Wading Through the World of Wikis: An Analysis of Three Wiki Projects

With the increasing popularity of Web 2.0 tools, it only follows that these technologies are adapted to our foreign language classroom practices. Research shows their numerous advantages as participatory tools that foster communication and collaboration. This study focuses on one such tool, the wiki, and describes the implementation of three different wiki projects (micropedia, branching story, and pre-reading) in three university intermediate foreign language classes (French, Spanish, and German). The objective is two-fold: to investigate (1) the type of collaboration that wikis foster, and (2) students’ perceptions of this collaborative work. Results from a post-experimental questionnaire point to the positive effect of wikis on students’ motivation to use the foreign language, while revealing varying degrees of satisfaction with collaborative work