User:Cormaggio/Research proposal

This is Cormac Lawler's MSc research proposal.

Developing and evaluating a learning environment: Wikiversity

Introduction

My research is focused on the creation of an online learning environment, called Wikiversity. Wikiversity is in the process of being set up as a sister project of the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organisation, which develops free, collaborative, and multilingual educational resources (Wikimedia Foundation, 2006). These resources, such as its best-known project, Wikipedia, are based on (and take their name from) a system called a ‘wiki’, which is a website that anyone can edit, and so are created through the collaborative work of a large, international community, which, apart from three paid staff, is entirely voluntary. During the last year, the board of the Wikimedia Foundation has begun to delegate its work to a number of committees - one of these is the Special Projects committee (Meta, 2006 Spc), of which I am a member, and which has authorised me to organise a committee on creating Wikiversity as a separate Wikimedia project. The work done on this committee has been to synthesise the various views of what Wikiversity should be into a coherent proposal – essentially based around the provision of materials and the formation of communities around the use and development of these materials (Meta, 2006 Wmp).

Setting up Wikiversity will incorporate a number of things, not least a substantial, possibly systemic, change for the Wikimedia Foundation (ie. allowing the hosting of original research), and the process has not been without its conflicts and disagreements within the community. In addition to the interest within the Wikimedia community, there is interest in collaboration from universities and other educational organisations, and so, in other words, developing Wikiversity has involved the energising of a group of people to work together toward its creation. The ‘systemic’ component of this process will constitute my (current) MSc research, which will provide a launching pad for, and hopefully some insight into, my PhD research.

Rationale

Much has now been written about wikis in general and Wikipedia in particular, but Wikiversity is virgin territory in terms of research, and, I think, this alone would justify its study (though I anticipate more research to be begun when it is set up). Furthermore, Wikimedia has not been studied overall in organisational terms, except for partially in my own MEd dissertation (Lawler, 2005b), and my personal rationale for undertaking this study, therefore, is primarily because I am interested in the development of Wikiversity, but also to contribute to the development of Wikimedia as a learning organisation. On this, I should add that there has been much discussion over the last year, particularly recently, about the nature of the organisation of the Wikimedia Foundation as distinct from the Wikimedia community (including the setting up of committees, such as the Special projects committee), and this will constitute a significant focus of my MSc. However, as my research questions show, this is not an organisational analysis per se, but rather an analysis of the organisational processes and structures through which Wikiversity has been discussed.

A literature review that I have conducted of the area of wikis in education (Lawler, 2006) reveals that there is an increasing amount of work being done, especially within the last two years. Online learning is itself a rapidly expanding field (Williams, 2002) with a variety of working models (Cummings et al., 2002), often used in the training of teachers themselves (eg. Motteram, 2006); and educational work with wikis has largely been around facilitating collaboration within an existing course structure, working within a constructivist paradigm (Gulati, 2004; Allen, 2005). Wikiversity’s focus will not be purely on materials to be used by teachers in formal settings, but in also functioning as a resource for informal learning – but it still remains unclear, however, as to the extent of informal learning and the exact nature of it – how it works (Selwyn & Gorard, 2004). This has been identified by the Tavistock Institute (2002) as one of the key areas to be addressed in educational research over the coming years, and this will be largely the focus of my PhD. Furthermore, the way that technological innovations are themselves mediated in terms of the organisational processes that form them is an area which needs to be addressed (Whitworth, 2005).

A central research interest of mine is the identity of participants in a community of practice, how identity evolves, how the individual influences the community (and vice versa), ie. how this identity is negotiated (Wenger, 1998) - and this will constitute my overall theoretical framework in this study. Some studies have been completed on the application of these questions to Wikipedia (eg. Bryant et al., 2005), including a look at the process and nature of conflict (Lawler, 2005a; Matei & Dobrescu, 2006), but further research is needed to fully explore the dynamics at play in addressing these questions in a broader scope than simply the workings of Wikipedia.

On the basis of my literature review and ongoing work and interests in Wikiversity and other Wikimedia projects, I can outline my primary research question as:

• By what processes and structures has Wikiversity been developed, and how have particular processes/structures negotiated its development?

