aect-wikipedia-learning-commuities

What Can Wikipedia Tell Us About Designing Learning Communities?
Short Description:

Educational researchers continually seek more effective ways to design and support group-based learning activities. One approach is to examine existing communities of practice in order to identify and extend their successful strategies to other collaborative learning environments. In this presentation, the researchers will discuss the results of a Delphi study in which they examined Wikipedia, a large-scale online encyclopedia project, and explored the social, organizational, and technical factors that support successful collaboration within that community.
Abstract: (Click here to enhance readability)

Social constructivists posit that people learn as a result of interacting with others (Vygotsky, 1978). The phrase “learning community” is often used to describe the social context of learning within a group. Examining learning in different communities, Lave and Wenger (1991) introduced the concept community of practice: a group of people sharing common practices who develop their knowledge or expertise through interactions with each other. Lave and Wenger (1991) observed that members of a community of practice not only develop the skills required to participate in community activities, but also gain knowledge about the community’s goals, resources, and principles. This learning occurs through a process called legitimate peripheral participation. New members first participate in peripheral tasks that are less important to the group. Participation in peripheral tasks gives new members opportunities to access community resources and interact with other members. Through practice and interaction, new members gradually learn about the community’s goals and organization and start to build skills and experiences that enable them to move to more central tasks. Lave and Wenger argued that studying this process may provide insights into more effective ways to support and promote learning in community settings. With the advance of online communications and social networking tools, many communities have emerged online since the early ’90s and researchers have used community of practice theory to understand the nature of these virtual groups (Hung & Chen, 2002; Johnson, 2001; Nichani & Hung, 2002). Wikipedia (http://wikipedia.org) is one such community that has developed to create an online encyclopedia written by Internet users. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia written by Internet users. “Wiki” technology enables anyone with a browser to edit the encyclopedia and the changes are applied instantly. As a result, Wikipedia is never finished, but rather is always in the process of being revised by its users. As a result of the cumulative work of thousands of contributors, by 2008, Wikipedia featured 12 million entries in more than 200 languages (Wikipedia, 2009), making it one of the most-visited reference Websites on the Internet (Alexa.com, 2008; Rainie & Tancer, 2007). Wikipedia succeeds not only in its quantity but also in its quality. Although many are skeptical that indiscriminate Internet users can generate meaningful information using such a chaotic process, several studies have shown that Wikipedia articles are actually quite accurate and reliable (Chesney, 2006; Giles, 2005; Rosenzweig, 2006). Earlier work (Stalder & Hirsh, 2002) explained the phenomenon simply by the open source philosophy: errors are more likely to be found and fixed when more people have access to them. Later researches focused more on the social process within Wikipedia and pointed out that the quality of Wikipedia content is supported by a communication and administration system that resolves disputes, combats vandalism, regulates behavior, and coordinates projects (Ciffolilli, 2003; George, 2007; Viégas, Wattenberg, & Dave, 2004; Viégas, Wattenberg, Kriss & van Ham, 2007). According to Adler and de Alfaro (2006), there is a reciprocal relationship between Wikipedia’s content and its contributors. On one hand, interactions among contributors improve content quality. On the other hand, the complex process of creating and negotiating content promotes more interactions. Research by Bryant, Forte, and Bruckman (2005) has also observed peripheral participation within the Wikipedia community. Eventually, a social structure evolves to support the interactions. As its contributors work together to carry out the process of encyclopedia editing, Wikipedia appears to fall within Lave and Wenger’s (1991) definition of a community of practice. This study, therefore, takes a first step toward examining the organizational structures, technical procedures, and social interactions within Wikipedia and their effects on the site’s content, contributors, and group social structure in an effort to analyze the success of this community of practice. To achieve this purpose, we chose the Delphi method, as it is particularly applicable for collecting subjective information from experts on a given topic (Linstone & Truoff, 1975; Murry & Hammons, 1995). A Delphi study starts with initial, open-ended question(s) to be answered by a panel of carefully selected experts (Brooks, 1979). The researchers then analyze the experts’ responses and “feed back” those responses in a second-round questionnaire that asks experts to review, rate, and comment on the group’s previous responses. In any additional rounds, panel members receive feedback about the previous round and are asked to re-rank their responses. This process is repeated until consensus is achieved (Linger & Tressolini, 2001). We designed the following open-ended question about factors leading to the creation and evolution of Wikipedia: Wikipedia is a Web-based, open-content encyclopedia that anyone can edit. It has more than 9 million entries in more than 200 languages that have been contributed by volunteer editors from all over the world. It is one of the most visited Websites on the Internet (Alexa.com, 2008) and has evolved into a frequently used information source for many Internet users. From your perspective as a Wikipedia researcher, what are the factors that you feel have supported the creation and evolution of Wikipedia? To find individuals who both knew Wikipedia well and had in-depth experience with its social context, we sent recruitment emails to: (1) the Wikipedia research email list subscribers; (2) 2007 Wikimania conference presenters; and (3) the authors of research publications listed at the Wikipedia in Academic Studies webpage (Wikipedia, 2008). An informational questionnaire was used to gather information on participants’ Wikipedia research experiences so that the experts whose background did not match the purpose of the study could be screened out. Nineteen experts were identified and agreed to participate in the subsequent Delphi rounds. In this concurrent session, the presenters will report the findings of their Delphi study and discuss how key social, technical and organizational factors have characterized the nature of Wikipedia collaboration. In addition, the presenters will discuss how to extend the practices and experiences of Wikipedia to support collaboration in other online learning environments. The presenter will prepare a paper (approximately 5000 words, including references) to be distributed during the presentation; the presenter will not read this paper during the presentation, however.