Promoting Student Participation and Enabling Collective and Mutual Learning in Engineering Education through a Social Writing Platform (Wikispaces)

Description

Learning Management Systems (LMS), such as Blackboard, have proven to be an efficient tool to manage course materials and enhance learning. However, students can barely participate in course material editing, creation and sharing or expressing their opinions through the LMS. Blackboard is also complicated for beginners and impossible for instructors to track the students’ engagement. To facilitate Discovery-enriched Curriculum (DEC) and provide an open access and a free database for students to create, maintain, and share their knowledge and discoveries, Wikispaces, a social writing platform and an educational wiki, will be employed. Through Wikispaces, students not only can benefit from their active participation, but also from collective learning and mutual learning with their classmates. Students can hold their own personal wiki, store materials from other courses, and use the platform even after their graduation. The platform is also able to track the involvement and participation of students for instructors.