SITE: Wiki Creation in Mathematics Education

From WolfWikis

Introduction

This Wiki is an attempt at a Wiki Collaboration by Allison and Ryan (great idea Ryan!) to pull together a paper and presentation on Wiki construction in the context of a course project. We expect this page to change often as we share ideas and firm up our ideas for this paper. As this is a public wiki, if you have any suggestions and or comments we welcome them!

EMS 513 Project Description

The purpose of the project was for each group of 3 – 5 students to get familiar with the literature with respect to one algebra related issue and to share what they have learned with the class. Historically this project has been done as a collaborative paper and presentation. However, since the purpose of the assignment was to develop a resource for all students, I decided that a Wiki might be a better product. In this situation the Wiki addressed two problems that the students typically have 1) students in our graduate program drive in from all over, thus this format allowed for collaboration from remote sites, and 2) the wiki allowed for instant access to all group projects.

The project (I did not design this original project – need to give credit to the appropriate person)…Each group was assigned a specific perspective/issue with respect to the teaching and/or learning of algebra. The perspectives/issues were:

1. algebra as a generalized arithmetic and abstraction from computation
2. algebra as the study of functions, relations, and co-variation
3. algebra as the study of structure and processes
4. algebra as the study of generalization of patterns
5. use of technology in algebra
6. use of modeling to teach algebra

The groups were required to read and synthesize 5 – 8 practitioner/researcher articles related to the assigned topic. The groups were then to construct a Wiki which was required to include: description of the topic, a synthesis of the research literature, implications/suggestions for teachers, 4 – 5 sample tasks, and an annotated bibliography.

As far as I know (we’ll know for sure after feedback comes in) this was the first experience creating Wiki’s for all of the students. They were provided with brief instructions that addressed how to create a Wiki account, where to edit their page, and how to insert a picture.

Ideas for Presentation & Paper

Title: 'Collaborating Through Wiki’s: Challenges in Developing a Wiki Culture Ryan - I like the title, but I'm not exactly sure about the term "Wiki culture"...is this something we need to develop in the paper? what about: Asynchronous collaboration: Successes and Challenges of using a wiki or The nature of Students' collaboration in the creation of a wiki'I like the last one - thanks!

Authors: Ryan Smith North Carolina State University Raleigh, NC U.S.A.

Allison W. McCulloch North Carolina State University Raleigh, NC U.S.A. - I really think you should be first! - are you sure?

Abstract: In traditional graduate classrooms, collaborative projects generally result in a group paper submitted to the instructor and a group presentation to the class. However, when the goal of the project is to construct working knowledge on a particular topic and to share this knowledge with others, a more public format seems appropriate. Thus, the authors decided to have students enrolled in a graduate mathematics education course titled “Learning and Teaching Algebraic Thinking” construct wiki pages for a group project on different perspectives of algebra. The use of wiki’s (Should wiki be capitalized?) in mathematics education at our institution is new, as such the students that took part in this project had never participated in an asynchronous collaborative project of this sort. As students transition from working on a traditional word processing document to a wiki there are challenges both with learning the technology and how to collaborate in this way. This paper will focus on the later. Specifically, we will share the successes and challenges our students faced in the collective construction of their wikis and their thoughts on the benefits and drawbacks of using such a format in how it afforded collaboration in comparison to the traditional group paper. I KNOW THIS IS ROUGH, FEEL FREE TO EDIT!

Title: Wikity, wikity, wikity, whack!  :-) (or not…you’re probably too young to get that, aren’t you?!)- No, unfortunately I'm not to young...LOVE IT!

The objective of this presentation is to share our experiences with using Wiki’s in both master’s and undergraduate mathematics education courses.

Here is what we know about use of Wiki’s in courses…blah, blah, blah…there are 62 abstracts on Wiki use from past SITE conferences :-)

In the past year we have adapted two projects that are typically collaborative papers and/or presentations so that the final project product is a series of collaboratively created Wiki’s. The purpose of each project was to provide a resource for future use by the class and other students. (And to save valuable class time)

What we found/learned…

• The quality of their products given the limited directions…
• Everyone in each group added to the wiki…this was not stated as a requirement…nice to see it didn’t fall on one persons shoulders to do all of the work
• The ways that they used the Wiki to communicate and share information as they were constructing the page
• The students reflections on the wiki use and comparisons to a paper

Description of presentation

Our presentation will use the Wiki format to illustrate what we have learned from this project especially regarding the collaborative nature.

