The use of wiki in EFl\ESL classrooms

Although wiki-based writing has a great educational potential, yet there are many reasons that make me as an EFL\ESL teacher hesitate to use it in my classroom. The idea of students having a shared document, where they can work collaboratively is great, but when students edit or make changes to each others’ paragraphs it may arise some problems especially with certain cultural background students. It is true that wiki-based writing enables learners collaborate on a shared text and make changes to that document, but they need instructional support in order to have a meaningful piece of writing and not end up having too many different paragraphs or stories as it happened with our group. Wiki-based writing requires increased coordination efforts, and students should focus on the completion of the text as one unity. It should be group work where students agree on what to do and how to do it. Coordination between the group members is optimal in wiki-based writing and the teacher should divide roles to each student, so the writing texts become a learning process and not a reason for competition. The role of the teacher is to engage students to work on the text as one unity in order to have a high text quality.

Although the results of the research that I have read showed that students started to write better texts and they improved their revision behavior, but I’m still not sure how it’s going to work in my EFL\ESL classrooms and whether it is useful or not. Because if the text didn’t end up as one coherent and meaningful piece of writing, I think it doesn’t worth of writing it. But if the teacher gives enough instructional support and divides the task on the group members and the students don’t have problems of someone else deleting what they wrote and editing it, it might work.