Wikis for Language Teaching and Learning

Abstract

Wikis can be useful instruments for achieving various purposes in educational settings by offering novel and authentic ways of designing activities, assignments, group projects, etc. The objective of the article is to review the literature of wikis in language instruction related to the research design of the studies, the educational contexts in which wikis utilized, and the key findings of the selected articles covering potential benefits granted to the students, challenges encountered when exploiting these social networking sites in language instruction, and possible solutions to achieve more pleasing outcomes in our classrooms. Relevant studies hunted through Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) and Google Scholar by using the following keywords (1) Wikis, (2) Wiki tools in education, and (3) Wikis for foreign/second language teaching. Besides, bibliographies of related articles were checked. Six major themes were discovered: (1) Collaborative learning, (2) Improvement in language skills, (3) Motivation, and (4) Cultural awareness, (5) Learner Autonomy and (6) Audience Awareness. However, there can be some challenges when implementing wikis in educational settings, which include lack of training, inappropriate posting and unintentional deletions, the dominance of instructors in wiki tasks, and inappropriate task design. Moreover, there is a need for research going beyond case studies to produce more generalizable judgments on the significance of wikis for foreign language education in terms of improving writing, reading, listening, speaking skills, grammatical and vocabulary knowledge, and developing cultural awareness. Finally, most of the studies have centered on the potentials of wikis on boosting learning opportunities at the tertiary level; however, similar studies might be conducted at a secondary level of education.

1 Introduction

In mainstream classrooms, most of the materials consist of textbooks, teacher notes, ready-made worksheets, teacher-made materials, or posters, which are mainly text-based (Basal & Aytan, 2014). Broadening the repertoire of teaching practices becomes essential to create a dynamic and interactive atmosphere inside and/or outside the classroom to achieve more desirable outcomes in language learning, meet expectations of learners, and keep up with the advances arising in today’s world.

By taking innovative steps of technology integration, ESL (English as a second language) and EFL (English as a foreign language) instructors have a wide range of possibilities to utilize to enhance the effectiveness of teaching. Especially, Web 2.0 tools provide chances to generate an appealing, interactive, and motivating atmosphere for ESL/EFL learners if the task design is performed appropriately by considering learners’ interests, needs, or background (Basal & Aytan, 2014). Even if there is no agreement on the definition of Web 2.0, it usually refers to the second generation of the World Wide Web that empowers its users to collaborate, share information online and enhance creativity as being different from Web 1.0 technologies (Reinhardt, 2019). Referring Web 2.0 as a move from static HTML Web pages to a vibrant atmosphere that offers more organized and wide-ranging Web applications (e.g., social networking sites, wikis, blogs, and hosted services webinars, streaming audio and video, and RSS) to users, it holds the potential to promise open communication and sharing information among Web-based communities of users (Cronin, 2009).

What’s more, the constant enhancement of affordable, portable, and accessible digital information and communication technology and Web 2.0 has given rise to an escalation in the number of social media and its usage since the 2000s (Reinhardt, 2019). Social media is usually described as any application or technology that permits a person to engage in, produce, and share media sources and interact with different individuals through digital networking (Reinhardt, 2019). Although social networking sites usually do not offer any particular instructional prospects in the first place, it has earned a place in classrooms by granting novel modes of learning and forming networks of knowledge and expertise for the learners over the past few years (Friesen & Lowe, 2012). The integration of Web 2.0 tools in education can have potential if they are used appropriately since many studies were conducted in this field to investigate the positive affordances of these tools in language teaching settings.

The central attention of this paper will be on the use of wikis in the language instruction, potential benefits it grants to the students, challenges and possible solutions to the difficulties to achieve more pleasing outcomes in our classrooms. The selection criteria of the state-of-art article as stated in the following:

• 1. The selection of articles had to be the ones applying various research methodologies. Conceptual and review papers are excluded.

• 2. The data analysis section had to be clear in explaining the reported outcomes of student learning associated with the use of wikis appropriately and consistently.

• 3. The studies had to be published in English between 2008 and 2020.

The electronic databases utilized in this review were Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) and Google Scholar by using the following keywords (1) Wikis, (2) Wiki tools in education, (3) Wikis for foreign/second language teaching and learning. Also, it was checked bibliographies of related articles to reach notable studies that meet the selection criteria for the review. After a thorough search of articles, 40 of them found relevant to the aforementioned selection criteria.

1.1 Wikis

Technological advances have altered the way of communicating with others, such as turning to a collection of collaborative work instruments from postal mail and telephones to e-mail, instant messaging, and software tools. As aligned with that, it is inevitable to have groundbreaking innovations of teaching tasks in educational settings. Being developed approximately in 1995 as a part of Web 2.0, Arreguin (2004) simply named wiki as a collection of websites offering a place for content sharing and editing easily (as cited in Duffy & Bruns, 2006). Today, Web 2.0 technologies offer a sheer amount of wiki engines and software packages such as UseMod, MediaWiki, PB Wikis, or TWiki, which mostly differ in the programming languages of wikis and the server platform required for a wiki to operate (Wei et al., 2005). Being interconnected and organized wikis build a profoundly versatile context for knowledge management since they are not displayed by default in any predetermined order (Duffy & Bruns, 2006). Further, wikis play a major role in building and trading information by suggesting a simplistic route of generating HTML pages with the help of their novel characteristics of expandable spatial structure (Parker & Chao, 2007). They usually enable its users to express opinions as associations between pages by creating an environment for a network of interrelated and contextualized topics and allowing personal or collaborative contributions (Duffy & Bruns, 2006). Additionally, they grant possibilities for users to track the revisions and/or development of individual pages in time (Duffy & Bruns, 2006). Another feature of wikis is related to their security controls. The authority for modifying the content can be assigned for the selected groups to prevent anonymous edits by unauthenticated users (Wei et al., 2005). Also, hyperlinking is an important feature of wikis that allows the users to insert links from other resources- not only to other pages in the wiki but also to other web pages.