EMS 480 Project

The purpose of this project was for each group to become familiar with a particular technology tool that might be useful in the teaching / learning of middle school and/or high school mathematics, to review that particular tool and finally disseminate their information to the rest of the class. The final product was intended to be a resource for the entire class.

Students first identified the technology tool they wished to review (e.g. Java MathWorlds, ExploreMath, NCTM I-Math Investigations, NuCalc, etc.). The following was required to be a part of their final product:

• Identify the technology, availability, and ordering information
• Include a general description of the purpose and target audience for the technology
• Identify the NC Mathematics Curriculum objectives and NCTM content and process standards that students would learn by using this technology
• Describe the technology associated written material. How well does it work? Are the written materials well organized and useful? What are the purposes and goals for using this technology? Does the technology reach this goal? Is the technology relatively easy to learn how to use? Does this technology enhance or extend the teaching and learning process for the intended mathematics concepts? How and why? Would you recommend this product for purchase to a school? Why or why not?
• You must include at least one screen shot of the technology

As I look back at this, most of these Wiki’s were created by individuals, or at most pairs. We didn’t see nearly as much of the collaborative effort on this due to the nature of the project. So, maybe these should just be saved as an example from an undergraduate course, not as part of the paper??? Thoughts????

Let's Try a Collaborative Proof

Ryan's Running Thoughts

If I recall correctly, we chose the Wiki for three reasons:

1. Save class time - students did not have to present their technologies which allowed us to cover more material in class
2. Analysis - students would be able to view all of the technologies reviewed by the class and state which technologies they think would be most beneficial without having to recall each of the presentations
3. Resource - the wiki could be used as a future resource

If the focus of the paper is the wiki's affordance of colloboration (ooh, that might be a decent title), then the 480 wikis are probably not very helpful. I still think there is a paper here about how we used the wikis in 480...it just may not be for this conference. I think AMTE would be a good venue.

My thoughts on your thoughts :-)

1. I like this idea...transitioning from the collective construction of a word processing document to the collaborative creation of a wiki...success and challenges...I tried to integrate that into the abstract above
2. Can this be linked to the ways the students collaborated? Its interesting, but is it relevant to this paper?
3. The problem with Wikipedia is we don't know exactly where the authors are getting their information nor is it required. The wikis you asked them to build contained references so that readers would know exactly which articles/books the authors where using in constructing their page.

Allison's Running Thoughts

A few thoughts after reading the feedback:

1. The culture of collaborating on a traditional word document and communicating through email was pervasive, the groups struggled with creating a culture of collaboration directly through the wiki. Some groups did this better than others. However, the group that communicated solely this way had the worst wiki! I think this notion of creating a collaborative culture might be where we focus...transitioning from collaborating on a traditional word document to this...
2. The wiki format came about a few different ways 1) preplanned based on rubric, 2) planned as soon as articles were read, 3) more organically - these were the most interesting ones.
3. Interesting dilemma...so I had one group cite Wikipedia as a source for their project. Not appropriate given the project purpose, but given that I asked them to construct wiki's it I found it interesting that I was telling them to build a wiki, but you can't reference another wiki...hmmmmm.

My thoughts on your thoughts :-) (This could get confusing)

1. I like what you did with the abstract above...I think it captures everything well.
2. I think it is directly linked actually (I think) I'll think more about how to frame this.
3. I know, but it was an interesting question when it came up. There was one group who had an entire section from Wikipedia. Luckily I caught it early and discussed it with them.
4. which brings another point to mind. The Wiki allowed me (the instructor) to watch things being constructed, to comment along the way, and to catch issues like the Wikipedia one long before the projects were complete.

Literature on Wiki Use & Collaboration

There is a whole wiki conference! I had no idea! There are a lot of papers on EdIT, but I don't have access. We'll have to check with NCSU to see if we can get access so it doesn't come out of our pockets

Some Papers I found that might be helpful:

(Goodwin-Jones, 2003)

(Notari, 2006)

(Cress & Kimmerle, 2008)