Wikis / Advantages and Challenges

Wiki is a CALL tool that offers the opportunity of collaborative communication for developing projects. Wikis are internet based and their content can be accessed and edited by students from different places and times. Students can access and participate from any location without having to work at a particular time. Wikis can be used a means for developing writing assignments which require group collaboration. The collaboration that wikis provide is further promoted by the 'history' tool which gives access to all previous versions of a particular project. Students as well as instructors can easily identify who made a change on the page and the time and date that the specific change was made. Students can therefore ensure a sort of an equal participation of all group members on the project and instructors are also able to to monitor student progress and participation.

From the study of a wiki writing assignment in an Engineering major class the results show that even though wikis are flexible and collaborative they can cause confussion and difficulties if they are not applied in the appropriate way. The students of the specific study reported negative attitudes toward the use of the wiki and they felt furstrated from its use. Students reported a lack of understanding of the various advantages of wikis and their practical uses and a low desire for collaboration on any group project regardless of the use of wikis.

The results of the study reflect the need for introducing wikis in an appropriate way that will explicitly explain all the technical aspects of wikis and the advantages wikis can have. It is also important that students who are not used to collaborating with their peers on group projects develop an awareness of the positive outcomes that collaboration has and the ways that group collaboration emphasizes different aspects of their learning process. Collaborations issues should also be addressed in order to encourage students to participate and maximize equal participation. In addition before introducing any CALL tool as the means for an assignment, a good idea would be for the teachers to find out the level of students'experience with CALL tools, so that they can set the task difficulty at the appropriate level. Students with minimum experience using CALL tools may feel discouraged if they have to carry out a difficult and complicated task.