Using Wikis to Learn Computer Programming

In this paper, we analyze the suitability of wikis in education, especially to learn computer programming, and present a wiki-based teaching innovation activity carried out in the first course of Telecommunication Engineering during two academic courses. The activity consisted in the creation of a wiki to collect errors made by students while they were coding programs in C language. The activity was framed in a collaborative learning strategy in which all the students had to collaborate and be responsible for the final result, but also in a competitive learning strategy, in which the groups had to compete to make original meaningful contributions to the wiki. The use of a wiki for learning computer programming was very satisfactory. A wiki allows to monitor continuously the work of the students, who become publishers and evaluators of contents rather than mere consumers of information, in an active learning approach.

Authors and Affiliations

1. Department of Signal Theory, Communications and Telematics Engineering, Telecommunications Engineering School, University of Valladolid, Valladolid, Spain

   David González-Ortega, Francisco Javier Díaz-Pernas, Mario Martínez-Zarzuela, Míriam Antón-Rodríguez, José Fernando Díez-Higuera, Daniel Boto-Giralda & Isabel de la Torre-Díez

Editors and Affiliations

1. The American College of Greece, Aghia Paraskevi, Athens, Greece

   Miltiadis D. Lytras

2. University of Oviedo, Spain

   Patricia Ordonez De Pablos

3. Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

   Adrian Ziderman

4. De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

   Alan Roulstone

5. Institute for Information Systems and Computer Media, Graz University of Technology, Inffeldgasse 16, 8010, Graz, Austria

   Hermann Maurer

6. Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, USA

   Jonathan B. Imber

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