Off campus students' experiences collaborating online, using wikis

An online group work project for off campus students, using wikis as the collaboration platform, has been conducted successfully for several years. Students were given the opportunity and technical means to collaborate, and staff could assess individual students’ participation. However, the actual level of collaboration was less than hoped for, especially in early iterations of the unit. While the teaching staff are confident that, for the overall student cohort, collaborating online using a wiki is meeting the needs of most students, this is varied across the diverse cohort. To gain further insight into the internal machinations of student groups, selected students were invited to submit their experiences of their wiki project. This paper reports the personal stories of two off campus students, and compares the experiences described by our students with the teaching staff members’ perceptions. The two students featured were selected not just for their articulate writing, but because their group experiences were quite different. Considering these students’ experiences has allowed the teaching staff to reflect on how to better support our students during their group project.