transformation teachers program has provided an excellent

foundation in effective ways of using these tools, as well as a great bank of ideas to take for-

ward. One resource that I’d tried to use in the past and wanted to use more effectively is edu-

cational wiki sites and that is why they are examined in more detail through this action re-

search.

Focus of Research

This research intends to examine methods of promoting independent learning and collabora-

tive learning. The research will predominately focus on the use of wiki sites

(www.pbwiki.coma) as a means of achieving a more independent attitude amongst the

students as well as providing a chance to work collaboratively (group work and peer assess-

ment) with each other.

Purpose

The enquiry sets out to try to encourage students to take more ownership of their course, to

have a better understanding of the outline and expectations and then use that knowledge to

effectively improve their own studies. Coupled with this is the hope that they will learn more

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about the ICT and Web 2.0 tools that there are available to them and that this will help to en-

gage them more in their studies.

Importance of Enquiry

I’m very comfortable with using ICT and web based tools and so it’s only natural for me to try

to incorporate them into my teaching practice. What I did not want to happen is to randomly

throw something webby at the students just because I can do it/it looks flashy. My goal, as

both a student of the transformation teachers program, as a teacher, and in this action re-

search is to ensure smooth and cohesive use of ICT with the subject material. The intention is

that the ICT supports the subject, not dictates it, and that it makes it easier for the students to

learn, If this increases their independence and their ability to work alongside others as well as

enhancing the subject material then that is my primary aim. If technology can make mine and

the students life richer and easier then I’m extremely happy to embrace it fully.

Image three: Student studying on a school laptop

The sixth form centre is a new institution (opened in 2007) and it prides itself on being tech-

nologically modern. Students have access to PC’s, every faculty has access to cameras and

video recorders and laptops. The centre vision is to “Provide high quality education and train-

ing to young people enabling them to achieve their aspirations in an inclusive, supportive,

safe and stimulating learning environment. By increasing participation, collaboration and in-

novation,we will unlock (students) potential enabling them to succeed and make a positive

contribution to their community and the economy.”

Independent learning skills are an essential part of a students academic development and are

not easy to achieve. Active learning methods have frequently come up against the chalk and

talk expectations of students, and often parents. Learning is however an active process, and

no matter how much a teacher may wish it were otherwise, we can’t learn for them,

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EVIDENCE

School based

The centre self evaluation has identified independent learning as a key issue for student pro-

gression. Attainment on entry is below that of other sixth form centres and many students

have not come equipped with the study skills needed to enable them to work independently.

Without explicit guidance in all aspects of study the students often won’t attempt a task, or

seek help for it. Each department in the centre has a study centre equipped with textbooks

and computers with internet access. There is a learning mentor attached to each faculty to

provide additional support to students. Key skills in communications is given across the voca-

tional groups and this goes a long way towards increasing their independent skills. But, for

the A-Level students there seems to be a significant gap in these basic study skills and this is

something this research hopes to go a little way to addressing.

Haringey Data

Haringey is heavily committed and enthusiastic for the Building Schools for the Future initia-

tive. The Sixth form centre was built as a flagship centre and the BSF program in Haringey

includes 12 schools. The council website states that the intention is to transform teaching not

just buildings, and that a significant aspect of this is related to the enhanced use of ICT:

“A key way of transforming learning is through improving ICT within schools (for example

computers and interactive whiteboards) so that it is simple to use, and provides reliable sup-

port to teaching and learning. Whether it is through new buildings or by existing buildings

being refurbished or the provision of enhanced ICT facilities throughout, all our secondary

schools will benefit.”

Haringey is multi-ethnic borough and is classified as the 10th most deprived in the country.

There is a significant split however between the east and the west of the borough, with the east

(where the sixth form centre is situated and targeted for) there is significantly higher propor-

tions of deprivation.

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Research ParadigmsHow the research will be undertaken

Students undertaking investigation taken with ttp canon camera. All images on Flickr c

Data Collection Method

Data collection will rely predominately on student feedback and participation.Survey Monkey

will be used to poll the students on how effective they judge using the website to be, how

much they enjoyed it and whether it is a resource they wish to continue with. There will also

be comment made on the frequency and participation in the website.

