Wikis – competition vs collaboration

This overlaps with the Research Methods course. The idea of designing a role-play that utilises a competitive wiki still appeals. It might be a good way of facilitating language learning. It might need to be complemented with synchronous meetings.

The Research Methods bit – I was thinking of comparing Japanese learners’ participation in such an exercise / project with a face-to-face role-play along similar lines – faltered because there are just so many variables that it seems impossible to draw any conclusions whatsoever, no matter what the outcome.

Instead, there is now the idea of comparing an online collaborative role-play – like the Loch Ness exercise – with an online collaborative / competitive one. Thus the research is purely exploratory, and there isn’t so much pressure to come up with explanatory data. It might show, if used with several groups, some pattern of participation. Are learners more involved when in competition – particularly if set up as a kind of points-acquiring game.

Data can reasonably simply be drawn from observing the history of changes in the wiki and how many entries are made.

Very important: set-up of the exercise needs to be extremely clear to ensure learners understand the (possibly) motivating factors.

Maybe…