Building Collaborative Virtual Communities in a University Department of Early Childhood Education for Wikipedia Article Authoring

Abstract

Collaborative and student-centered learning are endorsed by modern educational approaches and (to a certain degree) are applied to educational environments. Early childhood education puts emphasis on such issues. Wiki environments provide the infrastructure for supporting collaborative learning and student-centered learning tasks. Consequently, wiki activities are gradually becoming part of teacher education curriculum. This chapter discusses issues regarding the incorporation of wikis in teacher education curriculum. The most recent corresponding approaches are categorized according to different views, and the most important findings are discussed. An approach aiming to create collaborative virtual communities for Wikipedia article authoring is also presented. The approach has been applied to a university department of early childhood education. To support communication among participants, face-to-face, e-mail communication, and tools encompassed in an open source Learning Management System were employed. Preliminary results are presented showing a positive response of the pre-service early childhood teachers. Lastly, conclusions and future research directions are outlined.