The Use of a Wiki as an Instructional Tool: A Qualitative Investigation ד " ר נועה אהרוני מכללת בית ברל ואוניברסיטת בר אילן

A Wiki A wiki is a webpage that can be easily edited by anyone who is allowed to access it (Edersbach, Glaser, & Heigl, 2006). The wiki is a collaborative tool that facilitates the production of a group work and a tool for building knowledge bases which are dynamic and fluid (Hall & Goody, 2007).

Research ‘ s Aim To explore and analyze the application and use of a wiki, in a knowledge-management academic course. To examine the level of collaboration among students and the kind of interaction that takes place during the learning process.

Constructivism 1. Learning is an active process in which learners construct new ideas or concepts based upon their knowledge (Piaget 1963; Resnick 1981; Shuell 1986). 2. Learning as a social activity (Brooks & Brooks, 1997).

Learning strategies The deep-learning strategy The surface-learning strategy (Biggs, 1993)

Collaborative Learning CSCL (computer-supported collaborative learning) The main aim of CSCL is to provide an environment that supports collaboration between students to enhance their learning processes (Kreijns, Kirschner, & Jochems, 2003).

Method The population of this study was comprised of wiki pages: The course included 19 undergraduate second-year students who participated in an information-management academic program in the Library and Information Science Department.

Method of analysis To understand the comments directed at each student on the wiki, a thorough content analysis was conducted. Each message was divided into units of meaning which compromise the units of analysis.

The four broad categories of the discussion section %Number of Units of Analysis Broad Category 17.9%1211. Courtesy 22.6%1532. Instructor's comments 28.2%1913. Students ’ constructive comments 31.3% Students' response to their classmates

The breakdown of the broad categories into sub-categories %NumberSub- category Broad category 100%121Courtesy 100%153Instructor's comments 21%32Supportive comments 34%52Style and bibliograph y 4569Substantive comments

%NumberSub- category Broad category 100%191Students' constructive comments 13.6%26Structure and bibliography comments 16.2%31Clarification 19.4%37Expanding the assignment 50.8%97Deep comments

%NumberSub-categoryBroad category 100%212 Students' responses to their classmates 8%17 Communicatio n with the instructor 8%18 Emotional reaction 9%19 Technical structural comments

14.6%31 Appreciation 22.2%47Direct response to other students' comments 38%80Substantiv e deep comments

Examples Instructor's comments - Substantive comments "You should add a discussion to your work, "or "some of the links are broken, please check them." Following are the content observations: "You should expand your work and cover the topic of various kinds of knowledge," or "Can you please expand the subject of codification of explicit knowledge?"

More Examples Students' constructive comments - Deep comments Do you think that being a learning organization is a precondition for assimilation of knowledge-management strategies within organizations, or do you think that an organization can have different knowledge- management strategies without being a learning organization?" or "You talk about implicit knowledge and you bring various examples. Do you think we can codify implicit knowledge?"

Further Examples Students' responses to their classmates – Deep comments "I think there is a correlation between knowledge management and learning organization. The following words: learning, assimilation, vision, team, values, goals are part of knowledge management theories as well as part of learning organizations,".

Conclusion The major part of the interaction that took place on the wiki centered on content-related comments and contained both collaboration among the students and use of deep levels of cognition.

Based on the encouraging findings of the current research, the researcher recommends expanding and exploring the use of wiki in more different academic learning contexts.

Thank you for your attention, Dr. Noa Aharony