Collaboration at a distance: using a wiki to create a collaborative learning environment for distance education and on-campus students in a social work course

Abstract

Continuing moves towards more flexible approaches to the provision of higher education have been reflected in the increased provision of social work education through distance learning and the related increase in the use of online technologies for social work education. This article reports on the use of a wiki in a final year social work subject. Wiki technology was used to create a collaborative learning environment where on-campus and distance students were able to work together to produce assessable material. Drawing on student comments regarding the process and outcomes of the wiki assignment, a number of issues and benefits of the use of wikis in social work education are identified and discussed.