Wikis as a Tool for Co-constructed Learning in Higher Education – An Exploratory Study in an Albanian Higher Education

Abstract

This study explores the effectiveness of wikis in a teaching course in teacher formation and its pedagogical implications with the aim of determining whether wikis will influence the learning experiences and the learning out-comes of the students in a middle-income, post-communist country as Albania. 
 For this, we implemented student-generated wikis into a master’s course on teaching and examined student reflections on their learning outcomes and other pedagogical effects. A mixed method methodology was employed. The findings of the study were informed by triangulating data from the analysis of the student-generated wikis, students’ reflections on the experience, as well as a comparison of the learning outcomes based on the exit exams of this group of students and the group of the prior academic year.
 Our data suggest that wikis help support collaborative learning, but at the same time they also encourage independent thinking. Teachers’ authority is minimized, empowering students’ ownership and authorship, leading to a continuous process of modification and improvement through interactions among group members via wikis. 
 The data present compelling evidence in favor of wikis, as an organic tool to facilitate co-constructed learning which students seem to enjoy.

Using Wikis as a Teaching Tool for Novice Teachers – Pedagogical Implications

“…Our research confirms what other authors (Kim, & Kim, 2020;Sula, et al 2021) state about wikis as a very valuable tool in the context of collaboration and cooperation, where it serves to make a lot of material available to a wide range of users and is increasingly becoming a welcome tool within teaching. In our findings, collaboration was strongly emphasised.…”

“…(c) As a virtual space in which students can write, collaborating on small essays. From this point of view, a good example is the experience carried out at the University of Tirana to allow students to collaborate in the editing or developing of articles in Wikipedia, related to the topic of the course, learning theories (Sula et al, 2021).…”

“…There were 120 students who had participated in wiki-supported learning during the school year 2018-2019 (Sula, et al, 2021). During the school year 2021-2020, they were completing their inception year, as specified by Albanian law, and they were involved in teaching.…”

Online Interaction Techniques Used at a Rural-Based University: Implications for Online Pedagogy

“…This finding is a cause for concern, as it reflects that opportunities for interaction were not exploited through the readily available digital tools on the Moodle LMS. Sula et al (2021) noted that a Wiki is a web-based tool that allows students to collaborate on a single document and build a corpus of knowledge by working together. As Sula and Sulstarova (2022) noted, through wikis, students learn collaboratively by participating as authors of knowledge and not as mere consumers.…”

Pelaksanaan Workshop Zotero Untuk Penulisan Karya Tulis Ilmiah Mahasiswa Fakultas Teknik Universitas Negeri Makassar

“…Dalam workshop ini, akan melibatkan mahasiswa dari berbagai program studi di Fakultas Teknik Universitas Negeri Makassar dan berbagai tingkat semester, sehingga dapat mencakup kebutuhan yang beragam dalam penulisan karya tulis ilmiah. Dengan demikian, workshop ini akan menjadi platform yang inklusif untuk memperkuat kemampuan akademik mahasiswa dari berbagai latar belakang (Suryanto, 2021).…”