Wiki site is alive!

Let us not get too excited but I have put together a wiki site: http://buildabusiness.wetpaint.com/
with the ethos of project based learning from a business perspective (it only took 2 hours to figure it all out) using the Kearsley and Shneidman (1998) theory of true engagement is gained with learning from real-world, authentic problem scenarios. I have started a skeleton of my Wiki with the intention that students would tidy and extent the material. This task also has reality links as how many people try, at some point in their careers, and succeed in small business. So having done the research on the requirements and gained assistance from their fellow students a strong business model can be built. By being a part of a group creating something students will have a stronger sense of belonging and then move onto higher self esteem as outlined by Maslow (1970) in his Hierarchy of Needs. During this task the linking to a RSS aggregator would assist monitoring. As an activity for smaller groups in a class a Wiki could be set up for each group and then they would choose the business they wanted to start giving students more ownership of their project.

I know as a facilitator of the task it would take me time to learn more about my ICT design along the lines of Prof. Ron Oliver (1999) where he recommends 3 areas for the framework being 1 Learning Tasks, 2 Learning resources and 3 Learning supports.

My feeling is that Wiki gives a good medium to base PBL tasks.

References

Keasley, G and Shneiderman, B 1999, Engagement Theory: A framework for technology-based teaching and learning, viewed 10 August 2009 at http://home.sprynet.com/~gkearsley/engage.htm

Maslow, A 1970, Motivation and personality, 2nd ed., Harper and Row, New York

Oliver, R, 1999, Exploring strategies for online teaching and learning, Distance Education vol 20 no. 2 pp 240-254