By using the students opinions on the effectiveness of the site it will be possible to gage

whether or not a student is more likely to approach this study technique independently. Grade

comparisons are not suitable for this enquiry because it is not their progression that is being

evaluated, it is the effectiveness and likelihood that they will work by themselves to create re-

sources and revise from them, and collaboratively to monitor each others progress and contri-

butions to the website.

Ethical Issues

The website is public, which means you do not have to log on to be able to read. You do have

to log on in order to be able to edit. There is no personal information to be posted on the wiki

and students are encouraged to use usernames rather than full names. During the course of

the research there have been several requests for access from unknown people which have all

been refused. Any edits made on the website are emailed out to all members, so this prevents

any chance of cyber-bullying. All users are known and all edits are public. Email addresses are

not displayed on the website.

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Target Group, Needs AnalysisWho is the research really for?

Collage of AS Biology Students at work

Student Information

While both academic and vocational students have had access to and used the website this re-

search will focus solely on the AS Biology group. This is simply because the course structure

means that for the duration of the research all of the students will be working on one particu-

lar unit rather than across several as will be the case with the BTEC students, and the A2 biol-

ogy students have been focusing on their coursework. The class has 18 students 10 boys and 8

girls. They have all achieved a grade B in their science GCSE and the TMG’s range from E to

C. They are of mixed backgrounds and only one student has been flagged up as having addi-

tional language needs, although this isn’t apparent from their studies. All students have lim-

ited study skills and in an early assignment when asked to be imaginative with the format for

submission, over 80% still handed in a word document, while a significant number of those

who didn’t provided a powerpoint presentation. They are technologically competent and all

use computers effectively.

Departmental focus

It was hoped that the website would be open access to all department members and editorial

invitations had been sent out to all teachers in science. There wasn’t any take up over the

course of the research but there is still scope for extension with other teachers if they wish it.

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OFSTED

The main message in the OFSTED report can be summarised, I feel, by the following extract:

“Students are now making good progress in most lessons as a result of good teaching, which

is carefully planned to meet individual needs and interests and to motivate them to learn. Staff

have high expectations of what their students can achieve, but also recognise the need to help

students to learn to work on their own and spend more time outside lessons to develop their

knowledge and understanding. Many students have had little previous experience of inde-

pendent learning and still rely too much on the teacher, rather than taking responsibility for

their own learning.”

Haringey Sixth Form OFSTED report 2008

In teaching and learning the centre achieved a grade 2 with the following included:

“...skills for independent learning are not yet fully developed in all subjects or courses.”

Obviously there is a real need in the centre, as everywhere, to equip the students with the

skills they need to learn to learn.

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Action PlanActivity, time line and time frame

Checking the standback edits

Time Line

June/July 2008: pbwiki summer school

Mid July 2008: Begin to set up wiki site with pages and folders for individual groups

End July 2008: Complete structure of wiki

Early september 2008: Google calendar and course outlines

Mid September 2008: Develop students IT skills - introduction to web 2.0

Mid September 2008: Imaginative homework task - do students think outside the box?

End September 2008: Give students secure log-in to standback.pbwiki. Set commenting

homework for students to familiarise themselves with the format

Early October 2008: Give student a homework task to edit a learning objective page on the

wiki, students pick from a list which one they use

Mid October 2008: Set student homework and provide details only on wiki

End October 2008: Post answers to a test clear to see on the wiki site and at the end of the

week give students the test

Early November 2008: Revision resources on the wiki

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Type of Activity

The activity is for students to use the structure provided on pbwiki to develop revision materi-

als and course related information that is structured around unit one of the biology AS. There

will be a series of tasks and tests and student participation levels will be monitored. The

pbwiki format allows you to see who has been logged on, when they last accessed it as well as

when they last edited it. The tasks will be wiki based either in instruction or in action, and

there will be a few notices that go onto the site to see who is paying attention! hopefully there

will be the chance to develop use of more ICT/Web 2.0 tools as the project goes on.

Resources

Student access to school computers on the network, classroom time and additional time to

teach ICT related skills to support wiki use.

Progress and evaluation

As the research has progressed the technology has been difficult to work with. The safety

mechanisms on the network often mean pages have to be refreshed over and over again. Ac-

cess to laptops has not been consistent and lesson time has been inadequate to teach the

whole range of ICT skills some of the students needed, it left them having to have a go and try

to figure it out which must have been frustrating for them. Because there are only 15 laptops in

the department if a whole class was in there wasn’t enough provision for them. Only half of

unit one was on the wiki because the other biology teacher did not use the site, which wasn’t

consistent for the students and confused them at times. They had some initial difficulty navi-

gating so a quick links section was added to the front page. Because of timetabling difficulty

(science maths and sport have a different lunch hour to the other faculties) additional support

time for the students was difficult to arrange, with not everyone being able to make it at the

same time.

