Wikis for collaborative learning, knowledge construction, critical thinking, and contextual application

The university where I work is a 100% online university catering to the needs of military, veteran, and nontraditional students. Despite the fact that we are 100% online, we have never had a dedicated student technical support team.

Student Advisors, who are hired for experience in customer service, customer retention, academic advising, and training, are expected to provide a basic level of technical support to students who have issue in our online portal or with a university-provided software program. Many of the issues students encounter are outside the scope of what an Advisor has the ability to do. This lack of knowledge pushed advisors to submit service desk tickets to the internal tech support team, overloading them with not only employee technical issues, but student issues as well. It is estimated that approximately 250 requests are submitted for student support beyond what an Advisor has the capability for which to solve. On top of that 250, approximately 1100 password resets were requested by students - a capability advisors do have. Both teams were becoming overloaded with the amount of work necessary to support students' technical needs. 

To solve for this issue, it has been mandated that a group of three advisors, three instructors, and four IT staff members form a Tier II support team. Student Advisors and faculty members can bring members of the Tier II support team on the line for support when the Advisor has exhausted his or her knowledge base. As more issues are resolved by the Tier II team, it is the desire of the university to create a knowledge base to prevent the need for Tier II to handle many issues at all. The rationale behind this is two-fold: first, it is assumed that the Tier II team will be able to train teammates on how to handle common problems, and second, if there are repeated technical issues that a smaller team is made aware of, it is likely that these issues can be universally solved. 

To make the transition to this team a smooth one, I will conduct an initial training session titled, "Tier II: When Clearing Cache and Cookies Just Isn't Enough" for all Advisors. In attendance will be the 40-person Advising department, comprised of Advisors, Assistant Managers, Managers, a Director, and a Vice President. 75% of this department would fall under the category of "millennial." The remaining 25% fall somewhere between Baby Boomer and Generation X. These generational differences must be taken into consideration when training on something as divisive as technical support can be. Millennials are "digitally literate, connected, immediate, experiential, social," team-oriented, structured, and like to learn things that can be applied to their current situation (West & West, 2009). 

After the initial classroom training, several follow-up trainings will be conducted based on feedback received through online collaboration. In order to share gained knowledge, it is crucial that knowledge be shared in some editable format, and a wiki is the very best way to create a collaborative knowledge base. 

Week 1: Initial training on Tier II process
The Tier II team will be introduced, and the process by which the team will be utilized will be explained. The nearly empty wiki hub will be unlocked for users to view, and the initial feedback form will be embedded for use immediately. Over the next week, Advisors will be submitting any technical support calls they take through this form, including but not limited to: 

• Password resets

• Pages not loading

• Assignments not submitting

• Software not downloading

Week 2: Collaboration on the wiki
The data collected through Week 1 will be uploaded to the wiki in an embedded Google Doc, and troubleshooting articles will begin to be created. Advisors who were able to solve complex problems on their own will be given access to specific wiki pages linked on the main technical support hub to add to the knowledge base. The reason for this heavily-collaborative environment is that the "role of the instructor is not to provide learning - it's to provide context" (West & West, 2009).

Week 3: Tier II representatives knowledge creation
Tier II representatives will be given a Google Sheet to collaborate on together, and will meet to discuss the most common problems they face. A wiki page will be created so they can collaborate on possible solutions with the IT department.

Week 4: Continued data collection from Google Form
The internal Grantham University wiki is not openly editable, but there are ways to create collaboration amongst the department. Various things can be included in wiki pages such as embedded Google Forms surveys with the collected data embedded in as a Google Sheet, embedded drop boxes for materials collected to assist with problems, and individual pages that can be edited leading back to the hub page. 


Advisors who have been unable to solve issues other advisors have been able to solve will be partnered with someone who has more technical knowledge. They will be given a Google Sheet similar to the one Tier II representatives were utilizing in Week 3, and by peering with someone more experienced, they may be able to gain more knowledge.

Week 5: Follow-up temperature check in-classroom meeting Advisors will gather in the training room to discuss the most common issues they've noticed, and explain how they feel about the new technical support process. Suggestions will be noted and frequently asked questions will be written down and answered on a viewable wiki page linked from the technical support hub page.

Week 6: Customer service training for IT and academic staff A main concern the university faced in creating the Tier II team was the lack of customer service ability in the members outside of the Advising department. A basic customer service training will be conducted, and calls will be uploaded to the wiki for their own critique and review based on their new customer service skills. A Google Form survey will be embedded on the same page to collect their feedback and make sure their understanding of good customer service aligns with my university's.

Week 7: Focus group A focus group compromised of approximately five advisors with different skill levels will meet to provide honest, open feedback. An anonymous Google survey will be sent out to another five advisors of varied skill level to receive perhaps more honest feedback.

Week 8: Data collection Data of the number of calls will be analyzed compared to the number of Google Feedback Forms submitted, along with feedback received from Advisors. Based on this data, it will be determined whether a dedicated full-time Student Technical Support Team should be created.

To analyze the growth in knowledge, I would recommend a self-evaluation from the advisors compared to the number of Google Form submissions. Additional training can be conducted if necessary.