Within this question, there are a whole set of questions about aspects of culture, conflict, identity, (the) community, (the) organisation and the individual, as well as the way that people themselves use, commune, and communicate via the internet (Wellman et al., 2003) - all of which I will not go into in great detail here, but rather attempt to address them through reference to my methodology and its implications.

Methodology

There has been much discussion generated about Wikiversity since its conception in 2003, much of it quite divergent. Most of this is publicly accessible (on Meta , or in the archives of the ‘foundation-l’ mailing list ) as a document (or archive) of the discussion that has led up to Wikiversity’s development so far. This will constitute much of my data, and I will be analysing this from my aforementioned theoretical background of constructivist, collaborative learning and communities of practice, more details of which are covered in the next section.

To add to this, I have drafted a short questionnaire (see Appendix 1), which I will be sending via email to a number of the people who have taken part in the development of Wikiversity to date. I count 36 people who have taken part on the relevant wiki discussion pages - of whom about half have made significant contributions, and around twelve of whom have been consistently active. There have also been discussions on other pages within Wikimedia, as well as on the ‘foundation-l’ mailing list, in which a number of people who have been key to Wikiversity’s development have taken part - there will be further discussions taking place over the coming months on mailing lists and community spaces about people’s visions for the project and opinions on the current project proposal. I will be looking to send my questions to the active twelve on the aforementioned wiki pages, and about 15-20 others, including those who have been active since discussions on Wikiversity began in 2003. My sampling is purposive, as I feel is appropriate to this type of naturalistic enquiry (Skrtic, 1985), and while I do not intend to deliberately omit anyone from my inquiry, I will be deliberately sampling for a diverse set of participants and perspectives, in order to fully address the social complexities behind my research question.

My previous M.Ed, on how Wikipedia constitutes a learning community, was essentially ethnographic in approach, though with elements of survey design. There is a strong element of ethnography in my current inquiry, in that I am conducting an ongoing study of a community and process in which I have been actively involved for some time. As part of an ethnography, my work also involves participant observation, mediated as it is by the online environment in which it takes place, which has its own limitations and challenges but also opportunities (Wittel, 2000). In addition to my observations (which, essentially is monitoring a wide variety of pages and mailing lists), as well as my questionnaires, I want to provide for ways of allowing conversations and dialogue to take place, and I hope to use my questionnaires to prompt further discussion. In this, I am open to comments from anyone involved - I am only purposively sampling for my questionnaires – so that the rest of my data, while not constituting the entirety of all discussions (as Silverman (1993) says, an “impossible burden” (p. 37)), will attempt to reflect the diversity of opinions and discussions that have been expressed/taken place.

In order to address my interests in identity and community, I am going to be probing deeper into individual case studies of participants of general discussions, and the factors contributing to these people’s roles, positions, and/or participation. I can identify at least five people I would like to further discuss with, particularly those working with me on the committee set up to advise on Wikiversity. In the process of our work on this committee (as well as the Special projects committee), we have had several meetings on synchronous ‘chat’ channels, a medium I would like to explore as a space in which to conduct a reflective focus group interview.

As a participant of this process myself, I will reflect on my role, both as researcher and co-participant, by keeping a reflective diary throughout my research. As indicated, I want this research to contribute to the ongoing development of Wikiversity as a whole, and my reflection will continually critique my own research design’s addressing of that larger goal. While my research is obviously centred on my research questions, I would like to remain open to suggestions from others as to how improve on this design – to retain a methodologically open stance (Jankowski & Van Selm, 2004) – I will be uploading this proposal to my userspace on Meta - it will be linked from my communications on consent to participation (see Appendix 2) – and I will invite comments on it on its discussion page.

Finally, I should make reference to action research, which informs both my rationale and my methodology in this study. As Adelman (1996) defines it, action research is: “the means of systematic enquiry for all participants in the quest for greater effectiveness through democratic participation” (p. 7). There have been reservations expressed about how democratic the process of setting up Wikiversity has been up till now (currently facilitated by a committee, members of whom have been chosen - not elected, nor applied themselves). Obviously, my research is an attempt to address this question, and to see what could have been done or what could still be done to improve the process of getting Wikiversity set up. I would also like to be open about and investigate the way that my research changes (or not) my own role or identity as researcher or that of any of the participants in the study (Biott, 1996), many of whom I very much regard as co-researchers, with whom I am formulating the goals of this research (Parker, 1999).

