Student and tutor comments on the use of a wiki to support collaborative

This section documents the qualitative analysis of the responses by students and tutors to the semi-structured interview questions, shown in Appendix 3.5, asking about the wiki when used to support collaborative authoring. The data was supplemented with Computing students’ assignment and examination answers reflecting on their

experiences using the wiki as described in Section 3.3. The analysis was based on the principles of Grounded Theory to permit consistent concerns to emerge from the data without the presence of any presuppositions. The concerns were then grouped, aided by Activity Theory, to produce concepts. The analysis process is described in Section 3.2.

Eight concepts emerged from the qualitative analysis: 1. The wiki’s limited feature set

2. Comparing the wiki with Word 3. Wiki as a central repository 4. The use of diagrams

5. Structure of the groups’ wikis 6. Style within the documents 7. Roles for authoring

8. Rules for authoring

Each concept is now discussed in detail.

The wiki’s limited feature set

When the wiki was first devised, Ward Cunningham, its creator, intended it to have a limited feature set so as to be simple to use and require minimal learning to use (Leuf and Cunningham, 2001). As with any software however, even if it is a simple wiki should still be sufficient to meet the needs of its users.

The replies in the two Computing end of course surveys suggest that Computing students did find the simple wiki sufficient for their needs. In the first survey, the standard OU survey conducted after the first presentation of the Computing course, none of the students criticised the authoring features of the wiki, though there was criticism of some technical aspects of the wiki. In the second survey, the online tools survey conducted after the second presentation of the Computing course, similar results are reported. In the survey responses, no student mentioned use of another writing tool in their group work and none directly criticised the authoring ability of the wiki. However, there were criticisms of the wiki as a tool:

“Slow and hard to format.” [Computing survey response 14]9

“The problem of formatting in the wiki made matters worse.” [Computing survey response 11]

Two students found the editor too simple; they expected there to be more functions with richer formatting options such as the layout options and image embedding features found in other editors:

“I was expecting something a little bit more like Wikipedia just because it’s what I’m used to with the richness in there.” [CS9 interview]

“[being] a wikipedia editor, this wiki interface offends me!” [CS10 interview] “basic wiki functions [but] it was not nearly as sophisticated as others I have used.” [CS16 interview]

Though not all students encountered these issues, either with the feature set or with the wiki itself:

“I didn’t meet any particular problems…” [CS7 interview]

In summary, the Computing students’ complaints were directed against this particular implementation of the wiki rather than the concept of the wiki, and just under half of the students interviewed mentioned encountering problems. Indeed, during interview,

9 _{Quotations are identified by the following codes: CS, Computing Student; CT, Computing Tutor;} BS, Business Student; and BT, Business Tutor, with a statement of the source.

several students cited the benefits of a simple and flexible wiki as originally conceived by Cunningham (Leuf and Cunningham, 2001), which this student articulated as a strength of the course wiki:

“The actual content… [could] be put into place quite quickly and quite simply without any diversions or without the tool itself becoming anything that you had to learn or a hindrance” [CS8 interview]

This concept of a relatively simple tool was repeated by one of the tutors:

“We’re looking for something simple rather than something sophisticated.” [CT7 interview]

Another student highlighted the benefit of the wiki’s simplicity:

“I don’t think it could be much more straightforward really.” [CS2 interview]

This student explained that they appreciated not having to devote course time to learning to use the wiki. This suggests the wiki was sufficient for the needs for the Computing course’s collaborative activity as intended by the course team. This view is supported by the students’ replies in interview when asked about missing features, a typical answer was:

“I couldn’t identify any particular improvements.” [CS5 interview]

When asked in interview if the wiki lacked any features, CS8 was one of the few to suggest a WYSIWYG editor be provided. He then added that while the wiki was not very good it was good enough for its intended use in the course. To which he commented, as an aside, that not having extra features meant there was less to learn:

This finding, that the Computing students found the wiki satisfactory for their needs, is supported by the students’ practice during the course. Only one Computing student abandoned the editor provided. Frustrated by the time spent on formatting text using the editor:

“I ended up editing using the html source. [CS16 interview]

This was the only recorded use of direct HTML editing in place of the default mark up language.

The Computing students, whatever their previous experience with wikis, were able to use the provided wiki to collaboratively author the required document for their assignment. This was in marked contrast to the experience of the Business students, who relied on Word to write their documents as related in the next section.

Comparing the wiki with Word

The use of Word was encouraged by one of the Business tutors. When she responded to her students’ concerns at some of the technical problems the wiki, such as locking, she advised her students:

“It's absolutely OK to prepare your individual contributions off line and paste into the wicki [sic].” [BT1 interview]

As a result, half the Business students were then using a familiar tool to circumvent problems with the unfamiliar wiki. This was not a part of the original design of the Business course’s collaborative activity.

