My Group Wiki Project

My group Project

I wanted to expand a little on the ideas of my group project because Professor Pickett was not sure where I was going with my ideas by reading my assignment in module 3 for my activities. 

The idea I came up with, for my group project was to have the students collaborate in small groups, 3 people, to build a wiki together. The ideas, concepts, and people covered in the wiki will be based on research the students do on their own. The students will have the freedom to pick ideas and concepts that they find interesting to do research on. 

Giving the students the freedom and power to make their decisions when it comes to learning is a student-centered approach to learning. Bill Pelz said in one of his articles, that the student not the teacher is the one who decides what is learned.  Most students are not given that opportunity in the classroom. I know I wasn’t given it. 

There could be problems along the way with this kind of model but it all depends on the teacher. A strong teacher will be needed to explain to the student what is expected, to show the student an example of how to do the research that is expected, and to guide the student in the right direction if the student has lost his way. The wrong teacher using this model could end up with a class that chooses to use their freedom to do less work. 

So my plan is to introduce my students to the ideas used in this class, learner-centered, student-centered, and constructivism. Than I will show the students how I do it (although I can hear professor Pickett responding to this line by saying “don’t show them how you do it, let them find out how it is done on their own). Than I will start them off small, by having the students do some research on their own to enhance the comments they leave on the discussion forums and in their reflective blog posts. Than once they have the foundation I will bring them into group work where the whole idea of the group activity will be student research. 

In the group wiki research project I will give the student pretty close to 100% freedom to investigate topics they deem of value to the class. Of course I will leave some room for guidance if they go off track. 

Each student will have to bring a certain amount of idea’s, concepts, people, to the wiki every module. And every student in the group will be required to edit each item a few times. This will show me that the students worked together to create something. 

My original thinking about group work was that the students can work together but must be assessed individually, so the teacher would be able to discern who did a lot of work in the group and who did not. But in the concept I am using, I will be able to see clearly who made the required amount of posts and edits, and who didn’t, so I may not need an individual assessment. But my idea was to write an individual paper to assess each student on what they learned in their group wiki project. Once again the student would have the freedom to choose their own topic that was originally going to have to meet the teachers approval. But talking with Professor Pickett she once again drilled in the idea of “let the students do it”, and mentioned that it could be a cool idea to have the students approve their classmates ideas. I like this and will use it, if I decide to have the essay. 

Another objective of the essay would be for the teacher to assess not only the students role in the group activity but in the whole course. The student would be required to bring into their final essay ideas the student wrote about in their reflective blog, and discussion posts, and ideas they learned about doing individual research for the discussion and blog. Basically the idea of the essay would be a culmination of everything the student learned in the class. A “put it all together” type of assignment. 

I like the idea of a “put it all together” type of assignment at the end of the class, because mosts classes touch on an idea, assess it and move on. Than what happens? Is the idea lost? Has the student retained the idea? Can the student combine two ideas or more and build something with it? So I would like the student to combine multiple ideas learned throughout the course, and build something with it. 

Professor Pickett asked me in the audio feedback for my activity list assignment in module 4, why it had to be an essay, why not something creative like a poem or art. I do like this idea. I wrote about it in a discussion post. The student can merge his personal interest with something they learned in the course. But in the process of putting myself in the mind of the student, I asked myself what type of creative project would I pick for this culminating assessment and I just dont know. So maybe I can leave it up to the student to choose, and if they cannot choose they can always fall back on the essay. (Once again I can hear professor Pickett saying “Don’t allow them to fall back”.

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