When it comes to the current position of wikis in language instruction, educators have noticed its potential value of increasing deeper learning both in and outside the classroom by promising a way of facilitating communication and collaborative knowledge building through exploring, forming, and sharing the content (Reinhold, 2006 as cited in Parker & Chao, 2007).

2 The Research Design of Wiki-Focused Studies

Numerous types of research designs were employed in the selected articles to investigate the wiki-enhanced instructional practices. The outstanding preference was determined to be an inclination to the research adopting mixed method research approach, experimental design, and case study design. The majority of studies conducted in this area were attempted to employ various data collection tools to reach valid and reliable outcomes even if the scale of most of the studies was relatively small and limited.

Fusing qualitative and quantitative methodology, a mixed-method approach to research design was employed to integrate the findings and deliver a coupled analysis (Ahlholm et al., 2017; Aydın & Yıldız, 2014; de Arriba, 2017; Ducate & Steckenbiller, 2013; Elola & Oskoz, 2010; Franco-Camargo & Camacho-Vásquez, 2018; Hsu, 2019; Kuteeva, 2011; Ma, 2020; Martin, 2011; Matthew et al., 2009; Miyazoe & Anderson, 2010; Nami & Marandi, 2014; Özkan, 2015; Sánchez-Gómez et al., 2017; Zou et al., 2016).

Case studies were usually fostered to utilize various resources of information to search, understand, and describe the participants’ attitudes, beliefs, judgments, and performances by investigating in its natural setting combining various research methods and enabling an examination of the case from different standpoints and guaranteeing the validity of the findings through triangulation (Alyousef & Picard, 2011; Coniam & Lee, 2008; Doult & Walker, 2014; Kwan & Yunus, 2015; Li & Zhu, 2017; Lin & Yang, 2011; Matthew et al., 2009; Nami & Marandi, 2014; Salaber, 2014; Zorko, 2009).

Other noteworthy research designs are experimental and quasi-experimental studies to understand the worthiness of wiki-enhanced instructional cases by manipulating the variables to support or reject the hypotheses of the selected studies (Al-Johali, 2019; Awada & Diab, 2018; Chen, 2008; Chin et al., 2015; Çelik & Aydın, 2016; Kassem, 2017; Khany & Khosravian, 2014; Mak & Coniam, 2008; Nikiforou, 2019). Even if the amount of experimental research on wikis is quite limited due to the difficulty of manipulating treatments and controlling the effects, it is a valuable and comprehensive approach to explain causal relationships between variables (Bhattacherjee, 2012).

Some of the studies utilized single research methodology. There were five qualitative studies (Kost, 2011; Lin & Yang, 2011; Nikiforou, 2019) and one quantitative study (Wichadee, 2010). The researchers have utilized various data collection tools, including observation diaries, the comments on wiki- tools, interviews, rubrics, questionnaires, reflection logs group-interviews, language tests, achievement scores, field notes, and instructor comments.

3 Study Context of Wiki-Focused Studies

Bestowing a shred of substantial evidence for the generalizability of any results that arose from the data is another motivation of this article. Concentrating on the studies embodying diverse cultures and countries was significant to explore the themes revealing the impact of wikis on students’ performances and to give insights for prospective studies. The distribution of the studies displayed in Table 1 indicates that Taiwan, China and the United States are the leading figures in conducting studies intending to investigate the significance of wikis in educational settings.

Table 1 Summary of the studies

Springing from the beginning of the 21st century, there is a slight increase in the number of studies casting wikis as an object of the studies; however, it was found that most of the studies conducted with the students of tertiary level as demonstrated in Table 1. It seems that the potentials of wikis in instructional settings were relatively ignored in contexts of K-12 and postgraduate education and needed to be addressed to encourage the integration of wikis into their instructional practices to promote deeper learning and other positive outcomes offered by wiki-tools.

4 Integrating Wikis into Classroom Settings

4.1 Collaborative Learning

Collaborative learning requires groups of learners to work together to solve a problem, perform a task or create an output; consequently, learners support each other to accomplish mastery in their language skills and performances. The unique characteristics of wikis make them a beneficial instrument of collaborative learning in various educational fields as in the light of the conclusions drawn upon from the studies focusing on wikis (de Arriba, 2017; Coniam & Lee, 2008; Doult & Walker, 2014; Hsu, 2019; Kessler & Bikowski, 2010; Kwan & Yunus, 2015; Matthew et al., 2009; Özkan, 2015; Salaber, 2014; Wang, 2015; Zorko, 2009).

