Abstract:

Group-based project work is a frequently used instructional strategy in higher education that develop skills and competencies that relate to key aspects of real-life work situations in many professional fields. A wiki is a collaborative tool that allow multiple users to work on the same content and actively involve learners in their own construction of knowledge. This paper describes our experience of using collaborative work supported by the wiki tool of Moodle in a Environmental Toxicology course at the Faculty of Marine and Environmental Sciences of Cádiz University. Students are grouped in teams of 4-5 and are assigned to a wiki. Each group is assigned a project topic. At the end of the activity, both teachers and students assess the academic activity. Assessment of wiki-supported collaborative work is based on a self- and co-assessment system among students using a rubric with the criteria to be considered. The evaluation questionnaire contained also general questions related with the collaborative project. The findings enables us to identify the strengths and weaknesses of this methodology allowing us to improve the future use of wiki as a tool for collaborative writing projects.

Keywords:

Wikis, collaborative learning, sef-assessment, co-assessment, Higher Education.