Designing Knowledge Management Systems for Teaching and Learning with Wiki Technology

Journal of Information Systems Education, Fall 2005 by Raman, Murali, Ryan, Terry, Olfman, Lorne

He calculated a wiki activity score by taking the difference between each student's score on each of the four measures and the mean score of each measure, dividing it by the standard deviation of its measure, multiplying it by its weight and summing the four values. Then, he ranked these calculated scores and gave 30 points to the highest score. He reduced the next highest score by a factor based on the number of standard deviations that that score was from the highest score with each standard deviation being equivalent to 3 points. Thus if the highest activity score was 4 and the standard deviation 1, the student with the highest score received 30 points and a student with an activity score of 3 (that is, one standard deviation below the highest) received 27 points.

4.5 DATA COLLECTION

In phase two of the study, fifteen interviews were conducted with the students. These interviews were conducted using both face-to-face and e-mail exchanges over a one-month period after the knowledge management class had ended. During this phase, the respondents were asked several questions to obtain an in-depth view about their experiences in using the wiki. The questions were geared towards obtaining a better understanding of the students' perception of the following:

* Why the instructor used a wiki technology as part of the curriculum.

* Whether the objectives of using wiki technology were clearly communicated.

* Whether the process of using the wiki technology was clearly communicated.

* Whether wiki technology can support the goals of knowledge creation through collaborative efforts and discovery learning.

The interview sessions ranged between 45 minutes to one hour. Responses from these sessions were transcribed and coded using an open coding technique (Neuman 2003).

4.6 Survey Results

Five students had prior experience in using knowledge management tools. The most popular tool for facilitating knowledge sharing was chat (seven students), followed by email (two students) and videoconference (two students). All the students claimed that they had no prior experience in using wiki technology to facilitate knowledge creation and sharing.

Seven students used the technology on a regular basis - more than 5 hours a week; ten students used the wiki often - (3-5 hours a week) and three used it occasionally only (1-2 hours a week). The regular users said that the main reason for using the wiki technology was to follow up with content covered in class. Only two students indicated that they had used the technology to facilitate team discussions. In this context, it can be argued that the technology was used mostly as a forum to create and extract knowledge pertaining to the knowledge management class, with limited focus on using it as a tool to facilitate collaborative knowledge creation and sharing.

Students were also asked to specify alternative methods of communication that should be employed to create and share knowledge. Fourteen students said that this could be facilitated by e-mail. Six students preferred face-to-face contact and discussions for the purpose of creating and sharing knowledge.