Referring to my post about my failure using wikis in the classroom Stephen Downes said “I wish I understood just how the exercise turned into a failure.” at: Stephen's Web Threads

I see now, that I never described the process in any detail. I mention that I developed a formula, but hadn’t shared it. Nor did I elaborate on why I perceived this as a failure.

The failure, really, is that I missed the opportunity to share the essence of the experience I am having collaborating on communal wikis. Instead, I merely slapped wiki technology onto a tried and true training method. I never got to ‘that level’… I’m putting that in scare-quotes because I know there’s something wrong about making value judgements about learning situations... I just can’t articulate it yet.

The essence of my experience on CommunityWiki has been collaborative document editing, and the wonders of hypertext- in a very ’95 sort of way. Sharing and learning there has shown me how you need to develop ideas in a group through rhizomes- linking out from existing topics. As a newcomer you begin to understand the established community’s shared knowledge, and you learn where you can introduce your voice in the discussion.

Your words then become absorbed by the group, and ‘refactored’ as they say in wiki-speak. And as others come to understand your ideas, it becomes their own, and new thoughts spring from your page, in a very literal sense: new links. The wiki, in a constructionist sense, becomes “an object to think with”. Issues of ownership become blurry, yet the social support and feedback system still provides a sense of accomplishment and pride.

This the experience I wanted to model and share with my participants. I feel that this process is a great tool for communal constructivism, a concept which I am highly influenced by the lecturers on my course:

“What we argue for is a communal constructivism where students and teachers are not simply engaged in developing their own information but actively involved in creating knowledge that will benefit other students. In this model students will not simply pass through a course like water through a sieve but instead leave their own imprint in the development of the course, their school or university, and ideally the discipline.“
You can read more about communal constructivism here, in a : Communal Constructivism:
Students constructing learning for as well as with others.

So in some ways, the bar for me has been raised ‘above’ the level of finding handy tools to deliver course material. I’ll describe now how I used the wiki in the classroom, and how it was a failure…

NB: Further Explanation of just *why* I felt this was a failure: Aiming for communal constructivism in a wiki environment

Links to articles of research on wikis.