Mastering the art of online teamwork

When students leave education and enter employment they often need to be able to work with a team towards a shared goal. The requirement to assign grades to these activities makes it difficult to provide opportunities to practice group work in schools or colleges. The extent of each group member’s contribution to both the process and the product can be difficult to determine directly and a group wiki can be a very effective tool for achieving this. 

In education, closed group wikis are starting to be used to produce collaborative reports, presentations or webpages – depending on the type of project being undertaken. Participants can then focus on the task set instead of being distracted by concerns that their individual input may not be recognised. The teacher can also give formative feedback as the work is developing instead of having to wait until a draft is submitted. 

Claire McDonnell discusses case studies of wiki use in the classroom, forms of assessment crtieria, and good practice to bear in mind when implementing wikis as a teacihg tool.