The Business course team wanted students to bring their own experiences to the course, and share them through the collaborative activities. (The students were drawn from a wide range of commercial, governmental and voluntary organisations). As

described in Chapter 4, the students were required to write a report on a current management issue. Crucially, the definition of a ‘report’ was not made explicit; it was to be what the students thought it should be based on their experience. This

experience was summarised by one of their tutors in a general forum posting in response to a students concern at formatting text within the wiki:

“We're all so used to working in Word, which is custom-built to make document formatting easy” [BT2 interview]

Word represented the common technology for the business students, despite their diverse backgrounds. Exploring the influence of this common technology during one tutor interview, she explained that the preference for Word was the students’ response to:

“The pressure of having to deliver in a new environment… whose particularities were not intuitive. I am not surprised they need [sic] time to think about it and they didn't have any and in consequence it turned into a barrier because what they found was the technology was not something you walked straight through.” [BT2 interview]

Therefore, despite theice-breaker session included in this course, once confronted with a familiar task – writing a report – the subtle differences in behaviour between the wiki and Word were sufficient for the students to prefer Word because, in the words of a tutor:

“[The students] are used to sitting at their computers creating Word documents, sending them to people attached to a message saying have a look at this what do you think having somebody tinker with the document or send back feedback whatever.” [BT2 interview]

This sentiment is expressed also by the students, for example:

“I’m not sure what advantage the wiki provided compared to what would have been secured through each of us posting a revised Word version of the report reflecting the additions/revisions we made.” [BS14 interview]

But then it is fair to argue that BS14 did not fully appreciate the features of a wiki, as shown in the later comment that:

“You couldn’t even number pages!” [BS14 interview]

This suggests a clear mismatch between expectations and the tool provided. The result, as one student said about the wiki, was that:

“It was used just as a necessity.” [BS3 interview]

Expanding on this she added that technical problems with the wiki (especially locking of pages) and familiarity with Word meant her group:

“…relied on old fashioned Word and forums” [BS3 interview]

The wiki was used by her group only to submit the final version of the report as set out in the course guide.

One group of Business students was willing to persist with the wiki as an authoring tool because they wished to use the opportunity to learn about using a wiki. Ultimately they had to use Word because of the attitude of one of their number as seen in this forum posting:

“I'm going to continue using Word and uploading to the Wiki as this gives facility to do tracked changes and keep document control tighter (for me anyhow!)” [BS21 forum post]

The student argued her case:

“I'm conscious that wiki doesn't allow the facility to "keep" previous versions and if changes aren't agreed by all team members it'll possibly be quite difficult for us to revert back to older versions?” [BS21 forum post]

This statement is in error because the wiki does keep previous versions and the page can be reverted to an older version. However, none of her peers took up this argument. Examining the forum discussion indicated that the group was not confident with this aspect of wiki technology. The group adopted Word in response to this one group member.

The ability to track changes in Word is the one feature mentioned by both tutors and all but one student as critical in their preference for Word over the wiki. Only one Business student argued the opposite case:

“Better even than Track Changes in Word.” [BS10 interview]

The student justified this statement because track changes:

“It’s very painful. You end up with loads and loads of things on the side. It’s difficult to see really what’s happened.” [BS10 interview]

This led the student to conclude that:

“The central precept of the fact we were writing a single essay together it [the wiki] was excellent… because that would be the only way we could have written that single essay, because there’s no other way that we could have gone through the editing process that I could see that was effective.” [BS10 interview]

This one student preferred the clarity of the simple wiki content compared to the annotated Word content. His peers, as shown by their practice in the course, did not agree. However, they and the two tutors did make a favourable comment on one aspect of the wiki, as summarised by this otherwise critical student:

“It provided a central shared version of the report which any of us could work on at any time.” [BS14 interview]

Wiki as a central repository

In their final examination, 16% of the 196 Computing students mentioned the benefit of a wiki as a central repository, so that all relevant information was in the one place. This came over far more strongly in the interviews, and quite simply:

“It kept everything in one place.” [CS6 interview]

The benefit of this was expanded upon by another student who said:

“The wiki was efficient in that it was a central place for us all to put our ideas.” [CS17 interview]

This meant that:

“Document control [was] maintained/managed.” [BS5 interview]

In the end of course examination, one Computing student wrote:

“The most important function, for my opinion, is the possibility to trace all entries, changes and deleted entries.” [CS10 examination answer]

Overall though, only 8% of the students stated a wiki was good for version/source control, which indicates it did not make as strong an impression on them. However,

their tutors, and the Business course tutors were much more enthusiastic. All made some comment similar to this:

“At least with the wiki you knew ... what you were looking at was the latest position.” [BT1 interview]

Even if it meant that the wiki:

“turned into a filing cabinet really.” [BT2 interview]

This use of the wiki was true for many of the Business course groups because they used Word for writing their report, and used the wiki as a Content Management System. Thus, the students appreciated the wiki as an effective tool for co-ordinating the written contributions, if not as an effective for making the written contributions.