With the emergence of novel approaches to language teaching and learning through technological advances, web-based social networking tools have been practiced as collaborative instruments for foreign language teaching (Wang, 2015). In Wang’s experimental study (2015), the actual purpose is to promote Taiwanese students’ English writing skills for business by centering on enabling ESP learners to benefit from collaboration through Wikispaces (wikispaces.com), which was preferred due to the practicality and rapidity of deployment. Ensuring fruitful outcomes in collaborative writing, wikis were found useful in obtaining mastery in business writing through a collaborative learning environment (Wang, 2015). Also, Kwan and Yunus (2015) attempted to discover the use of wikis in ESL collaborative writing among gifted students. Although the students were inclined to working individually, some participants contributed to all stages of the writing task; consequently, they were able to create meaningful and well-designed essays. Additionally, dialogic interaction in the process of collaborative writing enhances mutual support among learners (Hsu, 2019). For instance, they are willing to solve each other’s problems by giving and receiving advice or offer help to improve their group task (Hsu, 2019).

Using wikis for collaborative writing tasks has become a quite common practice of language instructors; however, there can be other ways of exploiting wikis in educational settings. Surprisingly, the results of a case study conducted in a Hong Kong post-secondary institute indicated that offering a novel way of collaborative tasks through wikis encourages learners to consider them as tools for performing group projects on different courses (Coniam & Lee, 2008). Adopting a wiki as a facilitator for engagement and collaboration rather than a medium of online discussions, Salaber (2014) pronounced that postgraduate students from an international management module showed a thorough investment into their learning through collaboration. In a different context, it was indicated that the collaborative tasks were profoundly useful to processing and learning the materials among the pre-service teachers by actively engaging in the process of knowledge creation instead of performing a passive role to grasp knowledge (Matthew et al., 2009).

Moreover, de Arriba (2017) indicated that the experience of using wikis in large groups encourages collaborative learning because there is no limited time and space for each student, and they may contribute as many times as they wish. Although this might create an increase in the workload of instructors, they may follow each student’s progress and contribution through wikis. Zorko (2009) noted the positive agents facilitating collaborative learning through wikis: the visibility of everyone’s work, user-friendliness, teacher’s feedback, and knowing your work to be assessed. When it comes to the factors inhibiting collaborative behavior in wikis, they were portrayed as technical difficulties encountered in wikis and preference of publishing only polished materials and utilizing tools that enable instant and fast communication (Zorko, 2009).

4.2 Improvement in Language Skills

Numerous theories, methods, techniques, or tools have been introduced to establish an authentic environment for practicing the target language by passing a busy route for seeking a cure for language learners (Khany & Khosravian, 2014). The majority of task designs shaped through the wiki-tools center on developing collaborative writing skills; however, some studies have confirmed wikis as beneficial tools for improving other language skills as well, even if they are restricted in amount (Al Johali, 2019; Awada & Diab, 2018; Aydın & Yıldız, 2014; Castañeda & Cho, 2013; Çelik & Aydın, 2016; Chen, 2008; Kassem, 2017; Khany & Khosravian, 2014; Kwan & Yunus, 2015; Lin & Yang, 2011; Ma, 2020; Miyazoe & Anderson, 2010; Nikiforou, 2019; Wang, 2015; Zou et al., 2016).

Wiki-based writing projects may broaden the writing skills and encourage language learners to reflect on each other’s works, compared to traditional learning practices. In an experimental study conducted at the tertiary level, Kassem (2017) unveiled that wikis were valuable in decreasing learner anxiety encountered in writing classes. Moreover, Ma (2020) investigated to what extent the inter-group peer online feedback given on a wiki writing homework for an EAP (English for Academic Purposes) course has the potential to enrich the students’ writing competence. As the results implied, students strived to give feedback concerning the appropriacy of language in writing assignments. Instead, they have concentrated on eliciting feedback about the content of their peers’ works though the prior research usually noted that the students are inclined to give form-focused feedback rather than meaning-focused ones in wiki-enhanced tasks (Ma, 2020). It is quite promising that correcting each other’s mistakes through Wikispaces enabled Chinese students to enhance their formal writing performance with the aid of both error correction and constructive feedback and ongoing interaction between native speakers (Zou et al., 2016).

Besides, wikis can help improve the learners’ grammar even if some of the participants stated their discomfort in editing their peers’ works and their doubt in the accuracy of others’ editing (Castañeda & Cho, 2013). More importantly, it was indicated that using wikis in collaborative tasks might enhance the grammatical competence and the content and language fashion in language learners’ writing pieces (Wang, 2015). To better understand the use of social tools in learners’ individual and collaborative writing, Elola and Oskoz (2010) indicated that when students worked together, they discovered that analyzing and criticizing their ideas improved not only the content but also the general quality of their essays. According to the findings of Kost’s (2011) study on the use of wikis in collaborative writing projects, students appreciated being able to correct each other’s mistakes, and one participant said that “catching my partner’s errors was much easier than catching my own.” Another participant, perhaps dubious of his or her own language abilities, cited one significant benefit as “having a friend to correct my grammar (Kost, 2011)”. Valuing wiki-writing tasks, the students were quite aware of the benefits of giving and receiving feedback and learning from each other (Lin & Yang, 2011). Aligned with this idea, integrating wiki technology and peer feedback into an English writing course enables students to enrich their language mechanics in a short period (Lin & Yang, 2011).

Wikis were perceived as much more favorable than blogs and forums by pointing to advancement in EFL learners’ ability to distinguish the writing fashions in the target language (Miyazoe & Anderson, 2010). Learners showed mastery in content, organization, discourse markers, vocabulary, sentence formation, and mechanics with the help of process-based writing instruction through wikis (Çelik & Aydın, 2016). Moreover, Chinese learners of English had a chance to discover the essential points for building the essays from English students when they were going over their written products in terms of content, lexis, syntax, and organization (Zou et al., 2016). Li and Zhu (2017) reported that students’ collaborative efforts in task negotiation and text construction, as evidenced by group members’ mutual engagement in language functions, writing change functions, and scaffolding strategies, aided students in developing a paper with a clear rhetorical structure and high degree of coherence. Moreover, Hsu and Lo (2018) determined that wiki-mediated collaborative writing has a substantial impact on the content quality and linguistic accuracy of learners’ individual writing in the second language although its impact on organization and linguistic complexity was less noticeable.

