Using Wiki to Promote Collaborative Learning in Statistics Education

Dani Ben-Zvi, University of Haifa, Israel

Download the Paper (PDF format) - October 12, 2007 Tell a colleague about it. Printing Tips: Select 'print as image' in the Acrobat print dialog if you have trouble printing. This work has been peer reviewed.

ABSTRACT:
This article attempts to make a strong case for the use of Wiki to support collaborative learning experiences for students in the statistics classroom. Wiki is an innovative Website that allows all users to add and edit content with relative simplicity. Wiki features empowered learners and bottom-up organization that enable easy authoring of Web content, open access and unrestricted collaboration. We first introduce statistics as a collaborative discipline and therefore compatible with Wiki as a collaborative learning space. We then show evidence that collaboration can improve the learning of individuals in the statistics classroom as well as the whole class. Finally we demonstrate how Wiki can facilitate collaborative learning and bring about instructional change to improve student learning of statistics. We present several types of Wiki-based activities: collaborative writing, glossaries, discussion and review, statistical projects, self-reflective journals, and assessment.