The Wiki Quality Instrument: Adaptation Guidelines for Educators and Researchers

Abstract

This is the third in a series of three white papers introducing the Wiki Quality Instrument (WQI), an instrument for measuring opportunities to develop 21st Century Skills in Wiki Learning environments. The WQI is a coding instrument used by trained researchers that measures the presence or absence of 24 behaviors that provide opportunities for students to develop skills in expert thinking, complex communication, and new media literacy. It has been used to evaluate excellence and equity in the use of wikis in K-12 settings.In Part V, I suggest adaptation guidelines for educators interested in using the WQI in their own practice. I describe how school leaders might use the WQI to evaluate the use of wikis in a school or district, and I suggest how teachers might adapt the WQI into their own rubrics for wiki projects. In Part VI, I suggest adaptation guidelines for other scholarly researchers interested in using the WQI in their own work. I suggest ideas for adapting the WQI for other wiki studies and how the WQI could be a template for studying other online environments. In Paper Number 1 of this white paper series, I present the coding manual of the WQI and describe the training guidelines and instrument protocols. In Paper Number 2 of this series, I describe the research behind the development of the WQI and its associated protocols.