It is an undeniable fact that vocabulary plays a crucial role in language learning. Without lexical items, they can hardly express the message they wish to convey even if they have some control of grammar either in their native language or second language (Kilickaya & Krajka, 2010). Language instructors usually follow various paths to teach vocabulary. To exemplify, some of them favor adhering to the activities in their course books, or some put vocabulary memorization at the center through lists covered with native language equivalents of the lexical items. On the other hand, the rest wishes to search for more authentic and meaningful tasks embellished with the technological tools to cultivate more desirable outcomes related to vocabulary development. When it comes to using wikis in vocabulary teaching, it is not a common practice embraced by language teachers; however, wikis can be viewed as a prospective medium for contributing to learners’ vocabulary growth, which acts as a critical figure for authenticity in teaching tasks. Intending to demonstrate its importance in improving the vocabulary knowledge of EFL learners, Khany and Khosravian (2014) selected Wikipedia as an object of their experimental research in which 36 intermediate Iranian EFL students participated. Excelling the control group, the performances of the experimental group confirmed that Wikipedia could aid EFL learners to contribute positively to their vocabulary growth. Wikis can be a beneficial and motivating instrument for building vocabulary knowledge in EFL contexts if the task design is desirable to embrace the objectives of vocabulary courses designed by the instructors (Al-Johali, 2019). In the light of Nikiforou’s study (2019), we can assert that the consistent and coherent task design in wiki workspaces can be promising in learners’ professional vocabulary growth as well as other language skills. What’s more, Martin (2011) discovered that the features of storing and hyperlinking in wikis could enhance contextualize vocabulary and grammar.

In an experimental study, Awada and Diab (2018) endeavored to find out the effectiveness of Google Earth and Wiki spaces in enhancing the oral presentation skills of EFL learners enrolled in writing classes. By exercising factorial design mixed-methods pre-test/post-test control group experimental design, the experimental group utilized Google Earth and Wiki tools to carry out research and deliver an oral presentation while a regular oral presentation and paper-pen research task were given to the control group (Awada & Diab, 2018). As the results hinted, the experimental group outperformed the control group in mastering oral presentation skills in the target language thanks to visualization agents and the structure of wikis that aid collaboration and scaffolding (Awada & Diab, 2018). Considering the difference between texts met in classroom settings and the ones language learners come across the outside world, there ought to be an increase in the number of tasks that provide learners the skills and strategies not only to operate and interpret visuals and images but also to comprehend the written language in order to overcome this pedagogical chasm (Serafini, 2012). Also, Chen (2008) shared one of the unexpected findings suggesting that the experimental group excelled in the control group in terms of listening and reading comprehension. Therefore, wiki workspaces can be exploited to offer language learners a meaningful and authentic environment to improve their reading skills in the target language.

4.3 Motivation

Motivation sets the initial steps to maximize competence in a language irrespective of learners’ talent and the reasons which are either self-motivated or determined by external factors for learning a new language (Chalupa & Haseborg, 2014). In the case of wiki-enhanced learning environments, it is believed that wikis can be helpful to achieve sustained motivation and create fruitful learning outcomes when the activities and tasks are designed by considering the learners’ needs, interests, and also the instructional goals and objectives in any educational settings, including second or foreign language learning.

To illustrate, students are more likely to get benefit from flexible learning environments to practice autonomy (Kessler & Bikowski, 2010). Autonomy is usually associated with motivation. Therefore, it can be said that autonomous and flexible learning environments created through wiki can increase motivation. In addition to the general outcomes of the study, Al-Johali (2019) confirmed that wiki technology in educational settings can be regarded as motivating since it enriches the teaching and learning practices with novelty and modernity entailing curiosity among learners. Curiosity leads to sustained motivation and commitment to complete the assigned vocabulary tasks in this context (Al-Johali, 2019). The interesting cosmos of Wiki projects ensure high motivation, creativity, and innovation both inside and outside the classroom and enable learning experiences to flourish in anxiety-reduced settings (Awada & Diab, 2018). Finally, language instructors should utilize wiki-based activities to enrich the repertoire of their teaching practice by keeping in mind wiki as a motivation tool (Özdemir & Aydın, 2015).

4.4 Cultural Awareness

With the rise of communication across cultures, intercultural competence has deserved an important place in granting opportunities for individuals to communicate effectively with each other (Arcagok & Yılmaz, 2020). Here comes to the scene the question of how to teach culture and how students acquire intercultural competence among EFL or ESL instructors (Ducate & Steckenbiller, 2013). In their project, they favored employing wikis for systematic integration of culture and authentic texts in a beginner-level German course in higher education in the USA (Ducate & Steckenbiller, 2013). The preliminary objectives of the study were accomplished as a result of students’ active engagement in the analysis of authentic cultural passages to extend their knowledge of values, practices, and beliefs both of the target culture and their own culture. Also, the activities can create a familiarity of cultural values, traditions, or history of the target community while they are given a chance to improve writing abilities in the target language (Sánchez-Gómez et al., 2017).

