Week 3: What uses might a collaborative wiki or blog
have in your chosen (current or desired) work environment? How would they
support learning and/or performance? What would be the design and
implementation challenges if management tried to do this? What would be the
design and implementation challenges of a user-initiated effort?
A collaborative wiki or blog would be an enhancement among
faculty for communications about teaching strategies and online pedagogy in my
work environment. While faculty members are experts in their field, few have
backgrounds in education and fewer still have had the experience of developing
and delivering an online course. To help create and support a community of
practice among faculty who desire to learn these skills, a blog would help support
their need for internal and/or external communication. I would envision the
blog as an area faculty could pose questions, describe personal experiences and
share tips for successes they experience. It could emerge as a way to provide
mentorship to those at various stages of confidence in the process of online
teaching and learning. I think wikis might be useful in the development of
helpful resources or shared documents at the departmental level.
I suspect the design challenges that would emerge if
management tried to create these tools for faculty use would be similar to
other challenges driven by management. It is a common for most people (faculty
among them) to resist top down changes. I think the use of Web 2.0 tools such as
a blog or wiki would be better received if it were user-initiated. However,
that too would have to occur because faculty was exposed to the tools and
provided examples of how the tools could enhance their work efforts. The implementation
challenges would be mainly from getting people familiar with the tools and
encouraging them to make use of the tools as a part of routine activities.
The main issue with blogs and faculty is that - how many will actually utilize this function? Yes, the newer faculty maybe and those in certain fields, but how feasible is it that these faculty will utilize and read a blog with no incentive? Just an interesting topic. In an ideal world our faculty would want to be better teachers and serve students... but the reality is that is not the case. Sadly.
ReplyDeleteYou've hit on a key issue here, Gale: Web 2.0 / user-contributor media work best when they evolve more organically, in a bottom-up approach. A top-down design -- particularly one with a mandate to make use of a tool -- generally begets reluctant use at best, and perhaps even ill will.
ReplyDeleteI've seen time and again how people will complain if you try to add one more thing to their work day, but then turn around and spend their free time sharing/communicating about work-related things online (of their own free will, there).
Yes, sadly that is reality. I would like to think that all faculty would be interested in making their classes more engaging, fun and interactive to improve student learning opportunities. Even with a bottom-up approach, incentives with perceived or real value are usually necessary to get the process started.
ReplyDelete