The Development of Learning Competences through Wiki Tools

Abstract

This paper reports on a pre-research included in a pedagogical experiment carried out at a Secondary School in Prague. In particular, it focuses on learning outcomes and overall experience concerning the development of learning competences through the use of a wiki in Social Science lessons and realized through the content and language integrated learning (CLIL). Although the main objective of the pedagogical experiment was to enhance English communication skills, the inevitable part of the experiment was to implement wiki tools into autonomous home learning, mainly to create such a learning environment which supports English communication, and particularly to examine the wiki potential for the development of learning competences. Moreover, the pedagogical experiment was supposed to show the extent of students' effort to create and use wiki materials for their learning and cooperation. In the first part, various aspects of implementing learning competences into the learning process are dealt. In the second part, the general concept of a wiki (wikispaces) is introduced, including the practical usage for enhancing learning competences. Followed by research questions and research methodology, where three stages of the teaching and learning process involved in the experiment are introduced, the final part of the paper deals with the outcomes and summarizes their beneficial contributions to a wiki-based pedagogy.