Constructive Interference: Wikis And Service Learning In The Technical Communication Classroom

Abstract

Four service-learning projects were conducted in technical communication courses using wikis. Results confirm previous findings that wikis improve collaboration, help develop student expertise, and enact a “writing with the community” service-learning paradigm. However, wikis did not decenter the writing classroom as predicted by previous work. Instructors using wikis to scaffold client projects should calibrate standards for evaluation with students and client, and they may need to encourage clients to stay active on the wiki.

Notes

¹The Environmental Studies client in India did not complete a survey but did use the wiki to view and approve the student design for a new undergraduate-targeted Web portal for the environmental studies; at semester's end, he had adopted the design for testing with undergraduates.

¹I am constructing the public sphere here as including the client, the instructor, and the students currently enrolled in the course. All the wiki projects I implemented except one (the first wiki) were password protected to enforce this definition of publicity. The first wiki I used allowed access from all Web users, but after reading scholarship on wiki pedagogy, I decided to restrict our public sphere for these projects to limit students' anxieties about criticism of unfinished work. However, even this restricted publicity is more “public” than students are used to dealing with in traditional writing classrooms, where only the instructor and a few of a student's peers generally read what a student writes.