As much as it seems a pleasing result from a Wikipedia perspective, my quick summary of it
is that there were a lot of uncontrolled variables and very small sample sizes. My quick
summary of the experiment:
5 students attended 7 hours of traditional lectures about cells. Another 5 students were
told to read Wikipedia articles about cells at their own pace, although there was some
additional activity taking place as part of a process including the identification of
other Wikipedia articles to read and then a collaborative activity where they drew
diagrams of cells and shared them with others. Both groups were tested before and after
about their knowledge of cells. The Wikipedia group learned more.
To me, the differences between the two learning approaches has a lot of uncontrolled
variables. For example, did the content of the lectures cover the same material as the
Wikipedia articles (I presume there was no limit to how widely the students roamed by
clicking links within Wikipedia articles, which may make it difficult to assess the
breadth of knowledge to which the Wikipedia group was exposed). Was the quality of the
content as good?
What was the quality of the traditional lecturing, a lively entertaining lecturer or one
droning along? I am sure that we would all think that makes a difference.
There was no mention of the researchers interacting with the traditional lecture group,
yet it seems there were interactions between the researchers with the Wikipedia group,
which appeared to be trying to ensure they were reading related articles and to summarise
their knowledge with shared diagrams.
To me, the learning approaches were so different that it seems hard to argue that it was
Wikipedia that made the difference. It may just as easily have been a boring set of
lectures, the preparation and sharing of the diagrams, or the researcher interaction
(being part of a research experiment may have been more fun/interesting than attending yet
another set of lectures).
To me, the need here is to control the variables a whole lot more. Maybe assign one group
to read from a traditional textbook for N hours vs read Wikipedia for N hours. That would
be a fairer test of Wikipedia's content (although not controlling for the novelty
value).
If I have a general criticism of research of educational methods in general, it is the use
of regular teachers using traditional methods compared against excited researchers using a
new method, which the researchers hope/expect to confirm their hypothesis - the presence
of the researcher in the process brings bias. Sometimes there is an attempt to control
this by first training a regular teacher to teach using the new method, but there is still
the problem that the teacher involved is usually a volunteer, who is probably keen to try
this new method, so again there is bias. Unless these studies involve enough students
using randomly-chosen run-of-the-mill teachers over enough time, it is very difficult to
judge if the new method has any real potential.
I don't think most people would argue against Wikipedia being a useful self-learning
resource, but I don't think this paper would persuade me that it can or should replace
more formal educational processes. I note that since the students were tested on their
knowledge of cells after the Wikipedia reading, they had a motivation that most
self-learners do not! I think anyone involved in formal education will know the
motivational power of exams :-)
Sent from my iPad
On 4 Oct 2016, at 3:19 AM, Jan Dittrich
<jan.dittrich(a)wikimedia.de> wrote:
Thanks for sharing!
I only skimmed the article so far, I just wondered a bit about the use of learning
styles. The existence of such styles is widely believed but are not much supported by
educational or psychological research – so their results should probably be take with a
grain of salt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles
Nevertheless, I'm happy if Wikipedia does perform well :-)
Jan
2016-10-04 0:37 GMT+02:00 James Salsman <jsalsman(a)gmail.com>om>:
I enjoyed
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=4061737011161182722&hl=en&am…
CELL (BIOLOGY)-WIKIPEDIA LEARNING PERFORMANCE IN
RELATION TO COGNITIVE STYLES, LEARNING STYLES, AND
SCIENCE ABILITY OF STUDENTS: A HIERARCHICAL MULTIPLE
REGRESSION ANALYSIS
"It is resulted that Wikipedia learning performance was better over
traditional approach."
Best regards,
Jim
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