This pilot study aimed to gain the perceptions of first-year students using a wiki as a learning tool for the Bachelor of Radiation Therapy degree in New Zealand. Literature suggests that wikis have great potential as an educational tool for both lecturers and students, because they encourage collaborative learning and resource sharing. In 2015, the 'Otago Wiki' platform was introduced as a part of the degree.
The first-year students were allocated into groups of four. Using the 'Otago Wiki' tool, each group created their own wiki page by addressing assigned tasks over the course of the year that related to a fictional patient. At the end of the year they were invited to participate in an online Survey Monkey(™) questionnaire, which 15/26 students completed. We used a conventional approach to code the free-text responses for our content analysis.
Three main themes emerged from the qualitative data: group work experience; developing a greater self-awareness of radiation therapy; and improving the learning experience. Although there is room for improvement, the quantitative data indicate that most students found the wiki to be a valuable group exercise, helping them to understand the patient experience.
Overall, the students' perceptions of the wiki as a learning tool indicated that it was a worthwhile experience. Moving forward, wikis will continue to be used and incorporated into other modules in the first year. Setting clearer goals for each task would enable the students to use their time more efficiently in the future. Literature suggests that wikis have great potential as an educational tool for both lecturers and students.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 31 October 2018.
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#21,768,402
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#569
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#204,187
of 359,626 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Clinical Teacher
#19
of 24 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,518,599 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 36th percentile – i.e., 36% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,214 research outputs from this source. They receive a mean Attention Score of 4.9. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 50% of its peers.
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