Wiki Communication and Collaboration

The elements of collaborative interaction and communication have evolved through technological innovation to extend beyond borders and span distances in order to facilitate global diversity. These three elements of technological communication have facilitated many types of interactions among people as life-long learners, and promote continued discussions among individual as well as groups.

Such an example would be that of a wiki. Wikipedia is a prime example of taking limitless subjects for constructing collaborative definition. This is a prime example of a tool which facilitates interactions among its users, promotes the collaboration of collective meaning and encourages all to communicate, argue, persuade, etc. in order to come to common terms and understanding.

As this global market of Wikipedia users and contributors works, so may the learning community. Educators need to seriously take into consideration the role technology plays in creating meaning through collaboration. This type of collaboration wouldn’t allow for the individual to be left out. Each member of the learning community is encouraged through interaction to participate within the wiki space. With this type of encouragement, individuals can be lead to research and comment, create and respond, through higher levels of thought and investigation. Facilitated by an educator, this is a tool which would create and maintain accountability, and truly assist is assessing individual growth and learning. Through thoughtful design, a facilitator would be able to post inquiry based learning opportunities, follow threads of discussion, and assist in promoting further research, action or collaboration depending on the outcome. Design of the program along with the facilitator taking on the role appropriately would be the key to the success of the wiki used as a collaborative communication tool in education.