The use of diagrams

Many Business students wanted to use diagrams in their reports. For example, BS8 used a diagram to illustrate the case study he proposed should form the basis for his group’s research. He sent out the document containing the diagram, eliciting this response from one of his peers on the forum,

“And a great diagram (wish I knew how to do diagrams of that calibre on the pc!).” [BS8 forum post]

However, the version of the wiki use at that time did not support images, as some students learnt the hard way:

“…have just posted my part in (with diagrams) - these have not transferred in to report. This is a bit disappointing as I spent some time drawing them!” [BS9 forum post]

This led to some ingenuity as students sought to host images (diagrams and illustrated figures) outside the wiki. One student set up a Facebook group to host diagrams; but this caused some problems as only one other group member was familiar with Facebook. The others had something new to learn:

“I've got the invitation and I'm going through the technical barriers (what exactly do I have to do). Will get there eventually” [BS20 forum post]

as shown by the parenthesised request for guidance from Business student 20.

Fortunately for the students, their tutor was able to use Facebook. So it was a valid tool for them to support their collaboration:

“it may well be the case that importing the document onto the wiki from word means we don't have some of the diagrams in which case we'll have to reference where to find them on the Facebook page.” [BS22 forum post]

The tutor was not solely committed to Facebook, and informed another group to:

“Let me know, too, where you are going to locate the diagrams (if you are planning to include any) for reading with the WIKI version.” [BT2 forum post]

It is worth noting that problems with integrating diagrams into the report were not confined to sharing them through the wiki. BS17 endeavoured to post them to the forum, but fell foul of the size limit for attachments. BS14 informed her group that,

“[The] Quinn diagram still needs putting in as I couldn't get it into my Word document for some reason...” [BS14 forum post]

The group made increasingly urgent forum postings as the submission deadline neared and the diagrams themselves needed reworking: revising diagrams and justifying the

revisions were more difficult tasks than the group had realised. The diagrams were not supported by the comments and version control possible within the wiki. Incorporating diagrams into the report added much complexity to the students’ collaboration. The Computing course makes extensive use of diagrams, as one student noted when asked if the course met her expectations:

“…if anything they are exceeding them. I didn’t realise that the course materials would be as far reaching to include DFDs, UML, use cases, and other diagram work.” [CS1 interview]

However, the collaborative activity in the Computing course did not call for diagrams and so the absence of image support within the wiki did not become an issue with the Computing students. Only one Computing student mentioned the lack of image support in the final examination answers as a limitation of wikis, which suggests the issue did not make a great impact on the students.

This view is reinforced by the interview responses from the Computing tutors. Only one favoured the use of diagrams, and when asked later in the interview how the wiki could be changed to support the collaborative activities better, he replied that it should

“Have the capacity to add diagrams.” [CT7 interview]

In contrast, both of the Business tutors wanted diagram support added to the wiki. More explicitly, this student stated that the wiki would be improved by:

“Being able to slot into the wiki diagrams in line with the flow of text.” [BS4 interview]

Such views coloured the Business course tutors and students’ perceptions of the wiki and of the collaborative activity: the tool could not support the report they wanted to produce.

Structure of the groups’ wikis

The course teams did not impose a wiki structure on their students. The intention was for the wiki to support whatever structure emerged from the students’ authoring, thereby exploiting the wiki’s flexibility.

“Within the wiki it’s interesting because it offers no structure. I did notice that it quite quickly got itself into being a sort of reasonably stable way that it came together” [CS8 interview]

This assumes that there is time within the activity for a structure to emerge. In their end of course examination, 27% of the Computing students referred to the lack of structure in the wikis they had used and all considered it a problem. The Computing course team had defined a wiki with an outline structure that a placed a discussion alongside a content page. They also provided a template on how to present an

individual requirement. But the course team had not provided any detail as to how the content pages that contained the requirements should be structured leaving that to be part of the learning process for the students. Though there is always the student who wants more:

“A good “wiki” would have for requirements a form like the Volere shell and added to each one a history and a discussion board.” [CR16 interview]

This leaves open the question how much prescriptive guidance the students should be given. In the case above, the Volere shell is one of the requirement engineering

techniques taught in the course, and the student had recognised that it is the appropriate tool to use in answering this question.

The Business students too felt that guidance would have been beneficial, with all making a comment similar to the following about a sample report:

“The provision of a sample collaborative report on an issue not among the five chosen for the course might have been useful.” [BS2 interview]

In the absence of a sample report, the usual approach adopted by the Business