Chapter 4 Students’ Group Work Attitudes and Experiences in Collaborative Wiki Writing

Purpose – This chapter will discuss empirical results on how attitudes toward group work and the prospect of publishing in wikis influence students’ work in collaborative knowledge construction. It will also explore how writing for an audience can be used in information literacy education. Methodology – Data were collected by pre- and post-questionnaires and group interviews from two 8-week courses in an upper secondary school. In total, 58 students were involved. The quantitative data was analyzed by frequency and correlation analysis. Content analysis was applied to transcribed interviews. Findings – Group work experiences carried over from one context to another. Ways to undertake group work influenced the learning experience. Cooperation – sharing tasks to be undertaken individually – tended to be a negative experience while working closely together enhanced learning. Wikis were mainly used as platforms for combining texts written individually by the students. The prospect of publishing on public Wikipedia had a considerably stronger influence on students’ motivation than publishing a text for fellow classmates on the school wiki. Practical implications – Wiki-publishing enables an emphasis on information use as part of information literacy instruction, where students learn to adapt their texts toward their audiences. Careful instruction is, however, needed for the use of social media tools and collaborative processes, in order for them to serve their purpose. Originality – The study showed how group work attitude in general influence future group work experiences. It also demonstrated the influence of publishing texts on wikis or Wikipedia on students’ motivation.

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