Students Experiences of Using Wiki Spaces to Support Collaborative Learning in a Blended Classroom: A Case of Kenyatta and KCA Universities in Kenya

Abstract

Wiki spaces are simply web pages that allow users to create, edit and share each other’s work. This paper shares experiences from a group of students who were using the Wiki spaces in their course work. It attempts to use collaborative knowledge building theory to evaluate the existing Wiki spaces practices in order to inform stakeholders on the power of Wiki spaces in setting students on a knowledge building trajectory. The respondents were 150 university students from Kenyatta and KCA universities in Kenya whose lecturers had created Wiki spaces for collaborative group tasks as part of their coursework during the September to December 2013 semester. More than 50% of the students found the Wiki spaces promoting the various aspects of knowledge building such as reflective learning and propagating idea diversity to be useful. This paper underscores the importance of Wiki spaces as environments for positioning today’s students on a knowledge building track which is a skill set requirement for the 21st century graduate. Keywords: Wiki spaces, Collaborative knowledge building, Collaborative learning, Students experiences.