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Impact and Findingshas it had an effect?

Students preparing for collaborative visit issue reports to go onto

www.standback.pbwiki.com

The majority of the data that will be used to determine the impact and outcome of this investi-

gation will come from the students achievements and their comments. They were invited to

undertake a survey (created through survey monkey) and offer their opinion on using the

wiki.

Ease of Use

What often seems to have a large impact on how positive the students feel about a certain

strategy is how easy it is for them to use. Is it accessible?

Table one: How easy have you found it to look for information on standback.pbwiki.com

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Table 2. Students comments on question one (see table one)

Overall students are mostly, if not enthusiastically, positive about how easy it is to navigate

your way around the website. There are some flaws with the general layout and it can require a

bit of navigation to get to where you need to be. I had tried to ensure that it would be easily

possible for another teacher to slot in their material but as that never happened, the layout as

it is, is a little clunky. There have been changes based on feedback, on the front page there has

been the addition of a current projects link

alterations to www.standback.pbwiki.com

And this has seem to have had a positive effect, increasing the amount of time students have

spent on the site. After the completion of this research the whole site will have a navigation

overhaul hopefully making it much easier to use.

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General Usefulness

Is it useful to the students? Another essential part of the research, if it has been no use then

there’s very little point in having a wiki.

The majority ascribe some use to the wiki with only one student deeming it not at all useful.

Not every member of the class can see the validity in having a site like

www.standback.pbwiki.com on which to have course information, but for those who have en-

gaged and used it generally the feeling is a positive one.

Enjoyability

Again students are not overly enthusiastic, but to my relief, no one hates it!

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Collaboration

Interestingly students don’t recognise the fact that they’ve all contributed to the site and

commented on the goings on as a collaborative piece of work. They seem to believe that col-

laborative work is group work - physically sitting and working with others rather than virtually

working with others.

Web 2.0

Early in the year the students were asked to sign up to a number of web tools and produce

work using one of those tools. Students have used flickr, bubbl.us, slideshare and goanimate

at the very minimum, but not all were willing participants in this and the majority don’t feel

like they have learned anything from it.

This suggests the need for more teaching based around web tools.

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Helpfulness

The majority of students see the benefit, but it is not an overwhelming majority

Exams

Here everyone sees that there is some usefulness in using the wiki for exam preparation with a

strong majority seeing a good use for standback,pbwiki which seems to contradict the results

for question 6 where students believed there was zero benefit.

Continue using the wiki?

Not a single student said they wanted to cease using the wiki altogether.

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Student SWOTStrengths

Weaknesses

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Opportunities

Threats

The student SWOT gave plenty of information about the general attitude of students towards

the wiki. There are a minority who do not seem to want to engage in it and don’t offer very

much in the way of feedback here. However the vast majority all have ideas for ways they

would like to see the wiki developed. The navigation and layout is a clear area for alteration,

and they seem to want more time spent on learning how to use it properly.

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Students Comments

Participation

In the initial set up with the students and with the specific tasks they were set the use of

www.standbackpbwiki.com was frequent and purposeful. The first assignment they had that

was fully wiki based the submission rate was far above the average for the group at that time. I

didn’t want to have to keep reminding them to use the site, so after some initial intensive ac-

tivity I took a fairly hands off approach. The main focus of this was after all to encourage them

to work independently. Without the constant applied pressure of tasks and assignments, edits

and views of the website sloped off significantly.

I did test the water to see how much attention they were paying and posted the answers to a

test I would be giving them the following week. A couple of students realised that a test had

gone up, one student thought it must have been a mistake and didn’t bother revising it. How-

ever, for the majority the interest had dropped off completely.

However, around exam time participation increased dramatically as students realised that they

had his tool here for revision purposes. For the unit one exam the majority of students used

the learning objectives on the wiki to target the revision effectively, recognising that not all of

the detail in the textbooks was relevant to them.

