The Write Stuff for Group Work

Using Wikis in Writing Teams for Problem-Based Learning

Do you think your students will never write anything as a team? Maybe they don’t have the right tool. That’s why Mark Rooze has brought wikis into his English 260 – Advanced Technical Writing classes at Florence-Darlington Technical College (FDTC). Using Problem-Based Learning (PBL) techniques, his students are turning out significant projects and stretching their own writing capabilities. Rooze had previously used PBL techniques when he taught service learning projects in Technical Writing at Clemson University, but he hadn’t tried PBL at the technical college level. Then he attended a South Carolina Advanced Technological Education (SC ATE) mini-conference on training technicians with team projects, and Elaine Craft and Tressa Gardner challenged him to give the techniques a try.

Rooze decided that his students would write proposals as a team. To make the project more realistic, he would write a Request for Proposals to which they would respond. And to cap off the project, they would not only turn in the written proposal but also do a team PowerPoint presentation. “My previous experience told me that what I needed was wiki software,” says Rooze. “Just like Wikipedia, multiple people can work on one piece of writing. The problem was, with my limited time, how to choose which software was right for our class.” Then Rooze hit on an idea: why not let the students themselves research the various software solutions? Answering that question became the students’ proposal assignment for the first two semesters. “Students who were still uncomfortable with Microsoft Office researched more about software than they knew existed.”

In the end, Rooze chose PmWiki for his installation – a choice that may not fit everyone. “My first computer was a TRS-80 Model III that my dad bought in 1980. I built chips for Texas Instruments, and my brother works for Apple today, so my family has been in home computing since the beginning.” Rooze had to draw on his experience to set up the program and the website. “But there are other solutions out there, including hosted solutions that require no programming expertise. So any instructor can do this.” 

Service Learning Asserts Itself

But Florence-Darlington Technical College was already facing other technology challenges. FDTC had just changed its Learning Management System to Desire2Learn, and the faculty was very happy with the change. But in those days, Desire2Learn didn’t have student help files. So Rooze and his class set out on a service learning project. The client: the students themselves. “It seemed a natural fit,” Rooze says. “The students already wrote instruction sets. Why not write Desire2Learn help files on a wiki instead?” Rooze altered part of the PmWiki site to look like the FDTC site, and the students wrote the instructions. “I told them that if they made a mistake, six thousand people would know.” The class raised its standards to meet the challenge. Though Rooze knows about some grammar errors, no one else has ever mentioned them.

Writing Proposals

The time came for Rooze to test his original idea: writing proposals on the wiki. Could students do it? Would they do it the way he envisioned? “The answer is, yes and no,” Rooze admits. Rooze always gives the students an introductory assignment on using wiki software, and students soon become comfortable with it. “That’s part of the design; wikis were meant to be quick and easy.” But do they really collaborate on writing? “Not as much as I would like,” Rooze says. “What they do very well is contribute their own part. They get the teamwork aspect. But I want them to edit each other’s work pretty heavily, and they have qualms about doing that. Still, compared to peer-editing in our normal classrooms, it’s a great improvement.” Other teachers have been far more enthused. Some of Rooze’s students brought their RFP to their engineering instructors for help. “The reaction was, ‘Wow! You’re doing this here at Tech? I might have seen this as a senior project at the university, but not before.’ So now the engineering technology department is fully on board.”

Spreading the Flame

South Carolina Advanced Technological Education (SC ATE) has also given Rooze a chance to influence other technical writing teachers. He attended SC ATE’s 2011 Instructional Leadership Institute in Flat Rock, NC. “Other writing teachers were skeptical that Problem-Based Learning could work in their classrooms. But I had a chance to share some of my projects. By the time they left, they said that they were not only convinced that PBL could work, but they had a lot of ideas about how to implement it.”

Continuing Development 

Rooze continues to develop Requests for Proposals for the students to respond to. So far, he has an IT RFP to install office computers, a civil engineering RFP to redesign a bad traffic intersection, and an electrical engineering RFP to install downtown sidewalk lighting. All of them are based on real RFPs that Rooze found on the internet. “Redesigning the traffic intersection has been the most successful one, but I think the most fun was the downtown sidewalk lighting, because we took the specs straight off the renovation plan for downtown Florence, SC.”

Lessons Learned

Rooze has some suggestions for those who want to try similar projects.

• Consider a hosted software solution. Setting up PmWiki required a lot of out-of-class time and special skills that some instructors may not have. Sites like Google Sites or Wikispaces. com offer free wikis that still give students the experience of writing collaboratively on a wiki, but with far lower instructor workload.

• Put on your cheerleader uniform. Do you remember the fear you felt the first time you wrote a proposal? You students feel it too. They will need lots of encouragement. Be prepared to give it to them. • Keep the scale of the assignments appropriate. When Rooze wrote the IT RFP, it was for a 200-person office. He believed that since the students all used computers, they could identify with the assignment. But the large scale of the project increased the number and types of components. “Fortunately, I had an IT-savvy student in class, and he could explain it. So I made him a ‘consultant’ to all the other groups. It worked – but I’m rewriting the RFP for a 20-person office. It simplifies everything.”

• Convert more of your lecture time to project time. “What is important in the classroom is not what the instructor does but what the students do.” Move away from the podium and over their shoulders more often. Less lecture and more guidance.

Mark Rooze teaches Technical Writing, English, and Religion at Florence-Darlington Technical College in Florence, SC. Prior to coming to FDTC, he taught at Tri-County Technical College and Clemson University.