Data analysis

A wiki is a predominantly text-based environment, and so language, and the use of language, is key to how it works - as Ebersbach and Glaser (2004) point out, a wiki page is a “never finished summary of an ongoing discussion” (p. 6). I will be analysing participants’ interactions (including myself), and looking at how they constitute a discourse, and how this is influenced by and itself influences the discourse of Wikiversity, and even Wikimedia overall. Essentially this will be a critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2003), looking at discourses as “practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak” (Foucault, 1972, p. 49). Even though web-based data is relatively untouched by critical discourse analysis (Mautner, 2005), I have myself already found this useful in analysing conflicts that occur within pages in Wikipedia. However, I will adopt other strategies as I feel appropriate – there are aspects to the data that I have identified would be useful to take a grounded theory approach to (particularly the questionnaires), and others where a narrative analysis would be appropriate, in order to bring out the richness in the stories that I find and, in particular, recurring and contradicting aspects of identity in a community of practice. Overall, I will be drawing from a range of analytical procedures to apply the method which is most appropriate to the data I collect, including the use of NVivo software to help map and correlate the data, as well as for display purposes.

Ethics

Ethics is more than simply promising anonymity to the research participants, and I am aware of the complexities in publishing research, where much of my data will have already been ‘published’, ie written on the internet. Walther (2002) points out the ambiguities in whether various communications online are public or private, or whether the researcher is intervening in any way. There may also be a distaste in the corpus of action research in general for the anonymity of participants (Punch, 1998). In any case, I will err on the side of caution; I will be treating my research as an intervention, and one which requires a deep responsibility to the participants in my research; I will assure participants confidentiality as a default (as I will follow all of the BERA (2004) guidelines); and will ensure that the opportunity to opt out of the research will always be available. Full details of who I am and what I am doing will be made explicit on my user pages (I will upload this proposal to my userspace on Meta), which will be linked to with every communication I have with participants. I will be explicitly checking back with people after analysing discussions, observations and interviews, as well as remaining open to comments as a given.

Validity

This process of data collection and analysis and its ethical implications, which I have described, needs to be validated throughout, I feel, by a system of member-checking with the participants of the study, in how they view the data that I have chosen, and my analysis of this. I don’t feel that it is realistic to send a copy of my dissertation to everyone involved, however, so I will instead be making my dissertation selectively available on Meta itself, inviting comments, critiques from participants and other researchers. The obvious criticism that this, being a freely editable page, is susceptible to being radically changed, will be addressed by limiting the process of ‘editing’ my work to putting comments on the related discussion page.

The major issue that remains to be addressed here is my own reflexivity as a researcher. As my own embeddedness in this research is obvious, it is a truism that my own values and assumptions will shape the very nature of the study, from the way I will generate, select, and interpret this data – for example, I am contributing (or have contributed) to the very discourse which I am studying. This is an inherent part of action research design, and one I am entirely comfortable with, though I intend to deal with it with the continual critical vigilence it deserves. My overall stance is obviously interpretive, and this is aspect of the researcher’s inextricable role in the meaning-making of the data is a well-documented feature of this type of research (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1993; Radnor, 2001). I should add that I have taken a long time to understand this community before I began to become involved with it; however knowing the community well often blinds the researcher to the routine or non-exciting (Silverman, 1993), a potential threat I will try to address through the gathering of diverse viewpoints and immersion in the data both that I generate and that I find, as well as my treatment of my research and analysis as an inherently dialogical process (Holt, 2004).

There could be perceived to be a further threat to validity, in the sense that I have (or have had) disagreements with some of the people involved in this process. Some people may not want to participate in my study because of the fact that I am conducting it, and I cannot but simply accept this fact. However, through allowing for and encouraging dialogue to take place (both within and about my research), and by retaining and open, reflective and self-critical stance throughout the process, I want to make it clear to people that I am open to criticism, and, furthermore, I want to allow the data to guide me rather than the other way around – in Maxwell’s words, “[to give] the phenomena that [I am] trying to understand the chance to prove [me] wrong” (Maxwell, 1996, p. 87).