Wikis - Pros and Cons for Adult Learners

Until a few years ago, all the job aids and information at my work were paper copies that needed to be updated and handed out again at least on a monthly basis.

This was a very labor intensive process, and almost always resulted in someone who may not have been in the office the day the new information was provided holding on to outdated information.

Since I work at an online university, it only made sense to move to some sort of online knowledge database.

Enter Wikispaces. Our university's Admissions Office had used a wiki for about a year and a half before Student Advising (my department) decided to jump on the bandwagon.

As we implemented this new tool, there were several growing pains. First, we had to go through existing pages and make sure all of the information that was previously Admissions-focused was changed to be relevant for both departments. Next, we had to build pages with Student Advising-centric material. All of this was happening in tandem with the creation of the training department, of which I am now a part. I had to quickly re-learn HTML coding to make adjustments to pages, and figure out ways to create interactive tools to make Student Advisors' jobs easier.

Advisors were initially reluctant to let go of their physical resources. It took quite a while to get everyone on board, but once we did, they quickly discovered the usefulness of having information that could be updated in real time.

Earlier this year, senior leadership at my university decided to migrate the internal wiki from Wikispaces to our own system called Redmine in a cost-saving effort. The transition was painful, to say the least. Search terms were not as intuitive, there was no option to mark favorites for easy access, and a lot of the image-hosting ability was eliminated. We had finally created buy-in for the Wikispaces site, and now had an even larger hill to climb to create more buy-in on an inferior hosting site.

Ultimately, however, the benefits of using the knowledge base outweighed the negatives of it being uploaded into Redmine, and the department embraced it once again.

What does this tell us about the pros and cons of using a wiki in an adult learning environment?

First, ultimately, we created a space where thoughts could be "revisited, reused, and repurposed" (King & Cox, 2011). The use of a wiki kept people informed and equipped to handle situations with accurate information at their fingertips.

A community of practice was built, and while our wiki wasn't necessarily collaborative - only certain users can edit pages - we did ask for near constant feedback. When someone provided a tool to me, I would review it for "wiki-ability" and see if I could share the tool via the wiki for everyone to utilize. This prevents some of the security concerns such as a collective bias or inaccurate information being uploaded.

However, despite the careful construction of information, there was always the chance people could interpret information inaccurately. "Learns construct personal interpretation of knowledge based on their previous experience and application of knowledge in relevant context" (Hazari & Moreland, 2009).

On top of that, several tenured employees were not comfortable with the technology and are still reluctant to use the information housed in the wiki. While "technology can only be effective in the learning process when it meets learning requirements," people also must be willing to implement the technology to help them learn and grow.

The biggest issue I've seen is the lack of retention of information, because people know they can always find what they need on the wiki. I am all for utilizing resources, but it's also good to know and understand policy and apply it immediately.

Despite any downsides to using wiki pages for adult learners, they are ultimately practical, political, and timely (King & Cox, 2011).

Resources:
Hazari, S., North, A., & Moreland, D. (2009). Investigating pedagogical value of Wiki technology. Journal of information systems education. 20(2). 187-198.
King, K. & Cox, T. (2011). The professor’s guide to taming technology. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Blogging: Pros and Cons for Adult Learners

As a 2005 high school graduate, I spent a lot of my teenage years exploring the burgeoning world of social media.

I experimented with HTML on my MySpace page and posted angsty things on Xanga and LiveJournal. Facebook was in its early stages when I received my Winona State University email address and was able to create an account.

I even currently (attempt to) maintain my own blog regarding my endocrine disorder and failed attempts at weight loss.

However, I have never spent much time considering how blogs could be used to help adult learners synthesize material. Sure, I have friends who teach at the middle and high school level who have used blogs to help their students learn how to write better, but this felt more like what King & Cox referred to as "skills-based" blogging - giving people a set of guidelines to practice their writing, but not focusing on the content (King & Cox, 2011).

My first Master's degree - an MBA I earned in 2014 - was completed 100% online. I became well-versed in posting in discussion forums and knowing how to write a brief but thorough post that fit in with several other students' posts. Replying to their posts required me to be calculated - affirmative but slightly critical, not too vague but not too specific, and posing a question to allow the discussion to continue.

This method may be slightly confining for the typical adult learner. As Knowles said, adults need to be self-directed in how they learn (King & Cox, 2011). Discussion forums give learners a very specific item to address, while giving a general blog topic not only gives the learner the ability to use their own voice a bit more, but also creating a personal space that reflects individuality. By reading others blogs, "students can obtain a sense of how others digest and make sense of Internet materials" as well (Oravec, 2002). Discussion forums are social by nature, but blogs are social by definition. Learning with a blog is "in situ" or socially situated in context (King & Cox, 2011).

Despite the obvious benefits of blogging, adult learners may run into a "digital disconnect" that requires individuals to not only learn the material, but overcome and learn the technical piece in which they may not be well-versed (King & Cox, 2011). Just in writing this initial post, I had to recall some of my HTML knowledge to format things correctly. If I didn't have this previous knowledge, I may have been confused or frustrated. In order to effectively use blogging, students "must be meaningfully engaged in learning activities" (Santos, 2011). Without the comfort level or buy-in, this engagement may be lost.