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Article

Open Access

Recommendations for Using Wiki in Online Group Projects in Engineering Education

Author(s)

Gláucia Nolasco de Almeida Mello

Full-Text PDF Download XML 1203 Views

DOI:10.17265/1537-1506/2016.03.004

Affiliation(s)

Gláucia Nolasco de Almeida Mello, Dr., adjunct professor, Civil Engineering Department, Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

ABSTRACT

Although Web 2.0 tools like blogs and wikis have been used for supporting collaborative learning in higher education, there are not many reports about implementation of that resource on engineering in Brazil. In this way, the main purpose of this research is to use a wiki platform for online activities and evaluate how students collaborate with each other in online tasks. It was investigated how collaboration can be measured on wiki platform. During four-week online activities, 40 students of Civil Engineering course were monitored on Wikispaces® platform. All students’ actions were analyzed and classified as low, medium, or high level of collaboration. The data were collected through the statistical reports of Wikispaces® and Google Analytics platforms. It computed 336 students’ actions: 16.67% as high level, 45.24% as medium, and 38.10% as low. During informal interview, most of students (70%) related that wiki was a nice tool for collaboration work. The results indicated that wiki platform is an important way to develop innovative activities and tasks for the purpose of improving engineers’ abilities and skills such as: writing communication, organization, collaboration, and critical thinking development.

KEYWORDS

wikis and higher education, wiki-based project, collaborative activities online, measuring collaboration online

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