Final comments

Overall, I very much hope the findings of this research will be useful to the people who will have taken part in my research, as well as other past, present, and future participants of Wikiversity. As a widening of this, I hope that this research will be of benefit to the Wikimedia Foundation, by continually critically evaluating the learning process of its projects, as my work last year began.

With reference to the timescale of this study, I anticipate to have the vast majority of my data collected by the middle of July, including the community-wide discussions (though, as already outlined, data will continue to be generated throughout this ongoing process). I don’t expect there to be any serious challenges to getting data, as it is all done through email and wikis, nor will there be any significant budgetary considerations – all of these points are some of the benefits of internet research (Wittel, 2000). The major challenge in this will be to get my analysis done in time to check the validity of my observations and conclusions with the participants, which I plan to make public in chunks, rather than publish the dissertation in its entirety in advance of submitting.

References

Adelman, C. (1993) Kurt Lewin and the origins of action research, Educational Action Research, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp:7-23

Allen, K. (2005) Online learning: constructivism and conversation as an approach to learning, Innovations in Education and Teaching International Vol. 42, No. 3, pp:247–256

BERA (2004) Revised ethical guidelines for educational research, retrieved from: http://www.bera.ac.uk/publications/guides.php

Biott, C. (1996) Latency in action research: changing perspectives on occupational and researcher identities, Educational Action Research, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp:169-183

Bryant, S., Forte, A, Bruckman, A. (2005). Becoming Wikipedian: transformation of participation in a collaborative online encyclopedia. Proceedings of GROUP International Conference on Supporting Group Work, Sanibel Island, FL, pp:1-10.

Cummings, J. A., Bonk, C. J., Jacobs, F. R. (2002) Twenty-first century college syllabi: options for online communication and interactivity, Internet and Higher Education, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp:1–19

Denzin N. K., Lincoln, Y. S. (Eds) The landscape of qualitative research. London: Sage

Dorling, D., Simpson, S. (Eds) Statistics in society: the arithmetic of politics. London: Arnold

Ebersbach, A., Glaser, M. (2004) Towards emancipatory use of a medium: the wiki, International Journal of Information Ethics, Vol. 2, November 2004, pp:70-77

Fairclough, N. (2003) Analysing discourse. London: Routledge

Gulati, S. (2004) Constructivism and emerging online learning pedagogy: a discussion for formal to acknowledge and promote the informal, Annual Conference of the Universities Association for Continuing Education, University of Glamorgan, 5-7 April 2004, retrieved from http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00003562.htm

Hammersley, M., Atkinson, P. (1993) Ethnography: Principles in Practice. London: Sage

Hine, C. (Ed.) (2004) Virtual Methods. Oxford: Berg

Holt, R. (2004) Dialogue on the internet. London: Praeger

Jankowski, N. W., Van Selm, M. (2004) Epilogue: methodological concerns and innovations in internet research, in Hine, C. (Ed.) (2004) Virtual Methods. Oxford: Berg, pp:199-207

Lawler, C. (2005a) Wikipedia as a learning community: content, conflict, and the ‘common good’, Wikimania, 4th-8th August, Frankfurt, 2005. Retrieved from: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Transwiki:Wikimania05/Paper-CL1

Lawler, C. (2005b) Wikipedia as a learning community, M.Ed dissertation, University of Manchester, unpublished

Lawler, C. (2006) Review of the literature on wikis in education, unpublished

Lincoln, Y. S. (Ed.) Organizational Theory and Inquiry. Beverly Hills: Sage

Matei, S. A., Dobrescu, C. (2006) Ambiguity and conflict in the Wikipedian knowledge production system. 56th Annual Conference of the International Communication, Dresden, 19th-23rd June, 2006. Retrieved from: http://www.matei.org/ithink/papers/ambiguity-conflict-wikipedia/

Mautner, G. (2005) Time to get wired: using web-based corpora in critical discourse analysis. Discourse & Society, Vol. 16, No. 6, pp:809–828

Maxwell, J. A. (1996) Qualitative Research Design: an interactive approach. London: Sage. Originally published in 1941

Meta (2006 Spc) Special projects committee, retrieved from: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_projects_committee

Meta (2006 Wmp) Wikiversity:Modified project proposal, retrieved from: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity/Modified_project_proposal

