ClappingTree’s Web 2.0

III. Research Questions

Having gone through some preliminary literature review, my key research questions are:

1. How to structure and scaffold a wiki to support PBL approaches?
2. How to facilitate PBL approaches effectively in a wiki environment?
3. Does the wiki enable or hinder the students in various stages of problem solving?

IV. Literature Review

1. “How to structure and scaffold a wiki to support PBL approaches?” To address this question, my literature review needs to answer the following:

• Which PBL approaches will enable polytechnic students to learn Business Information Technology in a Wiki environment?
• What kinds of online features and/or support would these PBL approaches need?
• How have recent technologies been used to support collaborative problem solving? In particular, how have wikis been used so far, and with what results?

2. How to facilitate PBL approaches effectively in a wiki environment?
To address this question, my literature review needs to answer the following:

• What kinds of online support would the students need? Would they have any problems accepting and using the wiki for PBL?
• How to optimize the social affordances within a Wiki environment such as TikiWiki?
• Which online facilitation techniques are appropriate and effective? How to overcome group learning problems such as social loafing, free-riding, evaluation apprehension, uniformity pressure and production blocking? Should group facilitators be nominated from among the students? What could be done upon certain interaction cues? Would it be useful to establish and reinforce some guidelines?

3. “Would the wiki enable or hinder the students in various stages of problem solving?” To address this question, my literature review needs to determine how the effectiveness of the PBL Wiki will be tracked, i.e.:

• Processes: Would the students find it effective to use the wiki to solve problems? (How would the students perceive the Wiki in terms of usefulness and ease of use? How engaged or disengaged will the students be? What types of engagement are desirable? How does one measure or gauge engagement or disengagement?)
• Processes: How often would the students activate cognitive / meta-cognitive processes at various PBL stages? (What type of content analysis to use?)
• Outcomes: How would the students perform? (How to measure the performance of the students? Which PBL rubric?)