Authentic Assessment
Wikis Provide a Rich Environment for Collaborative Open Educational Practices: Motivation and Emotion Case Study
University of Canberra
Dr James T. Neill
Overview
Wikis provide a rich, but surprisingly underutilised digital environment for collaborative development of open educational resources (OERs). Open wiki platforms, such as hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), can be used to engage in renewable (Grey, 2023) learning and assessment exercises with higher education students.
To demonstrate the educational potential of open wiki platforms, this chapter presents a case study of an ongoing project which has developed over 1,500 online, interactive, editable book chapters authored by students about the psychological science of motivation and emotion.
Visit the book Motivation and Emotion book (Wikiversity)
Each student develops an online book chapter about a unique topic as a learning and assessment exercise. This is an innovative alternative to traditional, disposable (Wiley, 2013) essay writing.
The project’s OER-enabled andragogical philosophical and educational principles, and its approach to scaffolding and student support, can be readily adapted across disciplines and levels of higher education (Neill, 2024).
Engaging students and educators in collaborative authoring via open wikis contributes maximally flexible and sustainable OERs to the knowledge commons and develop students’ 21st century digital literacy and communication skills (Neill, 2024). Open wikis offer ideal platforms for open andragogy and open educational practices because they provide resources that are free and open for anyone to edit and the licensing allows re-use for any purpose.
Watch a webinar: Wikis in open education: A psychology case study (24 mins) (Neill, 2023).
Using this case study
This chapter provides an overview of how renewable assignments can be published openly using wikis. After reading this chapter:
- Academic staff will: Develop awareness of the benefits and processes for facilitating quality student authentic assessments published as OERs
- Library staff will: Learn strategies and techniques for working with students and academics to innovate and publish high quality student created content.
Key stakeholders
Key stakeholders for the Motivation and Emotion online book project are shown in an onion model (see Figure 1):
- At the core is an inspired academic educator with values rooted in open andragogy (Clinton-Lisell, 2021).
- Second, there are cohorts of students enrolled in a specific university coursework unit (in this case, 7124 Motivation and Emotion at the University of Canberra).
- Third, there is a broader community of people who voluntarily edit Wikiversity and its WMF sister projects (see Figure 2) and who contribute by responding to student questions, editing, and providing feedback.
- Finally, the broadest stakeholder group consists of all future users of the knowledge commons; these are people, but increasingly also