This is a presentation that I gave at the ICEL 2012 conference in Hong Kong. The presentation outlines a randomized control trial that examined the an intervention to have nursing students learn discipline specific terms through a collaborative wiki exercise.

1. Enhancing the Undergraduate Experience
Through A Collaborative Wiki Exercise To
Teach Nursing Students Discipline
Specific Terminology
Dr. Iain Doherty*
Dr Michelle Honey+
Ms. Lisa Stewart+
*eLearning Pedagogical Support Unit, CETL, HKU
+
School of Nursing, University of Auckland

2. Project Background
• Research project involved undergraduate nursing
students in a blended learning environment working
in small groups where they made use of a wiki to
develop a collaborative glossary of health specific
terminology.
• Previously students had been provided with a weekly
list of relevant nursing and clinical terms that related
to their lectures and case studies. Students were
expected to memorize the terms and were tested on
their recall at the end of the semester.
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3. Project Background
• The change of direction to making use of wikis aimed
at providing students with a medium to gain a more in
depth and contextual understanding of discipline
specific knowledge and professional vocabulary.
• This in depth and contextual understanding is
essential for students’ future communication in the
healthcare environment where they have to apply
what they have learned as they work in a hospital
setting.
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4. Project Background
• The first step in the process of creating a successful
Wiki activity is to ensure that the elements in the
teaching situation – learning outcomes, teaching
activities, technologies and assessment(s) are
aligned such that there are clear and logical relations
between the elements.
• In particular, students need to see that the activity is
one that will support them in achieving the intended
learning outcomes that will be assessed at the end of
the course.
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5. Project Background
• Whilst alignment of the technology with the other
elements in the teaching situation is important,
alignment per se does not guarantee that students
will in fact work collaboratively or contribute equally to
a Wiki exercise.
• The literature indicates a number of additional factors
that can help to ensure that students participate in
Wiki exercises.
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6. Project Background
• First, the wiki must be easy to use and students must
be adequately supported in the use of the Wiki
• Secondly, students need to be given adequate
guidance concerning what is expected of them in the
Wiki activity. There are two aspects to this guidance:
– The expectations around collaboration must be made
clear; and
– The expectations around the quality of the final output
must be made clear.
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7. Study Aims
• The aim of this study was to determine whether a
collaborative exercise to teach undergraduate
nursing students discipline specific terminology
resulted in improved student learning.
• We defined an improvement in student learning in
terms of students moving beyond the ability to recall
the nursing discourse terms and their definitions in
order to be able to demonstrate contextual
understanding of the discipline terms.
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8. Study Aims
• The change in learning that we were looking for can
be understood in terms of Bloom’s Taxonomy of
Learning in the Cognitive Domain (Bloom 1956). The
progression in learning is one of moving beyond the
recall that was achieved in the previous teaching
approach to students demonstrating a contextual
understanding of the meaning of the terms
(comprehension) in a clinical scenario assessment.
The final test of learning is students applying what
they have learned in the hospital setting.
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9. Research Method
• We conducted a randomized control trial to determine
whether a collaborative learning exercise would lead
to improvements in student learning.
• Our trial involved a control group (wiki activity in
which students were free to reflect on any aspect of
the course + learned glossary terms in traditional )
manner and an intervention group (wiki activity for the
creation of glossary terms and definitions).
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10. Research Method
• The Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences Learning
Technology Unit assisted in the production of six
video clinical scenarios and created an online
multiple-choice test to assess students’ knowledge of
clinical terms prior to the introduction
• Students were asked to identify terms in relation to
particular activities that were taking place in the
videoed scenarios. The Learning Technology Unit
also set up 8 wikis using a free Wikispaces account.
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11. Research Method
• The dependent variables in this study included
participants’ experience of the learning exercise,
participants’ gains in knowledge and participants’
ability to apply their new knowledge to clinical
scenarios.
• We adopted a mixed method approach by including:
a pre and post course assessment; a course
evaluation; and focus group interviews to evaluate
the impact of collaborative learning on students’
clinical practice.
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12. The Study
• The research project was explained to students at
the beginning of the semester – including the fact that
the project had ethics approval – and students were
advised that they would be awarded an additional 5%
for participating in the pre-course assessment, wiki
exercises and post-course assessment.
• Students’ marks on the pre and post course
assessments did not count towards their final grade
i.e. the additional 5% was simply for participation.
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13. The Study
• Students (N=105) self selected into 8 tutorial groups
with each tutorial group consisting of between 12 to
14 students.
• Groups were then randomly allocated to either
control or intervention.
• We then invited the members of each of the
randomized tutorial groups to join one of the eight
wikis (4 wikis for control and 4 wikis for intervention).
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14. The Study
• The control group were asked to use the wiki to
reflect on the course e.g. content, additional
resources and their own learning.
• The control groups were also advised that they would
be learning the discipline terms as per previous years
i.e. through being provided with definition lists to
study.
• The intervention group were asked to contribute
three glossary terms per week and to comment on at
lest one term provided by another student.
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15. Results
• The vast majority of students (n=97, 92%) completed
the pre-course assessment.
• Results ranged from a score of 3 /15 to a score of 15
/ 15, with an average score of 12.15 out of 15.
• The activity on the wikis has also been monitored
over time.
• Preliminary findings indicate that both the control and
intervention group wikis are equally active.
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16. Results
• There is evidence of students collaborating in both
groups. However, students added to the intervention
group wiki more consistently and the wikis appear to
be more structured than the wikis in the control
group.
• Students in the control group have, however, been
more creative. For example, students have added
YouTube videos and other web links to items that in
some way relate to the course content.
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17. Results
• A full analysis of the wiki contributions will consist of
assessing the wiki postings using a rubric that will
define the type and quality of the wiki postings e.g.
factual content, critical content, revision content etc.
We will also be using the Wiki reporting function to
determine e.g. how often students accessed the wiki.
• Focus group interviews have been carried out and
the data is currently being analysed.
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18. Discussion
• We can already see that there is an issue with the
pre / post assessment exercise as the mean score
for the pre-test was 12.5 i.e. very high.
• This means that it will potentially be difficult to show
gains in learning for this cohort of students.
• The assessment exercise was created by lecturers
and there was no reason to think that students would
have scored so highly on the pre-course assessment.
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19. Discussion
• The qualitative data gathered from the focus group
interviews is potentially very interesting in terms of
students’ perceived ability to apply their learning in
practice.
• Our thinking here revolves around the possible
difference between understanding a term
contextually in a teaching and learning environment
and being able to make use of any particular term
appropriately in the very different environment of a
hospital setting.
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20. Discussion
• Finally, interviewing the students’ concerning their
experiences of working collaboratively in a wiki
environment may yield some interesting results,
particularly in terms of whether or not students
learned the social skills required to work as part of a
team.
• The ability to function as part of a team is an
important part of being a practising nurse and we will
be looking to see whether students developed as
team players during the wiki exercises.
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21. Concluding Remarks
• This initiative was driven by the desire to engage
students at a deeper level with the nursing
terminology that they need to master in order to be
able to work in a hospital setting. We remain of the
opinion that this is a worthwhile initiative and we are
committed to this pedagogical aim.
• However, from a research perspective we definitely
face the challenge of establishing a meaningful
baseline in future years so that we might have a
measure of gains in knowledge during the course.
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