Title: Creating wiki communities in blended learning environment and the creation of the Moodle new Wiki

Authors: Marc Alier, Maria Jose Casany, Jordi Piguillem, Raimon Lapuente

Addresses: Office 116 Omega-Campus Nord UPC, Jordi Girona 1-3, Barcelona, 08034, Spain. ' Office 116 Omega-Campus Nord UPC, Jordi Girona 1-3, Barcelona, 08034, Spain. ' Office 116 Omega-Campus Nord UPC, Jordi Girona 1-3, Barcelona, 08034, Spain. ' Office 116 Omega-Campus Nord UPC, Jordi Girona 1-3, Barcelona, 08034, Spain

Abstract: The Wiki is one of the basic tools for collaborating online, gathering, sharing and organising knowledge. Wikipedia is an overwhelming proof of that. Introducing the wiki as a learning tool is, however, not an easy task. This paper explains a case of introduction of wikis into a course that succeeded and that helped to contribute to improve one of the tools more used in education worldwide: Moodle. The teachers of the subject |Computer science history and ethics| of the UPC have been applying collaborative learning techniques since 1994. On 2004, inspired by the social constructionist paradigm, they started using Wiki and Moodle to create learning communities during the last five semesters. This article will discuss which strategies where adopted and the quantitative and qualitative results obtained. To accomplish their objectives, the teachers of ASAI have developed a new Wiki module (nWiki) for Moodle; this module implements an innovative grading feature. The nWiki has been accepted by the Moodle FOSS community as the new Wiki official module in Moodle 2.0 upcoming version. This article is about pedagogical principles, the use of Wiki as a collaborative tool and how fulfilling specific needs can benefit a whole community through the open source paradigm.

Keywords: education; e-learning; Moodle; wikis; wikinomics; social computing; online collaboration; social constructionism; constructivism; open source; free software; wiki communities; blended learning; online learning; electronic learning; collaborative learning; computer science history; ethics; learning communities; virtual communities; web based communities; pedagogical principles.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSHC.2010.032690

International Journal of Social and Humanistic Computing, 2010 Vol.1 No.3, pp.300 - 313

Published online: 12 Apr 2010 *

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