There was a fair amount of interest in our presentation at the CSTD Symposium on Mancomm’s use of wikis with healthcare professionals. The MASIE Center has recently published this commentary on the impact of blogs and wikis on learning;
- Instructor Blogs to offer a more dynamic and personal perspective on the teacher’s expertise and view of the context.
- Wiki Handouts that are launched by the instructor or instructional designer and then evolved by the various learners in the classroom or on-line programs.
- RSS Feeds from Blogs and Wikis that are linked to Compliance subjects. As the content changes, the learner receives a RSS feed linking them back to the Blog to receive an update and even take a Compliance Re-Check.
- Context Rich Wikis which are used as ways of making the role of SubjectMatter Experts easier and more time efficient.
These examples are for more traditional training models, where you have an instructor and students. In our case (mental health community of practice) the wiki was used for a diverse group of physically separated professionals to post and share common practices that were not available in any published manuals or procedures. So far this group, many of whom had no computer experience, has created +600 wiki pages.
As for blogs, there are many applications for informal learning, such as this post which is a follow-up to our face-to-face presentation in Fredericton on Monday. For instance, blogs can be used to post presentation material so that learners can determine if the material is suitable for their needs and can act as a medium for questions in advance so that the facilitator can customize the scheduled F2F meeting to meet learner needs. I encourage anyone to use this blog as a follow-up to what was presented and let’s see where the conversation and learning goes.
Linking to subject matter experts (SME) is made easier with blogs and wikis, as one Canadian military officer told me at the conference that they are trying to connect the best SME with their soldiers in training. This could mean a synchronous web session between soldiers in New Brunswick and the expert currently serving in Sudan or Afghanistan. Blogs and wikis can be the glue that holds the learning conversation together between time zones.
Masie on WikisThis just in from the Masie Center.
“Wikis for Real Time Global Translation & Context: Lately, we have been experimenting with the idea of using a Wiki (a multi-person blog) to allow for real-time globalization of content, including translation. The idea is simple. Headquarters creates a three panel display for content. The first panel has any graphics for the module. The second panel contains the content in a primary language (eg. English, Spanish or Mandarin). The third panel is a wiki, which allows any user to add content or change/edit content already in that box. Each country or region translates and localizes the 3rd panel in real time. Since the original content stays on the screen, subsequent readers can update, correct or improve the content or context. There could be a centralized desk that edits it, but in the right organization, it would be self-healing. An interesting shift in how content goes global at the speed of business.”
blogs & wikis for learning
Also found wikis can serve dual purposes as hyper-linked blogs, perfect for brainstorming, concept development and problem-solving, especially if to accelerate alignment for innovative or design-based project teams.
Start off by identifying challenges and forming key terms to explore and enable strategy-making opportunities with SMEs as guides. An off-line meeting or interactive workshop/activity can be leveraged in order to structure materials for on-line documentation and discussion.
Indeed, commercial potentials of using wikis to empower collaborative project teams are fast emerging, extending generally from IT departments, as the usual point of entry, throught to HR and sales and marketing.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/03/25/13FEblogwiki-rev4_1.html
In short, wikis can boost performance of existing intranets, become a dynamic knowledge base for legacy migration, or help coordinate larger intiatives such as collaborating with different departments, vendors, distributors, stakeholders, etc.
david sean lester
wwww.knowledgeswap.ca