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Conclusion

There are mixed results from this research and largely this occurs from the limitations that

were set on it. The majority of students needed additional time and support to develop their

ICT skills for this site, and while a lot of effort was put into giving them the basics, there

wasn’t much opportunity to develop them from there.

However, not a single student never wants to use the wiki again, and based on the students

comments, those who have reservations seem to feel that with a little adaptation the resource

could be more effective for them. There was some increase in independent learning, and there

were several instances of students working on the same page, so whether they recognise it or

not, there was an increase in collaboration.

The very fact that the students are offering up suggestions for change and alteration suggests

to me that they are becoming reflective about their own learning and what will work best for

them. In my opinion this reflective attitude is a key component of the skills a student needs to

become an independent learner.

So while through the duration of the research the increase in independent learning was nomi-

nal for the majority of time, there is indication that there is room for growth, and it is this that

I hope to exploit fully in the future.

Progression From Here

There was a certain amount of apprehension when this survey went out. No teacher wants to

feel they’ve completely wasted their time doing something their students hate anyway, so it

was relief that the comments were read. This report is not the end of the work that has been

started on www.standback.pbwiki.com. In fact, it would have been impossible to get right first

time. The website needs to be a progressive and reflective entity that changes with the

students needs, and as it is designed for them and largely by them, this is a perfectly feasible

way of personalising learning for them as individuals as well as them as a group.

Over the next couple of weeks I plan on a consultation session with the students that use the

site to decide on a layout that will suit them. From each group of students that have access I

will ask for volunteers to moderate the website, making sure that the layout is working and

that students are navigating properly, using the right sections. I hope to start a student ICT

enrichment project to help to boost the ICT skills that students need, and will be getting

groups to brainstorm other ways they can make most effective use of the site. For independent

assignments there will be close links with revision materials and the wiki, as the students

found it to be extremely useful around exam time.

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In general from now on the aim of the wiki is to work with the students to be everything they

expect it to be, with frequent polls and consultations with the moderators to see what is, and

isn’t working. Eventually through this process it is hoped that I can move away from oversee-

ing the site so closely and it can become a truly student led, independent resource.

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Final Abstractsummary and evaluation

Haringey Sixth Form Students

We learn by doing, not by osmosis as some may wish, and there are plenty of technologies out

there that will assist in learning. The overall aim of the project is to see whether or not a

wikipedia like collaboratively edited site would encourage students to work with each other

towards a goal, and help students develop the independent learning skills they needed.

A website was set up and structured in such a way that there was something for every group of

learners. For the AS biologists in particular, emphasis was placed on course outline utilising

google calendars, and learning objectives as set out by the exam board.

After initial enthusiasm student interest waned without constant wiki based tasks. The only

time this downturn changed was around the time of the unit one exams where the majority of

students recognised the validity of a central source of revision materials.

Through the process of using and developing the wiki students have begun to reflect on what

works, and what doesn’t, what their needs as learners are and what the wiki isn’t providing.

This is the first step in learning how to learn, so in those respects the research was very suc-

cessful.

The wiki will be continued past this research and allowed to develop along the path of

students needs, and hopefully will be an increasingly useful tool for their immediate studies,

and their study skills in general.

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Bibliography: Web and ICT toolsa. www.pbwiki.com provider of free educa-

tional wiki’s (with limitations).

b. www.slidecast.net Site that allows free

upload of powerpoint presentations and

PDF files which can then be downloaded

or embedded. Also has facility to create

slidecasts: a mash-up technology fusing a

podcast with a powerpoint.

c. www.flickr.com really excellent image

storing website. Can use free trial but

accounts provide a lot more flexibility.

User name The Science Floor

d. www.bubbl.us simple mind mapping tool,

easy to use, popular with students

e. www.delicious.com excellent social

bookmarking tool

f. www.wordle.net create beautiful word

clouds - helps determine the focus of a

given document

g. http://goanimate.com easy to use anima-

tion site - good for explaining theories

h. www.google.com/calendars incredibly

useful tool, can be shared and embedded

and detail of upcoming events added

i. www.xkcd.com webcomic where the term

“stand back, I’m about to try science” was

taken from

j. www.meebocom chat applet embedded

into the wiki

k. www.animoto.com really swishy video

making tool, has been used by students

for presentation giving, some instances

embedded on the wiki

l. www.standback.pbwiki.com the science

floor wiki that was used for this research

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