Design Experiment 4: PBWorks

For our fourth and final design experiment, we will take a look at PBWorks, which provides a broad set of collaboration products that help collaboration be more effective and efficient. Millions use PBworks each month for partner/client collaboration, new business development, project management, social intranets, and knowledge management.

At the beginning of this project, I was not at all familiar with this system, so I was excited about the opportunity to learn more about, especially because I love to be efficient when collaborating with others! In this blog, I will break down my thoughts into four pieces. The first will talk about the technology behind PBWorks and then its affordances. Next, I will compare PBWorks to WikiSpaces and lastly, I will talk about what theoretical approaches and lessons I would use the resources in the classroom.

Technology behind PBWorks

The first thing I noticed about PBWorks was the simplistic, almost too simple on the surface, design of the page and the ease of signing up for an account on the website. The website itself is very user friendly and has a very simple user interface. The second thing I noticed was how similar the user interface is to Wikispaces, which I was already familiar with. In fact, I had planned to use it to create my final course design project.

PBWorks provides a simplistic layout that is very intuitive and user friendly from both the student and instructor's perspective. You are able to embed videos, images, use HTML code, and customize the layout to your liking. One problem I ran into was that it took me three tries to actually get my workspace created. It kept giving me an error message, which was frustrating. This could have been a fluke site issue on the day I created my workspace, but I felt it was worth noting. After trying it several different times, I did run into several slow save glitches and a few issues, but nothing to keep me from using it. The UI could probably be a little "prettier", but it gets the job done in an efficient, simple manner.

Affordances of PBWorks

The first affordance of PBWorks is that it provides a collaborative space for students to post questions, thoughts, and discussion items with their classmates and teacher. This allows students to learn how to communicate better with their peers and teachers. Second, PBWorks allows students to look through all of the course components, files, logos, etc. and set their expectations for the course from the beginning. Lastly, like the other systems, it teaches students accountability by giving easy, clear access to a list of assigned due dates for assignments, posts, and other work. These are life skills that are imperative to being successful as they get older.

PBWorks v. Wikispaces

After thorough review of PBWorks in comparison to Wikispaces, I decided to chose PBWorks over Wikispaces. While on the surface they are nearly identical, PBWorks just had a slightly simpler user interface and clicked better for me. I like the icons on Wikispaces more, but the usability of PBWorks was better for my purposes.

Implementing PBWorks in the Classroom

Marketing Skills quiz:

Technical Knowledge: The wiki itself is MS Word compatible, but also allows you to edit HTML and embed YouTube videos. It is a very simplistic, but very useful. The weighted marketing skills will test their ability/preparedness for meeting recruiters, networking, and delivering a strong personal commercial.

Pedagogical Approach

With the marketable skills lesson, I would apply a learning by investigating teaching method and assess the learning through a quiz (created in Google Forms and then embedded into the Wiki) at the end and a reflection paper assignment. Since you can track a student’s submission of the quiz through Google Forms, I would assign them a 2-3 page reflection paper on what they learned and how they will improve or implement their skills into their career plan. I will be able to see their strengths from the assessment and know they truly understand the results and how they are applicable.

Career Facility Tours & Presentations:

Technical Knowledge: I will use the PBWorks system to embed Google form polls for students and online research tools to find the appropriate field trip locations and professionals to call on to present.

Pedagogical Approach: The approach I would take to incorporate PBWorks into my classroom would be first through debate and discussion. I would create a poll in Google Forms and embed it into the module page for students to vote on what kind of facilities they would like to visit and what professionals they would like to meet! The winners will be what our class believes they would most benefit from.

Then, I would coordinate a field trip to the most popular location and have a professional present via Google Hangout from the second most popular. Since the professionals will be presenting live, students will be assessed based on their classroom participation. To further assess their knowledge, a quiz will be created via Google Forms and embedded into the Wiki module page at the conclusion of all of the field trip and web cast.

Overall, I think PBWorks has some wonderful qualities and can improve efficiency across the board. I would definitely use it for a course going forward. It is so simple and I enjoyed tweaking the system to meet the needs of my course.

While these are my opinions, I encourage you to check it out for yourself!