Motteram, G. (2006) ‘Blended’ education and the transformation of teachers: a long-term case study in postgraduate UK Higher Education, British Journal of Educational Technology, Vol. 37, No. 1, pp:17–30

Parker, I. (1999) Qualitative data and the subjectivity of ‘objective’ facts, in Dorling, D., Simpson, S. (Eds) Statistics in society: the arithmetic of politics. London: Arnold, pp:83-88

Punch, M. (1998) Politics and ethics in qualitative research, in Denzin N. K., Lincoln, Y. S. (Eds) The landscape of qualitative research. London: Sage, pp: 156-184

Radnor, P. (2001) Researching your professional practice doing interpretive research. Buckingham: Open University Press

Selwyn, N., Gorard, S. (2004) Exploring the role of ICT in facilitating adult informal learning, Education Communication and Information, Vol. 4, No. 2/3, pp:293-310

Silverman, D. (1993) Interpreting Qualitative Data. London: Sage

Skrtic, T. M. (1985) Doing naturalistic inquiry into educational organizations, in Lincoln, Y. S. (Ed.) Organizational Theory and Inquiry. Beverly Hills: Sage, pp:185-220

Tavistock Institute (2002) Review of current pedagogic research and practice in the fields of post-compulsory education and lifelong learning, retrieved from: http://www.tlrp.org/pub/acadpub.html

Walther, J. B. (2002) Research ethics in internet-enabled research: human subjects issues and methodological myopia. Ethics and Information Technology, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp:205–216

Wellman, B., Quan-Haase, A., Boase, J., Chen, W., Hampton, K., Isla de Diaz, I., Miyata, K. (2003) The social affordances of the internet for networked individualism’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Vol. 8, No. 3, retrieved from: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol8/issue3/wellman.html

Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of practice. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press

Whitworth (2005) The politics of virtual learning environments: environmental change, conflict, and e-learning, British Journal of Educational Technology, Vol. 36, No. 4, pp:685–691

Wikimedia Foundation (2006) Home page, retrieved from; http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home

Williams, C. (2002) Learning on-line: a review of recent literature in a rapidly expanding field. Journal of Further and Higher Education, Vol. 26, No. 3, pp:263-272

Wittel, A. (2000) Ethnography on the move: from field to net to internet, Forum: Qualitative Social Research, Vol. 1, No. 1, retrieved from http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/1-00/1-00wittel-e.htm

Appendix 1: Questionnaire

What is your personal vision for Wikiversity?

How is this provided for by the current proposal?

What has been your involvement with, and contribution to, Wikiversity so far?

Do you bring any professional or life experience into its development?

What are your thoughts and feelings on the process of its development so far (eg. including the setting up of the Wikiversity subcommittee)?

Do you have any suggestions on what could/should be done on/for Wikiversity either before its setting up or soon thereafter?

Appendix 2: Request/consent to participate

For questionnaire

Hello,

I am Cormac Lawler, User:Cormaggio <link>, and I am conducting my MSc research on the process of the imagining, planning, developing and setting up of Wikiversity <link to proposal>. As someone who has participated in these discussions, I would like to ask if you could inform me better on your own personal perspective of the process so far.

If this is ok with you, I would like to send you a very short questionnaire on your thoughts about Wikiversity. If possible, I would like this to prompt further questions and discussion. I would be happy to further discuss details of data and anonymity (which I will guarantee as far as is possible and, always, within your consent).

Please let me know how you feel about this, or, if relevant, what aspects of this you are unclear on, or unhappy with.

Regards,

Cormac Lawler

For consent to use comments on mailing lists/wikis

Hello,

I am Cormac Lawler, User:Cormaggio <link>, and I am conducting my MSc research on the process of the imagining, planning, developing and setting up of Wikiversity <link to proposal>. As someone who has participated in these discussions, I would like to ask if it would be ok to use an email/comment you made on <insert details of page/mailing list, and date>.

Are you willing to allow the full or partial use of your email/comment? If partial, which parts do you want me to leave out? Also, are you willing to be identified as the author of this email/comment? If so, what name do you wish to be identified as (ie. real name/username)?

I am happy to further discuss any details of this with you – please let me know if anything is still unclear to you.

Regards,

Cormac Lawler