Science Writing, Wikis, and Collaborative Learning in the Laboratory

 

Tested Studies in Laboratory Teaching, 2014, Volume 35

Michael A. O'Donnell

Abstract

As laboratory educators, we try to make the laboratory experience inquiry-based, student-centered, and reflective of the process of science. However, though we may have students work in teams during an experiment, we often have them go their separate ways to write individual reports. But that's not how science is done; it is very hard to find primary articles in the research literature written by one author. We have students collaborate for part of the science process and then send them into solitary confinement to finish the process. Writing is an important part of the collaborative process of science, and that is why I had students use wikis to collaboratively write laboratory reports. Wikis are a collection of interlinked pages, and their design is made for creating collaboratively authored texts. Instructors can compare document versions (using the wiki's history log), and can therefore verify and evaluate individual student contributions. Group reports also result in fewer reports to grade, which allows more constructive and timely feedback on drafts. Educators have recently started to use wikis to support collaborative and constructivist learning (Parker and Chao, 2007). Education use of wikis in the sciences has been relatively rare, though Elliott and Fraiman (2010) report on chemistry classes writing web-based collaborative lab reports. Using peer reviews and group discussion in the wikis, the focus is not only on the content of the finished lab report, but also on science writing as a creative and iterative process.

Keywords:  collaborative learning, wikis, science writing

University of Calgary (2013)