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Kaido Kikkas et al.
Hackers""), changes in requirements when dictated by circumstances ("if we would drop one task,
which one should it be?") and a healthy dose of humour ("... Everything has fallen so silent... doo-doodoo"
- "Nii vaikseks kõik on jäänud", a popular Estonian song; a remark on chat inactivity). Plus,
another notion shared with the next category is the low level of hierarchy (see below).
5. Facilitation: changing the role of teacher
Open courses tend to have facilitators enabling the learning process rather than professors teaching.
This was also witnessed at our courses where most tasks were analytical in nature and without a
predetermined ‘correct’ answer. Rather than demanding the ‘party line’ in thinking, sometimes a direct
(albeit well-argumented) opposition to the facilitator was graded above the like-mindedness (“I totally
disagree, but that's OK :)"). This resulted in sharp remarks (“The happiest people are those who
reside in infirmaries...", "Internet is the reflection of the real world - perhaps just a bit more cruel"),
some really down-to-earth approaches to sensitive topics ("I just tested out Net Nanny (a web
censorship software). Was still able to surf some porn and book a couple of hookers.") and a range of
thought-provoking questions presented to the peers ("What can a parent do if his/her child is
cyberbullied when he/she knows nothing about it?", "About today's topic, people what do you think is
a hacker a modern anarchist?" etc). However, the overall reaction was again very positive ("I'm
grateful for the course, it taught another angle to look at the world, introduced problems which are not
met in everyday life and forced us every week to think and write about the world.").
Our findings from the Wikiversity courses were the following:
The open content model functions as an effective quality assurance system – students are
motivated to produce quality work because of the possibility of immediate (both in-course and
from outside) peer review. Other fields of Free Culture (e.g. free and open-source software, as
suggested by Mockus et al 2002) tend to share the phenomenon.
Extra students joining from outside should be treated as a possibility, not a liability. The main
point here is to design the course in such a way that substantial increase in student numbers
would increase the supervisor's workload the least possible amount. One option is to make
distinction between for-credit and non-credit students. For-credit students have to complete all the
assignments and will get university credits for the course. Non-credit students participate the
course in various less formal ways and do not have to complete all the assignments. They will
receive feedback from other participants but the facilitator will not take responsibility to give them
the same amount of feedback that is given to for-credit students. This model is used by Alec
Couros (2010).
The model is especially suitable for the fields where rapid changes in the course materials are
needed in order to follow the state of the art (new media, information technology). As evident from
the history of Wikipedia, wiki as a media form is very flexible and can follow changes well. The
experience suggests that adequately supervised Wikiversity courses can have attrition rates far
less than conventional courses – especially if such a method is new for students. This has one
condition – the structure of the course and the tasks must be clear from the beginning, making a
very well laid-out and written course guide a must.
Community management and also conflict solving skills are very valuable – especially in
multicultural courses or when a large share of participants have other first languages. In some of
our courses, the supervisor was very thankful for having previous experience as a chatroom
administrator.
While it is possible to facilitate large courses in a single chat (SSNC 2010 made likely a record
with weekly Skype text chats involving ~140 people), it is advised to split large groups for chat. If it
is impossible, stricter chat etiquette must be maintained to minimise noise, a simple helpful tip is
to make the supervisor type with Caps Lock turned on (even if it is usually interpreted as shouting
and therefore discouraged).
For best results, the homework should contain tasks with varying response cycle (e.g. wiki-based
group paper vs weekly Skype chat session – ample thinking room vs 'on the toes' situation). Also,
some people enjoy writing large papers, some like short opinions or direct discussion – this is
where the surplus in total points counts.
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