In today’s world, having cultural sensitivity has become inevitable considering the fact that globalization has strengthened mutual dependency and multicultural communications (Dunnett et al., 1986). As in the case of the EFL context, learners have a limited likelihood to expose authentic language learning environments. Nevertheless, integrating cross-cultural projects into language classrooms through wiki workspaces can overcome the possibility of undergoing culture shock in real-life communications with foreigners. Moreover, it enables learners to embrace cultural sensitivity, open-mindedness, compassion, and tolerance for people having various cultural backgrounds (Dunnett et al., 1986). It may be a good idea to integrate wikis into classrooms to cultivate intercultural sensitivity and cultural awareness.

4.5 Autonomous Learning

Proceeding to learn outside the classroom is essential to maximize one’s skills and knowledge of the target language; therefore, language instruction should aim to create self-reliant learners who are able to take control of learning with the help of meaningful activities and tasks. Learner autonomy is usually interpreted as a concept that entails a desire to taking control of their learning which embraces the choices linked to learning intentions, types of activities, and assessment (Sinclair, 2000). Adding a dynamic nature to its definition, Little (2007) and Benson (2001) suggested that autonomous learning embodies not only learners’ capabilities but also a continuous process of the interaction between students and the teacher. Autonomous learning bears importance to maximize motivation and confidence in investing in language learning. Technology grants flexible learning chances that may aid in self-directed learning practices. When performing language tasks, the language learners acted not only as an individual but also as a collaborative group member by contributing information to the group tasks (Kessler & Bikowski, 2010).

Being aware of flexible learning opportunities granted through wikis and other synchronous and asynchronous Web 2.0 tools becomes quite powerful to build a sense of control that empowers students to make the most of the learning space. As the results unveiled in Sánchez-Gómez et al.’s study, pre-service teachers believed that wikis and discussion boards supported learner autonomy and collaborative learning in a blended course by stating that they created collaborative texts based on their individual and group contributions. Abandoning the conventional focus of previous literature concentrating on learners’ collaborative behavior, attention to form, and attitudes towards wikis in document mode, Nami and Marandi (2014) shifted their focus to the instructional power of wikis, like discussion forums, in thread mode. The nature of the tasks made the instructor passive in the process while students took the responsibility of their learning by determining the content, posts, and discussion topics according to their interests and concerns (Nami & Marandi, 2014). The instructors’ reactive position and flexible learning space proved wikis’ role in building a more student-centered learning environment; that is, learners worked collaboratively, exchanged their ideas, and built meaning and knowledge without the involvement of the instructor (Nami & Marandi, 2014).

All things considered, we can assert the idea that the learner autonomy achieved through the integration of wikis into language instruction provides desirable outcomes linked to language performance, student motivation to invest their language development, knowledge building, and becoming active learners since wikis offer a more interactive and flexible atmosphere for language learners.

4.6 Audience Awareness

Audience awareness is one of the prominent figures having a positive influence on the written products created through online tools, such as wikis, blogs, forums, and so forth since it pushes the authors to build more reader-oriented texts. To clarify, writers attempt to adjust the content, organization, discourse markers, vocabulary, and language mechanics to convey the meaning effectively and efficiently to their audience. It was indicated that language learners paid more attention to the certain characteristics of their written texts on wikis when compared to their paper-pen texts (Ahlholm et al., 2017; Awada & Diab, 2018; Chin et al., 2015; Kuteeva, 2011; Mak & Coniam, 2008).

To exemplify, Mak and Coniam (2008) attempted to explore the implementation of wikis as authentic writing practice for secondary school ESL learners. In this project, students were expected to create a collaborative school brochure with limited involvement of the instructor by using wikis and the final product was printed to be distributed to the parents (Mak & Coniam, 2008). Because there is a real reader community and their audience mostly pays more attention to meaning-related issues in their brochures rather than syntactical and lexical appropriateness, the pupils might feel the need for enrichment in content and creativity in their written texts (Mak & Coniam, 2008). In another study, Kuteeva (2011) indicated that the majority of students used interactional meta discourse markers -mostly preferred engagement markers, self-mentions, and attitude markers- in their argumentative texts. It strengthens the point that students are aware of the reader community and modify their texts by taking their audience into account even if the choice of using interaction markers alters among the students (Kuteeva, 2011). As specified in Alyousef and Picard’s (2011) case study, the employment of multiple meta- discourse markers by students demonstrates that they are well-versed in the diverse characteristics of various genres. This suggests that the wiki project helped ESL business students become more aware of their target audience for each genre (Alyousef & Picard, 2011). In another study, Wichadee (2010) focused at and compared students’ abilities to write English summaries before and after they were taught using wiki, a valuable asset for fostering collaborative learning settings among students. According to the findings of the study, wikis are great learning tools that can help students enhance their writing skills (Wichadee, 2010). On the other hand, students understood that their written work was read, examined, and corrected by all team members, which resulted in a considerable improvement in the participants’ score (Wichadee, 2010).

Briefly, collaborative writing tasks in wikis might help the language learners to raise a sense of the reader-writer relationship; correspondingly, students can enrich their written products in terms of content, creativity, and language mechanics.

