Wiki based collaboration platforms for collaborative learning with contribution based assesment method

iiABSTRACTMaster of Science ThesisWIKI BASED COLLABORATION PLATFORMS FORCOLLABORATIVE LEARNING WITH CONTRIBUTION BASEDASSESMENT METHODİbrahim Serdar ÖZKÜTÜKAnadolu UniversityGraduate School of SciencesComputer Engineering ProgramSupervisor: Prof. Dr. Ali GÜNEŞ2007, 69 pagesDay by day internet technologies covers human life and communitiescontinuously develop these systems for faster and more flexible sharing. One ofthe results of these efforts, finds application in education field such that classicalteaching methods has been moved to internet and other various educationinfrastructures and contents have been adapted to this environment. However for along time, flow direction of information had gone parallel with classic educationmethods and had been from certain points to community. In today, collaborationand sharing mentality has totally changed community?s information productionand transfer. Wiki is one of the major systems of this interactive collaboration.In this study, in order to form an education technique, university studentsare allowed to prepare their lecture notes on a platform developed by using theirwiki user names and passwords. For this purpose TWiki software is employed.Then, topic headings and sub-headings are created by the instructor in thedeveloped platform and seed some information under these headings for givingbasic influences to students. By the help of Twiki's built-in version controlsystem, daily contributions are assessed and results are announced in pages calledblue pages and by this way a competition atmosphere among students is generatedand studies-contents are maximized. For making assessment, contributions areseparated to three main branches as major contribution, minor changes and faultfinding. Originality is considered as a crucial point for grading the contributions.Also, the students led to denote references if they quote from or refer to otherreferences. Instructor moderates contributions to direct students to keep them inthe determined outline. Also by means of integrated questionnaire module,various inquiries are directed to students and gathered data are used forassessment of method's performance.As a result, by providing continuously updated and mutually improvingcontent, communication level between instructor and students is maximized.Students are asked to avoid memorizing, rather, directed to inquiry based learning.Additionally, student contributions are graded in a competition environment.Keywords: Distance Learning, Wiki, Learning Method, Inquiry Based Learning