The design and development of a wiki task in undergraduate education: retrospects and prospects Ilias Karasavvidis and Sevasti Theodosiou ikaras@uth.gr; theodosiou@uth.gr Department of Preschool Education, University of Thessaly, Greece Abstract. Wikis constitute one of the most promising web 2.0 technologies. However, there seems to be a knowledge gap in the literature concerning their effective integration in undergraduate education. Previous research indicated that student participation in wikis is minimal and that on-line collaboration and interaction are particularly limited. This paper presents data from a longitudinal research project which aims at the progressive refinement of a wiki task using a design experiment method. The effect of a third version of a wiki task on student participation, on-line collaboration and interaction was examined in an undergraduate course with 56 participants. The results indicated that, while student participation rates and on-line interactions were substantially improved compared to an earlier version of the task, student on- line collaboration remained minimal. Keywords: Web 2.0, wikis, design experiment, undergraduate education Introduction The last decade was characterized by the gradual transition from first to the second generation of the Web. According to O'Reilly (2005), Web 2.0 can be defined in a number of ways. From a technical point of view, the affordances that second generation web tools offer are greater when compared to the first generation ones. For example, blogs and wikis have more affordances than content management systems and threaded discussions respectively (Kim, 2008; West & West, 2009). Despite major technical differences, the substantial differentiation between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 generations lies in the role users play (O'Reilly, 2005). More specifically, while in the first generation of the Web users could simply read (i.e. “consume”) website content, in Web 2.0 users can also contribute to its creation. This possibility turns users from information consumers into participants and “co-producers”. Consequently, today the Web is best conceptualized as a platform service that relies on the architecture of participation and the wisdom of crowds (Surowiecki, 2004; Tapscott & Williams, 2006; Mason & Rennie, 2008). Based on this fact, two are the key principles underlying Web 2.0: (a) users “add value” to technology and (b) users play an important role in content creation. For example, sites such as Wikipedia and YouTube would be inconceivable without the input of thousands of Internet users in terms of text and video respectively. The impact of Web 2.0 on education has been substantial. This is clearly reflected in newly coined terms such as Learning 2.0, School 2.0, Classroom 2.0 and Education 2.0. The idea behind this terminology shift is that Web 2.0 technologies can contribute more to learning in comparison to the corresponding A. Jimoyiannis (Ed.), Research on e-Learning and ICT in Education. pp. 1-10 © Springer Science + Business Media