5 Wiki-Based Tasks and Activities

Wikis are a form of the collaborative learning environment in which people can work together to create communal outputs (Lund, 2008). Wiki tools were mostly used for writing tasks in classrooms such as writing articles in pairs (Ahlholm et al., 2017), group reports (Doult & Walker, 2014; Zorko, 2009), compositions (Lin & Yang, 2011; Zou et al., 2016), newspaper articles, and job applications (Zou et al., 2016), argumentative essays (Aydın & Yıldız, 2014; Elola & Oskoz, 2010; Kuteeva, 2011), narrative essays (Chin et al., 2015; Kost, 2011; Li & Zhu, 2017), expository essays (Hsu, 2019; Hsu & Lo, 2018), persuasive essays (Kwan & Yunus, 2015), informational and decision-making essays (Aydın & Yıldız, 2014), summaries (Wichadee, 2010), collaborative writing projects (Coniam & Lee, 2008; Franco-Camargo & Camacho-Vásquez, 2018; Özkan, 2015 Sánchez-Gómez et al., 2017); process-based writing tasks (Çelik & Aydın, 2016); and wiki-based business writings (Kassem, 2017; Wang, 2015).

Aside from those writing tasks, several authors made use of wiki tools for assigning online assignments (Martin, 2011), dictating a list of conversation dialogues (Chen, 2008); creating a school brochure (Mak & Coniam, 2008), reading authentic cultural texts about the target culture, discussion and creating a wiki post for the other classes to read on Wikispaces (Ducate & Steckenbiller, 2013). Moreover, wikis were used for promoting learners’ vocabulary growth by generating a vocabulary wiki on Wikispaces with illustrative presentations and podcasts (Al-Johali, 2019; Khany & Khosravian, 2014) and an online biomedical dictionary on PBwiki (Nikiforou, 2019). For instance, Alyousef and Picard (2011) created a problem-based learning activity that requires six group members to participate in online discussions that will culminate in co-authoring a report. Also, Miyazoe and Anderson (2010) utilized wikis to create a page that requires translating English course content into Japanese collaboratively. Finally, a distinctive example of the use of wiki tools was a class wiki synthesizing the course content on culture (Kessler & Bikowski, 2010).

6 PB Works/PB Wiki

PB Works or PB wiki is a public web service offering a user-friendly collaborative authoring tool for its users (Yundayani et al., 2020). It has various facilities. Firstly, it is easy to create student accounts without using email accounts to open up a space for teamwork through PB wiki. With the help of automated notifications, easy editing and sharing features make PB works as a practical tool for integrating technology into language classrooms. Finally, its users can easily access their workspaces via their computers, tablets, or smartphones.

6.1 Creating Teacher Account

First of all, to create a workspace on PB Works, you can go to the following link: https://www.pbworks.com/. Next, click on Get Started, and then EDU Hub. Among three available plans- Campus, Classroom, and Basic, you can choose the Basic option if you do not want a paid membership (See Figs. 1 and 2).

Fig. 1

Homepage of PB Works

Fig. 2

Pricing plans

Then, you can write down a name for your workspace and select the non-commercial use only option and sign up by using your email (See Fig. 3). After that, you can select either anyone or only people I invite or approve options to designate who will be allowed to view your workspace for security settings (See Fig. 4). After accepting PB Works Terms of Service, your account will be set up.

Fig. 3

Creating a teacher account

Fig. 4

Security settings and terms of service

6.2 Creating Student Account on PB Wiki

Once you have created your workspace on PB Wiki, you can easily create your students’ accounts with the following steps provided in this section.

PB wiki offers two options for creating classroom accounts: generating student accounts with/without emails. In this part, the following steps help you to give access to your students to your workspace without using their emails. First, you can click on the Users tab on the main page, and then press add more users (Fig. 5). If you wish to generate classroom accounts, click on create accounts for your students option (Fig. 6).

Fig. 5

Adding users to your workspace

Fig. 6

Creating classroom accounts

Next, you can decide how many students will be registered and their permission level: reader, writer, editor.

• Reader option allows your students to read pages, but not to add and delete content.

• Writer option allows your students to read and add content, but not to add and/or delete it.

• Editor option allows your students to read, add, and delete the content.

Then, you can either enter your students’ names or generate nicknames and passwords automatically (Fig. 7). In order to share usernames with your students, you can print out the user list and distribute them (Fig. 8).

Fig. 7

Usernames and passwords

Fig. 8

Sharing usernames and passwords

After generating classroom accounts, it is possible to modify or delete students’ accounts easily, if needed (Fig. 9).

Fig. 9

Modifying and deleting classroom accounts

7 Challenges and Possible Solutions

Integrating technology into education can be a challenging attempt due to several reasons; however, anticipating the possible obstacles and generating contingency plans for them might diminish the undesirable experiences.

7.1 Lack of Training

When utilizing any synchronous and asynchronous sites and applications in language instruction, training students become crucial to make the most of the activities and tasks designed on wiki workspaces since most of the difficulties encountered emerged from technical problems and unfamiliarity of the wiki platform (Al-Johali, 2019; Chen, 2008; Franco-Camargo & Camacho-Vásquez, 2018). It is a good idea to conduct a face-to-face training session to maximize students’ ICT competency. Considering the heavy burden of the instructors, group leaders can be trained to assist their peers in collaborative tasks on wikis. Besides, videos that include detailed instruction on how to use wiki-platform can be a way of solving the potential predicaments.

7.2 Inappropriate Posting and Unintentional Deletions

As stated earlier, wikis are usually utilized for collaborative writing tasks; nevertheless, there might be some instances creating disappointment and demotivation on the part of the learners in collaborative tasks on wikis when other members of the group attempted to edit inappropriately and/or remove the content accidentally (Augar et al., 2004; Doult & Walker, 2014; Özkan, 2015). Reducing the inappropriate posting and unintentional deletions among the members of wiki groups is possible when the instructors set clear written guidelines in terms of editing the content (Augar et al., 2004). Besides, the unique features of wiki tools- authentication and tracking allow wiki users to trace the alteration made in the content and secure wiki content against previously mentioned problems (Augar et al., 2004).

