Two Web 2.0 Tools for Group Projects
Contributed by Michael Gough, Instructional Technologist and Coordinator of START
Wikis and social bookmarking are just two of several Web 2.0 applications that offer potential for improving group collaboration. These tools make the time between meetings more effective for the group as a whole by providing a medium for the exchange of information. This is an improvement over email which often gets messy when used for group communication. These tools subsequently increase the effectiveness of face to face meetings as group members will be more prepared by reviewing the wiki or social bookmarks.
One benefit of using a wiki (web page editable by multiple users) is it allows each group member to update the page while preserving the history of the document. You might have encountered this when reading a wikipedia article. If you wanted to see how many edits have been made to an article within the last few days, you can click on the “history tab” to find this information. Students working on a presentation together could use a wiki to share notes with each other between group meetings. They could review the wiki history and see what each student contributed or removed from the notes. The removal or change in the notes by another student could facilitate a discussion amongst the group during a subsequent meeting or in a discussion forum. Thus, wikis allow for students to collaborate on a document in a way that might not have been possible before. Often a group discussion results which can further enhance the learning outcomes of the project. Below are some recommended wiki applications:
Moodle Wikis (contact moodle@depauw.edu for information)
Pbwiki www.pbwiki.com
Wikispaces www.wikispaces.com
Zoho Wiki www.zoho.com
In addition to wikis, social bookmarking offers groups the ability to tag and share online resources quickly. Delicious http://del.icio.us/ is often the tool of choice for social bookmarking. Group members could share resources by deciding on a unique tag for their group. Then each group member can subscribe to this tag in their Delicious account. Now, every time an article is tagged by a group member with the unique identifier, it will automatically be added to the list for the group to review. The resource can then be discussed during a meeting or in a discussion thread. Resources can also be searched by topic tags as a way to gather more information for the project. More on Delicious can be found in the LIS newsletter article by Tiffany Hebb. http://lisnews.wordpress.depauw.edu/2007/11/12/delicious-%e2%80%93-store-your-
bookmarks-online/
Both wikis and Delicious generate RSS feeds for subscriptions. If you subscribe to a wiki page, you will receive a list of the latest updates to the page and who made the change. With social bookmarking, you can subscribe to a particular tag. For instance, an instructor might designate a unique tag for the class. Students then tag anything they run across that might be useful for class. Then, the instructor could subscribe to the tag in their Moodle course. Now every time a student finds a new article relevant to the course and tags it, the article’s title and possibly a summary will be displayed on the course for the class to see and investigate. If you are interested in using this feature within your course and would like more information, email moodle@depauw.edu.
For more information on how to subscribe to RSS feeds using a feed reader check out:
http://fitsnews.wordpress.depauw.edu/2007/09/17/rss-readers/
More resources on wikis and Social Bookmarking:
Wiki’s in Plain English - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY
Social Bookmarking in Plain English - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x66lV7GOcNU&feature=user