Teaching Engineering with Wikis.

In this paper we discuss the nature of five university professors' use of wikis in education and their personal epistemologies pertaining to wikis. A group of students collaboratively authoring a wiki article is an epistemologically different practice from students writing individual papers. A wiki-supported learning environment cultivates more student-centered pedagogies by distributing the power of knowing towards the students, which in turn may lead to a formation of a community of practice. How and why professors use wikis in teaching are critical to explore for the efforts to cultivate more student-centered teaching practices in higher education. Study data are collected through individual interviews. Analyses revealed that participants used wikis to improve student collaboration, to reach an optimal solution to a given problem, to form an asynchronous and egalitarian learning medium, to have students negotiate and construct knowledge, and to have students work collectively. According to our participants, wikis provided a medium for communities of practice to begin emerging. However the communities did not fully develop because of the limited time within the course of a semester. We recommend any future studies investigate the ways to cultivate more sustainable wiki-supported learning communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]