11.07.2015 Views

1jYJPcl

1jYJPcl

1jYJPcl

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

Tema: Nuevos Lenguajes y EducaciónThe instructions for contributing to the course Wiki, onthe other hand, had somewhat more specific directionsand explanations of the goals of the assignment, includingthe following:“Since most of us, whether freshman or faculty, havedifficulty moving from an idea or argument to ourevidence, or from the text back to our argument, youshould occasionally try to create a graceful and effectiveintroduction to the passage you chose that suggestswhy a reader should want to follow you as you examineit closely. Hint: never introduce a passage with “[anauthor] says” or “states.”“Ask a question or questions (for which you do nothave to know the answer) about something other thanthe meaning of life or some other big idea — say,some technique, matter of context, or both.”3 RESULTSAlthough the previous instructions for the wiki contributionmade it seem more freeform than the earlier3.1 Student use of the wikiAlthough the Spring 2010 students had no difficulty inputtingmaterial on the wiki, which did not require knowledge ofmarkup languages, in general they did not either experience oruse it as a hypertext. During the first few weeks some studentsdid not grasp the difference between a contribution and annotatingor commenting on other student’s contributions. Veryversions of this assignment, in practice students followedexactly the same assignment.few members of the class ever made annotations to work byothers on the wiki despite the instructors’ suggestions to doso, and almost none of them ever added links, despite repeatedencouragement to do so. Essentially, they experienced thewiki as an old-fashioned listserve or discussion list.3.2 Unexpected ResultsStudents in both 2009 and 2011 completed a 22-itemquestionnaire, most of whose topics (e.g., student evaluationof the instructors’ brief lectures or time devoted toindividual texts) are not relevant this study. A few of therelevant questions, however, produced interesting, counter-intuitiveresults. Whereas the course wiki containedquestion-sets and commentary only by members of the2010 class, the Victorian Web combined the student contributionsfrom 2009 with a far-larger body of material, suchas question sets and long essays by members of other classesand material from published books and articles. Onemight therefore have expected that users of the wiki wouldplace far more emphasis on texts written by members oftheir own class than did the 2009 cohort since the 2010contributions were isolated from the other course materials.In fact, approximately 50% of the students in bothyears read work by members of their class each week andanother 50% did so only once or twice during the term.Similarly (and this result is perhaps surprising) the percentagesof those in each year who followed links in the VictorianWeb and read work by students in previous classes alsodivided the same way — 50% did so every week, and 50%did so only rarely.One might also have predicted that students whoseweekly assignments appeared only in the Victorian Webwould follow more links than those who assignmentsappeared in the separate wiki, but no significant differenceappeared between the two groups. Students in2009 and 2010 entered the Victorian Web in approximatelythe same way: whereas most students in both classesbegan with the syllabus, approximately 25% to 30% ofboth groups began with the homepage and explored,and only a few went straight to individual authors (i.e.,topics of individual weeks). One the most importantdiscoveries, therefore, was that students did not transfertheir more hypertextual approach of using the websiteto the wiki, nor their modes of using the wiki affecttheir approach to the larger website.94 Educación y Ciudad N o 25 Julio - Diciembre de 2013 ISSN 0123-0425 pp. 85-106

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!