Matching intention with agency: Lessons from practice

Abstract

Keywords social networks, communities of practice, agency of technologyA major difficulty for many doctoral students is their transition from professional practitioner to researcher and scholar. The struggle that many experience in this transition is in the development of a theoretical or conceptual standpoint for argumentation (Fox, Greene & Weese, 1999;Leshem, 2007). It was thought that the use of a collaborative wiki environment in a Professional Doctorate program in a Queensland university might ameliorate this problem and also provide a useful data source for examining the development of students" scholarly skills, namely, the development of logical argumentation, critical writing, thematic mapping and inter-textual referencing. Findings from this study relating to the timing, nature and obstacles to the development of scholarship were intended to help the teaching team to understand when and how to support individual students and, more generally, how to improve the course component of the program. The study was funded by an internal Teaching and Learning Grant.A wiki -a simple Internet application that allows social networking and direct interaction by multiple users -was selected and established as, along with other Web 2.0 technologies, it was thought to have the potential to support communities to come together to share, learn, create and collaborate (Auer, Dietzold & Riechert, 2006;Beldarrain, 2006;Picard, 2007). It is this agency, that is, the capacity of the technology to facilitate connections, to enable networking for learning purposes and to capture student development over time that was of particular interest. The aim of the study from which this paper was drawn was to highlight insights afforded through engagement with the wiki. It was hoped that the ensuing transparency and collaborative engagement with

Scaffolding wiki‐supported collaborative learning for small‐group projects and whole‐class collaborative knowledge building

“…Empirical research studies have shown that students might feel too intimidated to participate because of the public nature on wikis. For instance, some students felt uncomfortable displaying their works in progress in front of their peers on a class wiki (Beames, Klenowski, & Lloyd, ; de Pedro et al, ; Lin & Kelsey, ). Before addressing students' concerns, there is a need to help students understand ‘why wikis?’ and ‘how openness on wikis benefits learning’.…”

Research students’ conceptions of the role of information and communication technologies in educational technology research

“…Only a few recent studies specifically look into how postgraduate research students conceive and approach the use of ICT in their research (Beames, Klenowski, & Lloyd, 2010;Carpenter, 2012;Stelma, 2010). One of the largest of these, tracking three years' research behaviour of Generation Y doctoral students, found that research students were highly competent ICT users and sophisticated information seekers; however, they were quite risk averse and conservative about embracing new technologies in their research (Carpenter, 2012).…”