7.3 The Role of Instructors

One of the key benefits of wiki-based tasks is to create a flexible and interactive environment for students to take control of their learning and to become autonomous learners who determine the content, posts, and discussion topics according to their interests and concerns. Students are not merely content-creators in the social collaborative sites but they negotiate and collaborate with their peers to agree on the accuracy, meaning, relevance, and so forth. However, the dominance of the teacher might restrict the chance of students becoming self-aware, motivated, and self-sufficient individuals. Therefore, the instructors should play the role of facilitator, coordinator, counselor, or coach not the sole owner of the wiki platforms.

7.4 Task Design

Another problem that is encountered when utilizing wikis in language instruction emerges from the inappropriate task design in collaborative tasks since task design bears importance to ensure fruitful reflection and evaluation of their work as a group to raise the quality of collaborative group works and to invest in language development (Özkan, 2015). For instance, it was demonstrated that even if the pupils showed much more investment in the project at the beginning, student participation decreased through the end of the semester due to the problems and challenges; that is the unavailability of assessment of wiki-tasks and gradual increase of task difficult (Salaber, 2014). On the other hand, students might not have a clear distinction between collaborative and cooperative tasks. Instead of dividing up the tasks, students should be able to create a work or build knowledge jointly through ongoing interaction, negotiate the necessary points together and produce a jointly-created product at the end of the process. The reason why students tend to divide the tasks is associated with showing less effort for peer-review, meeting course requirements only, and not embracing the intention of the project, task, or activity (de Arriba, 2017). To prevent this, the instructor should offer learners a clear image of expectations and guidelines for the tasks designed in wikis and other social networking sites.

8 Summary

A wiki is an open user-friendly space allowing its users to locate, create, edit, and share information quickly (Trocky & Buckley, 2016). The unique affordances of wikis have caught the attention of educational experts, instructors, and researchers since technological advances have pushed instructors to move beyond the traditional teaching methods and approaches. The objective is to review the literature of wikis in educational contexts by providing information related to the research design of the studies, the educational contexts in which wikis are used, and the key findings in the selected articles. Overall findings will be summarized in this section.

Firstly, researchers favored employing various research designs to explore the potentials of wikis for teaching and learning. The most frequent research designs were case studies, mixed-method and experimental research conducted in different contexts ranging from the Middle East to South and North America. Another significant point to mention is that most of the studies carried out in higher education. K-12 education and post-graduate education remain scarce in this field. The tendency to performing projects at the tertiary level might be associated with the maturity of the students since wiki-enhanced activities require a certain level of technological competency. It is a good idea to open up a space for wiki workspaces in secondary or maybe primary levels when we consider the positive influences of wikis on learning.

Moreover, the prior research confirmed the advantages of wikis for language teaching and learning in light of the studies conducted in different contexts and fields. The nature of wiki tools made them a perfect medium of learning collaboratively, particularly collaborative writing. It is demonstrated that collaboration promotes the performances of the learners as a result of mutual support through giving, receiving advice, or offering help (Lin & Yang, 2011). Peer corrections in wiki-writing tasks enabled students to learn from each other’s mistakes. Moreover, wiki tools have the potential of improving other language skills, including writing, grammar, vocabulary, and speaking, and so forth. It was also noted that wikis could be motivating and engaging instruments both inside and outside the classroom and enable learning to prosper in anxiety-reduced settings (Awada & Diab, 2018). What’s more, intercultural competence is regarded as the fifth skill in second language learning, and it is deemed important to manage effective and smooth communication with other individuals from the target culture. In other words, holding only grammatical competence is not sufficient to achieve effective and smooth communication. To fulfill that aim, wikis can be advantageous workspaces to create a familiarity of cultural values, traditions, or history of the target community among the participants through collaborative tasks with native and non-native students (Sánchez-Gómez et al., 2017). Further, there is growing support for the notion that social collaborative sites might maximize the opportunities of developing a sense of control that empowers students to make the most of the learning space; that is called autonomous learning. Flexible learning environments granted by wikis make it possible for learners to continue learning outside the classroom with the help of ongoing interaction and negotiation between peers and the instructors since learner autonomy is quite important to promote motivation and confidence in advancing language learning (Benson, 2001; Little, 2007). Another benefit of wikis in language learning is to build up learners’ audience awareness in their written products. Knowing that there is a real reader community enables students to build more reader-oriented texts by modifying the content, organization, discourse markers, vocabulary, and language mechanics to convey the meaning effectively and efficiently to their audience.

In conclusion, wikis can be utilized for endless purposes in educational settings to achieve more effective, creative, and enthusiastic instructions. However, there can be some challenges when implementing wikis in educational settings, such as lack of training, inappropriate posting of the content and unintentional deletions, the dominance of instructors in wiki tasks, and inappropriate design of tasks. To overcome these difficulties, it is important to note that students should be trained on how to use wikis and their various functions, and the instructors should consider learners’ needs and interests when designing activities to get the maximum benefit from wiki tools. Avoiding inappropriate content deletion and posting can be minimized through clear and simple written guidelines in terms of editing the content and exploiting unique features of wiki tools- authentication and tracking, which allows wiki users to trace the alteration made in the content and secure wiki content. Additionally, the teacher’s role should be less dominant and directive to facilitate more learner autonomy in wiki tasks.

