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RUNNING HEAD: WIKISPACES

Action Research: WikiSpaces

Justin Logan

Siena Heights University

October 17, 2017


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Scenario

The scene for this paper is going to be in an undergraduate college classroom for athletic

training students. The problem being faced is with the advancement of distance learning and e-

colleges, athletic training programs are being forced to allow, to an extent, some online courses

for ease. For example, most of the Doctorate in Athletic Training (DAT) courses or graduate

level Masters degree (MS), as opposed to entry level Masters, are doing online programs with

only a week or two of face to face at the end of the semester for validation and assessment. Also,

with athletic trainers needing to work as a member of a team, they need to be able to work as a

part of a group. This is where the Web 2.0 Collaboration Tool comes into play. This allows these

programs to assign group projects while being able to monitor the amount of group work that

happens.

Coursework

The specific coursework is going to be in developing a rehabilitation program for a

patient. There will be a variety of injuries, settings, and ages for the students to work with and

through setbacks along the way given by the instructor at different times. The group needs to

work together to create a cohesive rehabilitation program, from when they enter the athletic

training facility to when they are fully cleared with no more injury, with videos, pictures, and

written explanations for each exercise and conquer each setback as they come. One of these

patients will be a middle-aged construction worker collecting workers compensation. Another

will be a high school football player with a college scholarship riding on him returning to play.

The final issue is going to be an elderly woman that is trying to recover from a total hip

replacement surgery. Athletic training sees a variety of patients in different settings and must be
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prepared to see different injuries with varying degrees of motivation, compliance, pain tolerance,

and ability to perform the tasks asked.

Obstacle

This is a project that needs to be done over Spring break. Since many students do not live

near their higher education institution, the problem must be done over the internet and

WikiSpaces is the site the assignment is to be done on.

WikiSpaces

Wikispaces.com allows an instructor to create an online classroom and assign people to

specific groups. On the part of the teacher, they need to email an invitation code for the class to

each student and have them join in on their personal log in, then assign the group members to

their own team. From there, the students can work together in their group and all the teacher

must do is upload the guidelines and monitor performance and participation.

Pros and Cons

One of the best features of this collaboration tool is that students can create their own

discussion boards for their own problems and discuss their participation and spread out

responsibility how they see fit. This is what makes WikiSpaces a Collaboration tool first and a

Communication tool second. One of the negative features of WikiSpaces is that it is does take a

bit of time to truly master the website. There are many different avenues to take and many

options to truly create a very individual and specific online classroom, and it takes a bit of

patience to figure it out and customize it to the ideal precision.

Skills Required

The skills required for the use of WikiSpaces is the ability to organize and delegate. As

mentioned previously, this is a very complicated website to get used to but once a small to
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moderate amount of use has been put into it, the WikiSpace can become exactly what the teacher

needs and wants. The environment can be strictly controlled to decrease the amount of clutter

and foster an environment as beneficial as a face-to-face classroom

Resources

The only resources needed to use WikiSpaces is a computer, the internet, and some time

to execute the project and create the ideal classroom. If the classroom is being used for education

purposes, or set up by an educator, the program is free to use. If it is used by a business or a

small group, there is a fee and cost to use the website depending on how much space is wanted

for storage; 2 GB is $100 a year, 5GB is $400 a year, and 1000GB starts at $2000 a year. The

last one is meant more for medium to large business with a minimum of 100 users working on an

unlimited amount of WikiSpaces.

Implementation

The first thing that must be done is that the teacher must set up the classroom in

WikiSpaces and invite the students to the class. The next thing is to assign the students to their

specific groups with their individual projects. Assigning the teams to one of the three scenarios

mentioned above, high school athlete, construction worker, or elderly post-surgical patient, must

have their own demographic and medical history developed and given to the students. From here,

the instructions must be given to work as a team and develop their own rehab program how they

see fit. The instructor can interrupt the progress of the patient with a setback in rehabilitation to

further simulate a realistic scenario. This can be done with a broad message to all students, or as

a discussion board entry in each individual teams page to individualize the project. The students

will be given the week of Spring break to work on this project and the projects will be discussed

in class upon return to campus. Creative freedom is the idea of this project to allow the students
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to use their imagination and challenge them intellectually while introducing them to a new web

program besides Google Docs.

Follow up

WikiSpaces was successfully implemented in the project. The students had a difficult

time navigating the site in the beginning as anticipated but became more comfortable using it

toward the second and third day the project was open. Student engagement was improved

because they could control the speed of the project to their needs and the inherent creativity

needed for the program was fostered by the way WikiSpaces works, by allowing the students to

truly be creative. The students could bounce ideas off each other in the discussion board and

provide criticism, mostly positive, and really feed off each other with ideas for their individual

portions.

Recommendation

I would indeed recommend WikiSpaces to others. It allows for almost complete creative

freedom, the ability to communicate with people in a controlled place, and allows the

teacher/trainer/manager to monitor the progress and the discussions in one spot with ease. The

users can effectively communicate and work on different parts of the same project with ease in a

specific place and keep the rest of their needs separate. The disadvantage that I would identify

with WikiSpaces is that it takes a bit of getting used to, to effectively use it to its full potential.

With all that being said, I would give it an 8/10 because you get the communication tool inside

of the collaboration tool and creates an ideal location to focus on the task and reduce potential

distractors. I absolutely plan on using WikiSpaces in the future, maybe in the same manner as I

suggested for the scenario.


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Reference

Wikispaces. (n.d.). Retrieved October 17, 2017, from http://www.wikispaces.com/

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