9 Sample Classroom Tasks

9.1 Story-Writing

This task was taken from Castañeda and Cho’s (2013) study which was conducted with college students who enrolled in Elementary Spanish II course. The writing assignments in this study were used in addition to regular classroom instruction. Wikispaces (http://wikispaces.com) was utilized to create the website. Students are requested to form small groups of three or four people, each with a leader who set up a master account in a wiki and encouraged all members of the group to contribute to each page as directed by the assignment. The instructor chooses group leaders based on their aptitude for leadership, responsibility, and topic. Each group has to compose four stories collaboratively based on four separate YouTube videos linked in each group’s wiki page by the instructor. Within a 2-week period, each group releases two drafts of each narrative. The four video clips are allotted to the students. The wiki writing process is broken down into six basic parts:

• Step 1: Following grammar instruction, each group is given a few minutes of class time to meet face-to-face to discuss the activity’s arrangement.

• Step 2: Each pupil visits their wiki page and views the video clip at least twice. Each participant is instructed to write at least six sentences explaining what happens in the video segment, using the target grammatical structure, and upload it to their wiki page after seeing it.

• Step 3: The instructor gives students implicit feedback (i.e. revision prompts) in order to ensure that repair their mistakes and enhance their wiki writing as a group.

• Step 4: The instructor gives pupils the opportunity to meet face-to-face again to discuss how to modify and move forward with the second and final revision. The story’s order and coherence are discussed by the students.

• Step 5: The students work together to revise and amend the entire manuscript (not just their individual contributions).

• Step 6: The instructor gives overall feedback through wiki by adopting the role of facilitator in the wiki writing process.

9.2 Dictation Task

This task was taken from Chen’s (2008) experimental study on the effects of incorporating wikis into language classrooms.

• Step 1: The instructor gives a list of conversation dialogues that pupils are to dictate. A thirty- to sixty-second dialogue segment is allocated to each pupil. Within the class, each student is assigned to a separate portion than the others. Each pupil is also given a portion of dialogue from another member to critique. Also, every student in the groups is given a specific role to play and is expected to carry it out. The roles of the students are illustrated below: (a) Checker of understanding is functioned as group leaders who facilitate group conversations and ensure that everyone in the group understands the content; (b) Recorder keeps track of everyone’s assignments and makes sure they are completed, (c) Elaborator clarifies and expands on key or ambiguous concepts and lexical items, (d) Encourager praises each group member’s effort and invites those who remain mute to join in the discussions, and (e) Praiser praises the members when they show improvement.

• Step 2: Students are expected to listen to the assigned dialogue and record the dialogue in written format word by word. They have 4 days before the class meeting to submit their dictation to the wiki. Each group member is assigned to review one of his or her group members’ allotted work by amending others’ wiki postings. Following the submission of the assignment, the correct product is displayed to the others.

• Step 3: This group task is graded, and feedback is given by the instructor. Each group work receives a 100-point mark, with each word receiving an equal score (See Appendix 1). Within the group, everyone gets the same grade. Besides, students are expected to submit out group evaluation sheets at the end of the course to dissuade freeloaders (See Appendix 2).

Appendixes

1.1 Appendix 1

Assessment Rubric.

Responsibility	Performer	Score
Dictation Assignment (Group members in one group get the same score)	All members	100
Discussion participation every week	All members	30
Post individual dictation assignment 4 days midnight before class on the wiki	All members	Yes -10/No- 0
Critique assigned dialogue and post feedback on the wiki before class meeting	All members	Yes -10/No- 0
Make sure members understand the course content by asking members on the wiki discussion area if anyone has any questions	Checker of understanding	0–20
Make sure the required assignment is accomplished by members on time and remind members if any assignment is not accomplished by posting reminder on the wiki discussion area	Recorder	0–20
Elaborate and explain at least 3 important vocabularies and 1 phrase or unclear concepts and vocabularies if any member asks	Elaborator	0–20
Encourage group members’ contribution and ask members who participate in discussions less than twice every week by posting request on the wiki	Encourager	0–20
Praise individuals in the group when they make progress by posting on the wiki discussion area such as “Good job!” “Great idea!” “That’s right”	Praiser	0–20

1.2 Appendix 2

Group Evaluation Form.

Member 1 name:

1. The extent to which the member contributes to our group work (1–10) 2. The extent to which the member gets along with others in the group (1–10) 3. The extent to which the member submits his/her work before due date (1–10) 4. Recommendation or comments:

Member 2 name:

1. The extent to which the member contributes to our group work (1–10) 2. The extent to which the member gets along with others in the group (1–10) 3. The extent to which the member submits his/her work before due date (1–10) 4. Recommendation or comments:

Member 3 name:

1. The extent to which the member contributes to our group work (1–10) 2. The extent to which the member gets along with others in the group (1–10) 3. The extent to which the member submits his/her work before due date (1–10) 4. Recommendation or comments:

Member 4 name:

1. The extent to which the member contributes to our group work (1–10) 2. The extent to which the member gets along with others in the group (1–10) 3. The extent to which the member submits his/her work before due date (1–10) 4. Recommendation or comments:

Member 5 name:

1. The extent to which the member contributes to our group work (1–10) 2. The extent to which the member gets along with others in the group (1–10) 3. The extent to which the member submits his/her work before due date (1–10) 4. Recommendation or comments: