Kakali Bhattacharya (Texas A & M University, Corpus Christi)

This study explores the ways in which wikis used in higher education contexts created communities of practice when driven by the instructor's need to create a democratic learning environment. Based on data from the integration of wikis for three and a half years in qualitative research methods classes, this paper establishes the ways in which students collaborated in projects, created safe learning environments, resisted certain expectations about collaborating using wikis, and negotiated the ways in which they were becoming independent learners. This study highlights instructional strategies for incorporating wikis and offers examples of students' work to discuss the ways in which construction of knowledge occurred.

A wiki is an editable webpage used to construct collaborative knowledge. Multiple users can use the edit function of a wiki-based webpage and collaborate to construct knowledge that reflects varied perspectives. Wikipedia is an example of an editable wiki page where users edit information to create repositories of knowledge on a certain topic. Depending on the way a wiki-based web page is set up, all users can have the ability to edit each others' work or only certain users can have editing privileges. Wiki-based web pages can be set to private viewing for signed account holders only or these web pages can be set for public viewing with editing privileges limited to account holders only, or some wiki-based web pages can be set up for open viewing and editing for anyone. The wiki software that supports the editable web pages enables users to communicate, collaborate, and share files with each other, thereby creating a community of practice amongst the users (Cunningham & Leuf, 2001).

In higher education, wikis have been used to create and update library websites and have been integrated in coursework (Carpenter & Roberts, 2007; Farabaugh, 2007; Parker & Chao, 2007) where wikis are used for various types of collaborative learning such as creating essays, vocabulary lists, and group projects in online courses. Most of these tasks involved some form of authentic learning where the students documented their understanding of content and had opportunities to edit their understanding during the course of the semester. Moreover, the concept of editable online learning space allowed learners to become more connected to each other, hear each other's perspectives, and experience learning that fostered representing shared perspectives. Most of the current literature on wiki-based learning focuses on how the instructor used, planned or designed learning environments using wiki software. Since the use of wikis is a relatively new phenomenon in higher education, little research exists on multi-voiced narratives where the instructor and the students collaborate to identify the ways in knowledge is constructed, negotiated, and contested through participating in pedagogically grounded wiki-based learning spaces through democratic representation of voices.

Over the last three and a half years, I have incorporated using wikis in my graduate level qualitative research methods classes at two universities. Apart from wanting to create a democratic learning environment where the learner is in control of what s/he produces as knowledge and how s/he does it, I was also interested in the negotiations through which such constructivist learning environments thrive or are challenged. Specifically, the purpose of the research was to identify the ways in which wikis play a role in shaping the construction, negotiation, and contestation of knowledge in web-supported graduate level classes. Particular research questions that guided this project were:

i) In what ways do learners construct a community of practice using wikis to construct knowledge?

ii) How do learners negotiate their own voices in relation to other's voices in wiki-based learning environments in graduate level classes?

iii) What kinds of knowledge are constructed through the collaborative participation of learners and an instructor using wiki-based learning spaces?

During the semester, the students performed class assignments using wikis, while the instructor maintained a detailed journal that included reflections and observations about the ways in which students were engaged using wikis. These journal reflections were hosted on a wiki page to which students had access if they wanted to remark but were not expected to do so. Once the classes were concluded and grading relationships expired, I invited students to volunteer for interviews. Thus, grounded in the theoretical framework of community of practice, this qualitative study incorporated interviews, informal conversations, observations, journal reflections, and web-based documentation for a period of three years.

Lave and Wenger's (1991/2003) theory of Legitimate Peripheral Participation in Communities of Practice has been taken up and criticized in various fields in social sciences, especially within the context of social learning in education. Lave and Wenger (1991/2003) purport that for a newcomer, participation is a way of learning, "of both absorbing and being absorbed in – the culture of practice" (p. 95). While Lave and Wenger's (1991/2003) work connecting communities of practice with situated learning and legitimate peripheral participation was informed by non-academic contexts, especially in contexts within which apprenticeships are prevalent, the principles of communities of practice have implications for higher education.

Communities of practice, according to Wenger (1998) must include three characteristics. First there has to be a domain or a shared space of interest or mutual engagement (Wenger, 1998, p. 76). Regular interaction can serve towards mutual engagement. In the context of this study, the domain of shared interest was identifying a topic as a group in order to create a repository collaboratively as they interacted with one another on a weekly basis. The combination of a common task and regular interaction served as mutual engagement. Second, Wenger (1998) proposed that, in an established community where members engage with each other, share ideas, participate in joint discussions, and build relationships with each other, community members must also participate in a "joint negotiated enterprise" (p. 80). The joint enterprise is negotiated allowing the formation of complex relationships where participants hold each other accountable in some manner which then becomes part of the practice and culture of the community. Because participants in this research came together as part of an established community of a graduate level qualitative methods class, their participation in collaborating for class projects using wikis became a joint endeavor in which the participants negotiated the roles they wanted to play with each other, the ways in which they wanted to hold each other accountable and support each other, and the ways in which they wanted to construct a culture of practice via face-to-face interactions and online discussions.

Third, members of a community need to have access to a "shared repertoire of negotiable resources accumulated over time" (Wenger, 1998, p. 85). In other words, over time participation in a community of practice results in accumulating resources that inform language and terms used within the community of practice as well as resources created by members such as pictures, gestures, and rituals that are part of the practice of the community. In this case, a graduate level qualitative research class is saturated with specific terminologies through class reading and activities that students need to continuously use and apply in their work. Moreover, students developed their own schemas, strategies, study rituals that they shared with each other as they nurtured their community of practice. Consequently, students developed both learner and membership identities within the communities of practice of the class and their own individual groups for conducting class projects. Through this shared membership, learners negotiated between individual and shared meaning. Such negotiation between individual and shared meaning is also in alignment with Piaget's theory of constructivism (Bhattacharya & Han, 2001) where intellectual growth and adaptation occur through negotiation, accommodation, and assimilation of various schemas or organizing structures in the human mind. Storck and Hill (2000) identified key elements that foster a successful community of practice environment. While having structure in learning environments is important, Storck and Hill suggested that some elements of serendipity, reflexivity, and a common understanding of the shared culture could be beneficial in developing strong learning communities. In valuing the shared culture of a community, Wenger and Snyder note that passion, commitment, and identification with the group's expertise hold a group together in formal learning environments (Etienne Wenger & Snyder, 2000). The key idea is that the learning occurs in a "situated" community of practice and the participation in such a community is critical to creating learning experiences and construction of knowledge.

Extending the framework of communities of practice from membership into communities to spaces in which practice takes place, Gee (2005) argues that the "idea of 'community' can carry connotations of 'belongingness' and close-knit personal ties among people which do not necessarily fit classrooms, workplaces or other sites where the notion of community of practice has been used (p. 214)." Instead of labeling people as either members or non-members of a community, a model that can sometimes be incommensurable if the community is an intact classroom, where everyone is a member by the virtue of being enrolled in the class, Gee focuses on analyzing the ways in which spaces provide opportunities for interaction. Gee (2005), argues that a space has to be about something for it to have potential interactivity. He outlines some key characteristics for interactive spaces, including having common endeavor, a way for newbies and masters to share the same space, encouragement of individuals, distributed learning, use of dispersed knowledge, use and honoring of tacit knowledge, many forms of participation, and flexible leadership amongst participants where leaders are seen as resources and not hierarchical figures (Gee, 2005, pp. 227-228). In other words, Gee proposes a space where the divisions between expert and novice users of the space are mitigated through interactions, sharing of resources, using multiple sources of information, and fostering an environment where many forms of knowledge can be used. This research, while grounded in the traditional approach to communities of practice, leans heavily on the ideas forwarded by Gee in terms of designing and evaluating the role of wikis as spaces of interaction, membership, and creation of information.

While wikis are relatively new, there are several researchers and institutions in higher education that have used wikis in various ways to explore the implications of wikis as a tool for collaborative learning, creating communities, and as a tool for creating repositories of information (Farabaugh, 2007; Minocha & Thomas, 2007; Wheeler, Yeomans, & Wheeler, 2007). However, the use of wikis in higher education is fraught with various issues such as students' and teachers' comfort levels with technology, effective instructional designs of wikis, and the flexibility required to meet the varied learning needs of students.

Several researchers around the world have reported the role of wikis in supporting collaborative learning across various disciplines such as English, education, law, and engineering (Costa & Bondia, 2007; Farabaugh, 2007; Minocha & Thomas, 2007; Wheeler, et al., 2007). Each one of these studies report that wikis as collaborative tools are most successful when the students are geographically separated from each other. The students do not have an incentive for using wikis if they can meet face-to-face either before or after class to draft a collaboratively planned out assignment. On the other hand, if the students are separated geographically (Minocha & Thomas, 2007), then a synchronous tool like a wiki saves time over an asynchronous discussion thread when making collaborative decisions about their projects. Examples of collaborative projects used by wikis include creating discourse communities around topics like Shakespearean literature (Farabaugh, 2007), identifying ways by which one can deal with one's business stakeholders (Minocha & Thomas, 2007), collaborative writing assignments (Wheeler, et al., 2007), or creating bibliographies and glossaries (Bhattacharya, 2006).

Some of the challenges in using wikis in higher education involve meeting the varied levels of technological needs of the students and the teachers. On one hand, there are teachers and students who need prolonged exposure to new technologies with full hands-on training in order to feel comfortable performing and being evaluated in a new space (Costa & Bondia, 2007). Costa and Bondia (2007) report about students feeling stress because of a dependence on technology for class projects, especially if they struggled to navigate the wiki interface, if they had trouble accessing the Internet on a regular basis, or if the wiki application lacked stability. On the other hand, students with advanced technological skills are likely to ask for various advanced features available in the wiki software in order to not feel restricted in the ways in which they can participate and create their own social learning networks (Minocha & Thomas, 2007). Minocha and Thomas (2007) report that students asked for features like file sharing, synchronous communication, blogging options, and seamless syncing with other social network tools available on the Internet without having to cut and paste links to travel between social networking spaces online. Therefore, it seems that in order to design an effective learning environment for students, instructors need to be able to support the varied levels of technological expertise the students bring to the classroom.

Although wikis offer an open-learning or minimally structured learning environment, students often complained about feeling lost without proper direction and structure (Gikas, Martindale, & Bhattacharya, 2009). In courses where students were expected to work on collaborative projects and set their own goals and criteria for evaluation (Wheeler, et al., 2007), they reported feeling disorganized and stressed. Moreover, without having someone organize and assign roles to various parts of a collaborative assignment, students reported feeling disorganized and apprehensive (Carpenter & Roberts, 2007). However, once students were organized and were able to reflect on their ideas and revise, they created connections between their thoughts and those of their peers (Farabaugh, 2007).

Even though wikis allow the collaboration of ideas between peers, the process of editing and revising someone else's page became a source of concern for many students. On one hand, in a study by Wheeler and colleagues (2007) students reported that they would be upset if another student came and changed their work. Moreover, the students wondered how the professor would know what the students have done if someone else changed their pages. On the other hand, in some instances, students were reluctant to "edit" their peers' work and used the discussion feature in wiki software to come to a collaborative agreement on what should be the final product (Minocha & Thomas, 2007; Tsinakos, 2006). Thus, when designing learning environments and assignments on wikis, instructors need to provide some ground rules of engagement with each other's work and acceptable forms of feedback without completely silencing one's voice.

Yet, the mere act of negotiating feedback, being able to receive feedback, and reflecting on one's work can allow students to develop critical skills around a discussion topic (Bhattacharya, 2008; Ozkutuk, 2006; Parker & Chao, 2007). Students have reported developing critical and analytical writing styles to offer feedback and respond to feedback (McPherson, 2006). Moreover, by engaging in other people's work, students were able to evaluate the information presented critically instead of being a passive receiver of information. Because wikis are always dynamic and represent work in progress, students had to learn that no one really "owns" knowledge, but that it is a shared commodity, especially after they click the "Send" button (Wheeler, et al., 2007).

Based on the varied findings in the literature about the use of wikis in the classroom, it is clear that there needs to be considerable time and thought invested in designing, implementing, and modifying the use of wikis in a learning environment. Moreover, training for teachers and students need to be aligned with their needs. Ground rules for engaging in a wiki-based learning environment need to be set up in terms of establishing feedback protocols and expectations from the teacher and peers, and in terms of seeing the value of sharing knowledge. However, very little research exists on what happens when modifications are done over a longer period of time apart from one semester where the researcher attempts to gather an in-depth understanding about how students negotiate their learning experiences where they become independent learners, participate in democratic ways of knowing and performing, and realize that the process of knowledge construction is knowledge in and of itself. Hence, in this study, I attempt to address this gap in the literature in order to create a space for democratic and de/colonizing possibilities of learning in higher education through the use of wikis.

Grounded in interpretivist framework, this study was conducted over a period of three and a half years in 9 graduate level qualitative research classes. In each of the classes, students were expected to use wikis to collaboratively create some sort of repository of knowledge. As their instructor, I guided those students who needed more structure in the project. The students were evaluated on ability to create a "nugget" of information that is relevant in qualitative research, ability to provide evidence of "collaboration," and appropriate grounding in academic literature. Students were allowed to bring in non-academic sources of information as well but they had to demonstrate that their understanding was grounded in reading relevant primary academic sources.

Interpretivism rests on the foundation that people make meaning of their lives and experiences based on their interactions with people, event, or objects in their world (Crotty, 1998). Such interpretation assumes that there can be multiple truths to people's experiences and realities. Thus, any kind of meaning making of truths and realities emerging out of people's experiences needs to be situated contextually, layered with details about social interaction, meaning, and communication. Dilthey (cited in Crotty, 1998), advocates for different types of investigation methods when working with multiple social realities so that one can make interpretations of the "social life-world" (Crotty, 1998, p. 67). The assumption in this approach is that human beings are active constructors of their social worlds and the meanings they make of that world.

Over the course of three and a half years (fall 2005-spring 2009), 180 students participated in creating wikis for class projects either in "Introduction to Qualitative Research" or in "Advanced Qualitative Data Analysis Methods." The Introduction to Qualitative Research class was offered three times a year, in each of the fall, spring, and summer semesters. Class sizes varied from 7-15 students. Advanced Qualitative Data Analysis Methods class was offered once a year in the spring semester and had 8-10 students.

During the semester, when the students were instructed to work on their wiki projects, I took detailed observation notes and kept a research journal on a wiki page to which the students had access and commented on. While the students were expected to collaborate through wikis online, because the classes were offered mostly through face-to-face instruction, the students requested some of the class meeting time to discuss their wiki projects. I took notes on the discussions, negotiations between students regarding their project, and the trajectories of their inquiry, and reflected on them in my research journal. The students were not required to comment on my research journal but some of them commented anyway, which became a data source for me.

Once the course was completed, I invited the students to volunteer to share their experiences with me via individual in-depth open-ended interviews. I wanted to wait until our grading relationship ended so as to not use my power as the teacher to coerce the students into doing anything beyond the scope of the requirement for the course. A total of 24 students, with varying degrees of comfort with technology, volunteered for interviews. Of the 24 students who participated in the interviews, 16 of them had received an "A" in my class and 8 of them had received a B. I interviewed each student at least two times formally and had multiple informal conversations, all of which were digitally recorded and transcribed. For at least two students, I used online chatting to conduct one of the three interviews, as they were unavailable to meet face-to-face. I followed up the online interview with two face-to-face interviews for both of the students. Additionally, I used the wiki pages where the students conducted their discussions as a data source, which included both the discussion threads and also the actual final product. Table 1 provides an inventory of data documenting the 2146 pages of raw data generated in this study.

I used an inductive analysis technique to manage and analyze the data which is described later in this paper. Moreover, to ensure academic rigor and trustworthiness during the process of data management, analysis, and representation, I invited the students to offer me feedback on the meanings I made out of their negotiations and experiences. Additionally, for two years, I invited students to be co-presenters with me at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, and the students collaborated to create multi-voiced narratives describing their experiences, anxieties, challenges, and insights from participating in the wiki projects (Bhattacharya, 2007; Bhattacharya & McCullough, 2008). These collaborative efforts added depth to my understanding and created another source of data to analyze, reflect, and represent.

Since I have been employed at two different institutions of higher education in the past four years, the participants for this study are also from a mid-southern university and a south Texas university where the qualitative classes were taught. As revealed in annual evaluations, generally speaking, students associated research methods classes at doctoral levels at both institutions with anxiety because they were intimated by the subject matter. The instructors in quantitative or qualitative research methods classes in both institutions worked hard to mitigate the anxiety through flexible office hours, assignments that could be re-submitted if a student received a bad grade, and through various types of practice problems, as well as guided and facilitated learning.

As I discussed the wiki project with the students, I asked them to think of an area in qualitative research that they would like to know more about, or something that they really understand well and would like to pass on to the next generation of students in the class by building a "nugget" of information. Initially, I asked the students to identify their own goals and build a rubric around their goals. This proved to be more anxiety-provoking for the students than I had anticipated. It seemed that the students wanted more structure and guidance from me even though I tried to create a completely student-directed project. The students wanted to make sure they were performing up to my expectations and needed some guideline of what I would consider "excellent" work. Thus, after the first semester, I created a rubric outlining some guidelines for the project (Appendix A). The rubric worked well for the consecutive semesters to guide students while they created democratic learning environments and became accountable for their own learning experiences. The purpose of the wiki project was to foster independent learners who could integrate multiple types of information and offer a synthesis level of understanding of the course content.

In designing this project, I had to become keenly aware of and sensitive to students' comfort level with technology-integrated environments in which they were expected to learn and perform. The participants in this project were usually returning mature students in graduate school with varied levels of exposure to technology. While some of the students were familiar, adept, and enthusiastic about learning and performing in a technology-integrated space, others were apprehensive because they lacked understanding and preparation. At least 20% of the students in the qualitative classes in both institutions did not know the difference between a browser and a search engine on the Internet. Therefore, I built in orientation sessions to wikis and the Internet as part of the class where we walked through the steps of getting on the Internet, creating a wiki account, logging into the account, creating a wiki page, publishing a wiki page, and editing a wiki page. Students also learned how to post a link, picture, video, and a file on to a wiki page. The first two assignments for the students were to write a description about themselves, attach a picture, and add a hyperlink. This activity became crucial in building community amongst the students as they began to share personal details with each other in ways they might not have shared in class. As the students shared personal pictures of their family members, pets, weddings, and graduation, they began to create a social community of learners and opened up ways in which members of the class can enter into each others' lives. Because the activity was "fun," the anxiety of learning and performing in a new medium was somewhat mitigated.

Knowing that the students might have varied levels of comfort with and exposure to technology, I selected a wiki software that functioned at a point and click level without expecting the students to know any html (hyper text markup language) coding. I used "Wikispaces" as the web-based wiki environment for all my classes. Currently, I am in the process of building a social networking site into my course website but during the last three and a half years each class had their own wiki site. Some of these wiki sites can be found at where students worked on Grounded Theory (http://qualmethods.wikispaces.com/Grounded+Theory), phenomenology (http://qualipedia.wikispaces.com/Phenomenology), interviewing in qualitative inquiry (http://tamuccqualhall.wikispaces.com/Idiot%27s+Guide), and critical pedagogy (http://tamuccqualhall.wikispaces.com/Theoretical+Frameworks). Wikispaces was an appropriate software for this project because it allowed easy entry and navigation for students with all levels of technological expertise. Secondly, students found the process of inserting files, pictures, hyperlinks, or videos easy, as they only had to click on an icon instead of remembering codes. Third, each wiki page had a "discussion tab", "history tab", and a "notify me" tab. As an instructor, I could go to the discussion tab and see what discussions students had about the content of the page and how that discussion shaped the final content. The history tab also allowed me to see who logged into the page and edited the page and the content of the edit. The history tab became a way to ensure that each member of the group had evidence of contribution and collaboration even if the final product did not contain everything an individual member suggested to the group. Instead, the group's discussion on the appropriateness of the final content revealed to me how they negotiated meaning around the content. The "notify me" tab allowed anyone to be alerted via email if someone edited information on the page without having to constantly log into the site to see if there were any updates. Interestingly, students were reluctant to edit each others's work on the wiki page itself. Instead, they provided suggestions about changes in the discussion thread and then collaboratively agreed on edits along the way until they constructed a final version of their wiki page. This was a trend that was consistent in all semesters at both institutions. The mere act of erasing someone else's work and inserting one's own seemed disciplinary and intrusive to many students. They wanted to be respectful to their peers while offering suggestion instead of erasing their peers' work. Any erasure of work happened only after everyone agreed to the erasure.

Generally, data management and analysis in qualitative inquiry using inductive analysis utilizes working up from raw data to create semantic units of meanings to label them as code, group like codes as broad categories, and detect patterns across and within categories to identify themes (Charmaz, 2006; LeCompte & Preissle, 1993; Patton, 2002). This inductive process allows the researcher to manage the data into smaller chunks and conduct close, in-depth analysis. After transcribing interviews and conversations with the participants, I began to read all the data sources closely. During my first reading, I used my research questions to focus on the data in addition to asking, "What is going on here?" Using sections of conversations, I began to write analytical pieces like the example below.

It didn't matter how much the students were given directions about how to collaborate and work on this project, students were anxious to please me. Their education has trained them in ways that paralyzes them to become independent learners, owning their learning experiences, and creating a democratic representative of their collaborative work. Yet, individually students are capable of doing group work. Individually, they are able to rise to the demands of an assignment. However, the combination of democratic learning environment and charting unknown territories as a learner has become great cause of anxiety for many students. (Journal reflections, April 2006)

Following the iterative process of reading and writing analytical memos (Charmaz, 2006), I began coding, labeling semantic units of meaning with a descriptive title. During the last three and a half years working through all data sources I was able to develop a master list of codes. Examples of codes include but are not limited to: performance anxiety, web-based collaboration, face-to-face collaboration, knowledge of content, comfort with content, resourcefulness, etc. By the time I collected data in the last semester of the study, there was a saturation in data as I found codes that repeated themselves instead of identifying new information. Incidentally, this data saturation experience triggered a completion of the study, which prompted this paper. During the process of developing codes, I collected codes that were similar in meaning and used a broader label to create a category. Examples of categories include but are not limited to: Students' Anxieties, Identifying Constructs of Learning Environment, Sharing Information, Offering Feedback and Suggestions, etc. Such categories allowed me to write more analytical memos as I began to answer my research questions and explore how the participants were making meaning of the data.

Because I had thousands of pages of raw data, I used the software QSR NVivo to manage the data and my analytical thoughts. This software allows one to code data, organize data into categories, and link between analytical memos and various data sources, as well as to create conceptual links between codes, categories, and themes. The benefit of using this software was that I was able to interrogate any part of my data instantly instead of having to manually look through thousands of pages of data. The software allowed importing of transcripts, web pages, and my journal reflections. By the end of the study I had created 1535 codes and 17 categories. Interrogating further into the codes and categories I began to use the software's Boolean search feature to look for commonalities, trends, and proximity of two ideas occurring to further analyze data. I continued to use the research questions to look for how participants made meaning of their communities of practice and discussed their learning experiences. I continued to write and connect analytical memos to various sections of the data until I was able to identify three general themes that were pervasive across and within all categories. While these themes represent the systematic process of identifying emergent patterns in this study, let there be no misconception that these themes are self-contained or neatly divided. In fact, the thematic organization is a framework within which these findings intertwine with each other in both agreeable and contradictory ways. Each of these findings contain within them contradictions, tensions, and the slippery nature of human experience and meaning making. Therefore, I urge the reader to bear in mind that even though these themes represent the most salient and consistent pattern across and within all data sources, the findings should be simultaneously suspect because in trying to capture the "original" moments of experiences, I am only copying the original through re-imagining, re-thinking, and re-presenting to the best of my limited abilities.

Often in qualitative research, findings are presented along with discussion (Bhattacharyya & Bhattacharya, 2009) as the two are closely connected. In this section I present each theme as I discuss them fully. As noted at the beginning of this article, this study is guided by three broad questions:

i) In what ways do learners construct a community of practice using wikis to construct knowledge?

ii) How do learners negotiate their own voices in relation to others' voices in wiki-based learning environment in graduate level classes?

iii) What kinds of knowledge are constructed through the collaborative participation of learners and instructor using wiki-based learning spaces?

The three emergent themes identified as a result of inductive data analysis include: (i) anxiety about academic performance is not about performance, (ii) being wiki editors is counter-intuitive to democratic learning, and (iii) raw forms of knowledge-making represent legitimate mastery of knowledge.

During the initial coding of data and through class discussions, I became aware of multiple forms of anxieties that students experienced. Initially, I was extremely sensitive to the technological skills of the students and offered them ongoing support. The anxiety around technology usually subsided within the first month of the class. However, there were some anxieties related to academic performance that remained consistent over the entire course of the study regardless of how much I tried to alleviate anxieties associated with getting the "right" grade. Students needed to know how they should perform in order to get an "A." Given that I believe that learning should not be grade centered, I tried to alleviate the anxiety by assuring stating repeatedly, "Everyone will get an A, unless you mess up. But I will make sure that you do not mess up by helping you along the way. So there is no need to worry. You have an A on this. Now go learn." However, I noticed during class and later in interviews participants reported being stressed, anxious about their performance even though they knew they would get a good grade.

Digging deeper into this issue, it seemed that the performance anxiety was not only generated by the students' expectations of a grade but also by how they authored themselves as a student, learner, and a future professional in their chosen fields. The exchange between Tami and me below demonstrates the saliency of this issue.

Tami: Even though you said that we had an A, it was still very stressful. We wanted to make sure we gave you what you wanted.

Kakali: But there were examples, there were class discussions, and I was helping you along the way. What was it that created the anxiety?

Tami: It wasn't the lack of support. It was something completely new to us where we were in charge of producing something that we chose to produce in order to demonstrate our learning.

Kakali: Do you think you were demonstrating your learning via the product or the process through which you created the product?

Tami: I think both but it is rare that we have to articulate our own process without any familiarity of what lied ahead. Sometimes we floundered in darkness.

Kakali: Would you rather that I carved that path out for you?

Tami: Hell no. This is what we came to graduate school for! I know there were other students who were extremely uncomfortable with this form of learning but hey some discomfort is okay in graduate school. They will get used to it. Besides, aren't we supposed to be professionals in our fields once we are done? No one's going to tell us how to figure out things then, right?

The previous exchange demonstrates the tension between needing directions and the satisfaction of journeying through an unknown territory to author one's learning process and product. The anxiety surrounding such journey is a direct reflection of how the students were trained academically prior to the current learning experience. Performing to please the instructor instead of meeting their own learning needs was a familiar model for the participants. Therefore, in my class, students straddled between a familiar teacher-centered model and an unfamiliar student-directed model of learning. The stress of shuttling back and forth between these two models created the performance anxiety where students wanted to make sure that they were performing well according to both models, but especially according to their previously familiar model where they ensured they produced exactly what the teacher wanted.

Even though Tami was happy to have been challenged, her reporting of students floundering in darkness was evident in multiple data sources. Students repeatedly asked me, "Is this what you want?" Anita, a student who has always performed well in her classes, stated:

We needed more structure and you didn't give us that. It was miserable not knowing how to proceed with the project. So we gravitated to a structure that made sense for us and created it ourselves. You gave us a rubric but we didn't realize that it was really up to us to create our own learning goals. The newness of this kind of learning made us feel miserable because of the lack of structure to the point we just felt lost in the dark. We were not used to being so independent in our learning even though you would have been fine with what we produced as long as we could justify our project and learning goals. That was a new path. Learning is messy. But looking back at it, it was nice to be in control of what we created instead of you telling us what to think and how to think. In the end it was the kind of learning we needed for our own good in the long run.

Anita's comments not only emphasize the anxieties due to shuttling between two models of learning but also demonstrate the pride and ownership participants experienced as a result of being self-directed learners. However, the performance anxiety was not just about the lack of structure or and unfamiliar learning model, but also about the ways in which the participants authored themselves as high achievers and performers in academia. Therefore, even if they knew that they were going to get their desired grade, their anxieties were grounded in being able to successfully create a path to their own learning goals, achieve those learning goals, and demonstrate that they have mastered those learning goals by making transparent their process and their product. While the challenge of not having an assignment that allowed students to "fill in the blank" was refreshing, the anxiety around seeing themselves as anything less than a successful academic performer was profound. Jeremy described his negotiations in an interview:

I stayed up nights thinking if I was doing what you wanted me to do. It wasn't because I was worried about the grades, but it was because I couldn't bear to disappoint you and thereby disappoint me. It was scary because we all think we are good students and here you come and challenge us and make us do something for which we have no schema. And we don't know how we can please you. What made me happy was when we finished our final project and we were proud. By that point we didn't worry about pleasing you anymore. It became about the project and us and not about you.

Jeremy's negotiations reveal that despite being a good student, the ways in which he authored himself caused him performance anxiety. This anxiety had little to do with his ability to perform. Instead, his anxiety generated from being in an unfamiliar learning space and the possibility of not performing to the expectations of the teacher, which by extension would have challenged his authoring of himself as a "good student."

Yet, all of the participants reported that the process of creating a project was a liberating one even though it was filled with arduous tasks and moments of uncertainty. Moreover, all of the participants agreed that given the opportunity to do the project again, they wouldn't want any more structure than what was present because they had the freedom to perform from their familiar learning spaces -- something they didn't own, name, or claim prior to this project. Ultimately, even though the process of being in an unfamiliar learning space was uncomfortable, participants identified the anxiety of being in that space as a positive one, one unrelated to an actual grade on the project, but related to the ways in which they thought of their ability to perform as high achievers and future professionals in their fields. Additionally, even though the participants shuttled between two models of learning, they identified that the shuttling was necessary in order for them to create new learning models, become self-directed, and reinforce themselves about their own ability to successfully perform to high expectations. Jeremy's concluding remarks about how the stress of performing to the teachers' expectations subsided when the focus became on the learning is especially poignant, because such meaning making points to a transformative experience -- perhaps a creation of a new "schema" which Jeremy was searching to build upon for future learning.

I see democratic learning as an environment in which multiple voices can come together and create a space for each other regardless of differing perspectives. I also see such environments occurring when participants feel safe to voice their ideas. In this study, there was an inherent tension in using the wiki as an editable page to collaborate across ideas and create a respectful working relationship between peers where multiple voices were honored. Students were asked to create teams of 3-4 people to collaborate on a wiki project. Since wikis are editable pages, students had the option of going in and editing a peer's work, to update a page with information and/or build on previous work. Due to the way in which the software is programmed in Wikispaces, the previous work would have been preserved under the "history" of the page, therefore no contribution would ever be lost. However, there was not a single student who edited anyone else's work but their own. Here is a reason cited by Andrea for such reluctance:

How could you say that you respect everyone's perspectives when you go and erase the person's perspective and put yours on top of theirs as if yours is any more important or critical than the other person's? Isn't that a form of silencing? And you could make that person upset and they might not want to put up anything else anymore. Either way I think it is disrespectful to go in and edit someone else's work even if you think they are wrong.

Andrea's reluctance to edit the work of her peers reflects how she sees her role as a member of the community of practice within her project group. As a member who wants to make space for multiple perspectives, she refuses to erase anyone's perspective even if the perspective could be refuted. By recognizing that the editable functionality of wiki is in direct contradiction to creating a space for multiple voices, she refused to participate in any activity that privileged her perspective any more than a member of her group. Other students in the class shared Andrea's perspectives where they felt that silencing or erasing a peer's voice with someone else's is an oppressive act in which no one was willing to participate.

Instead, students created an alternate strategy to collaborate with each other. They used the "discussion" tab on the wiki pages to discuss about the content of the wiki page. It was only through the discussion that students came to agreement about changes they wanted to make on the page. The primary author of the page then made the changes, which reflected a collective agreement. While none of the groups shared their strategies of collaboration with one another, every group utilized this strategy of collaboration instead of playing a self-appointed role of wiki editor when they saw fit.

Using the discussion function helped the students build a community of support and practice around their individual project groups that allowed for students to learn about one another and make space for multiple voices. Students helped each other perform in a technology-integrated learning space and sift through readings materials from within and outside class. When students were stuck conceptually or procedurally, they brainstormed as a team to find out mutually agreeable solutions. However, such team building did not happen entirely online. Because the students met face-to-face at least once a week or twice a week if the class was offered in summer, students used the face-to-face meetings to build online communities of practice and support. Steve explained:

It was much easier to meet 10 minutes before or after class to figure out where we wanted to go next. It was also a way for us to vent. Not at you. Just generally vent. And then the discussion that would have taken 4 or 5 days to have online, we had it in 5 minutes. So we used the class meeting time to strategize. What you saw in the discussion tab was not all the negotiations we did. In fact it was usually a continuation of what we discussed face-to-face.

I was aware of the students' meeting before or after class to strategize about their projects. Sometimes the students also requested a class discussion on the status of the projects across different groups so they can hear what everyone else was doing and gauge their own progress. These discussions were instructive to me as they allowed me to scaffold the students' learning process. I noticed through these discussions that students were making personal and professional connections with each other. There was banter and humor in their discussion. The classroom then became the first site of democratic learning which was extended online. On one such occasion, I wrote in my journal:

As an instructor, it is rewarding to see that given enough space and freedom students end up building a community of support with each other. Their support generated from engaging each other as persons who were their peers. Their shared experience of being in this class became the first point of entry into each others' spaces. From there on, the academic engagement in class and online became a reflection of how the students interacted in class. If they didn't find a way to be open to multiple ideas and voices in class, I am not sure the kind of learning environment they would have created online. The online environment mirrors the relationships students have built in class.

Steve's comments and my journal reflections point out that communities of practice and support online mirrored the communities students built in class both within their project groups and across project groups. Carrying such relationship online meant that students were unwilling to behave how they would have otherwise behaved had it been purely an online learning environment. For example, Katie stated:

I couldn't edit Mark's work online. I know who Mark is. It's not like he is some anonymous blogger. I see him in class and we work well together. I have seen the pictures he has posted of his wife and two kids. He is a good man, a good school administrator. I am not going to tell him that what he has to say about a topic is less relevant than what I have to say. It is much easier for me to engage him in a discussion about his ideas because I know he will be agreeable than to offend him by over riding his thoughts.

Katie's remarks demonstrate the ways she sees interaction in a completely online space versus interaction with someone online whom she knows through her face-to-face interactions. This line drawn between blended and online learning spaces influenced students heavily in the ways they interacted with each other. Because Katie knew Mark, an erasure of Mark's remarks was by extension an erasure of Mark's voice, someone she knows personally. The integration of personal relationships built in class informing professional interactions on class projects became the model for students to build a democratic environment. The notion that no one voice should take precedence over others is a key tenet that students were learning in qualitative research, especially within the critical theory framework. In class we discussed how certain voices are systematically silenced through multiple social systems of oppression. Therefore, it was incommensurable for students to engage in activities that had the potential to silence their peer's voices. Collaborative voice within groups is problematic since not all group members participate equally in group projects. However, since some of the negotiations of content happened online, students were able to seek out the more silent members of the group and ask their opinions.

Perhaps what is most critical about this finding is that communities of support and practice fostering democratic learning occur in safe spaces. The classroom was a safe learning environment for the students and they wanted to create similar safe learning and performing environments online to continue to build on the community of practice and support they had in the classroom. Once students began to operate in both spaces, they blurred boundaries between the spaces and discussed online activities in class and classroom activities online. Of the 24 people who participated in interview sessions, 16 of them reported that the connections they made with each other lasted long after the class was completed, therefore indicating that the communities of practice and support offered a meaningful connection to them and such connections did not have to end just because the class ended. Extending the safety of face-to-face learning to online classes became the critical building block for creating democratic learning environments. Any apparent threat to maintaining safety and democracy was then easily eliminated, reframed, and re-strategized by the students.

I use the term "raw forms of knowledge" to imply knowledge that is "natural" and indigenous to people's everyday experiences without being processed through an academic filter, since academizing knowledge implies speaking in certain coded ways, using certain citational authorities, and being evaluated against benchmarks that may be incommensurable to the ways in which people otherwise process and know their worlds. To that end, I asked students to create their wiki projects not just by including academic citations but also by using accessible reinformation that helped them make sense of the topic that they were working on. My intention was to tap into multiple ways of knowing and to create a learning space for those ways of knowing so that the students could work their way from a familiar non-academic space to an unfamiliar academic space. Academic disciplines grounded in studying people's life experiences should be able to build bridges between the raw knowledge that people construct out of their daily lives, events, and interactions with others and connect it to academic frameworks.

Being free to choose multiple forms of knowledge, students used cartoons, YouTube video clips and other everyday accessible metaphors to communicate their understanding, students demonstrated where knowledge resided for them. For example, a look at the glossary of terms built by students (http://qualmethods.wikispaces.com/Glossary) demonstrates multiple ways in which students integrated their understanding. Thefirst item in the glossary shows the use of YouTube video for discussing deconstructivism, a critical framework often used in qualitative research.

Because these everyday sites of information had meaning for the students, the connections they made with the academic content of the course (theoretical frameworks, methodological frameworks, traditions of qualitative inquiry, etc.) became tangible and workable for them as they moved through the course and applying these concepts to their own work. Similarly, students also used cartoons and photographs that were relevant to them.

The use of cartoons demonstrates that students were able to identify some ways to unpack the dense reading in the course while adding some humor. The process of identifying humorous examples in order to understand course content also helped in building community amongst the students. Margie reported:

We had fun looking for cartoons. Some of them we thought we couldn't use because they were a bit too racy. Others, we were able to use and had a good laugh going through them. When we brought it back to the larger group, they liked it because it gave them a break from the abstract stuff in the readings.

Margie's reporting of camaraderie and getting a break from the abstract ideas in the readings also demonstrates that there is raw knowledge operating even at the level of accessing a relevant cartoon. In explaining the role of the cartoon in discussing a topic in the course, Margie demonstrates that the ways in which she constructs knowledge about an accessible cartoon are directly relevant to the ways in which she negotiates her understanding of the course material.

The use of photographs in the students' definition of 'ethnography' represented the their need to find examples of ethnography where they could see the integration of multiple data sources in qualitative research. Even though in class we had examples of qualitative research, the personal identification of ethnographic research to which the students connected only reinforced their agentic roles as learners and their journey into constructing their own knowledge about qualitative research.

In trying to make meaningful connection to the course content, students identified creative ways to demonstrate their understanding. Figure 1 demonstrates students' use of the web-based software Wordle that offers a visual representation of frequencies of words used. Students inserted passages about critical pedagogies from their readings into Wordle and the software returned a visual of words most used by representing those words bigger than the others. This form of descriptive analysis of text was a way for students to pick out what the author was emphasizing the most and discuss amongst themselves how they wanted to address the salient ideas.

Prior to using Wordle for academic purposes, students used it as an entertainment tool to look at newspaper articles, emails, chat texts, etc. The transferring of the ways in which the students understood the function of Wordle to academia built legitimate sites of knowledge making.

Students also used comedic scripts to identify their own confusion around understanding phenomenology. This wiki page demonstrates how students began to frame a guide to phenomenology by first honoring their own confusion as part of their journey. While the guide to phenomenology contained relevant academic information about this theoretical framework, as adult learners, their raw place of knowledge making started from a place of confusion. As I continue to use the students' guide to phenomenology as an introduction to other students, the confessions the students made about their journey became relevant learning points for those who used this group's guide.

Feeling confused about qualitative research was common in many classes, as students did not have any prior exposure to qualitative research. Therefore students who were especially high achievers complained that they "felt like idiots" because they were in completely unfamiliar territory. Based on this self-deprecating view of their own lack of knowledge, one group of students created an "Idiot's Guide to Qualitative Research Interviewing." Of course, the students didn't actually believe that they were idiots, but the feeling of unfamiliarity and lack of expertise in a new paradigm of inquiry became the place from where they constructed their knowledge. From the instructor's perspective, I saw them as able and capable students. Their use of the "Idiot's Guide" metaphor became a humorous point of connection between the students. It was evident to me that the students wanted to perform well for their learning experiences and also to please the instructor. What was critical in this space of performance was that students felt free to construct knowledge from wherever they were at and build bridges to the course material.

Through the examples demonstrated here, it is clear that students construct knowledge and make meaning in multiple ways. Because qualitative research is grounded in multiple theoretical frameworks, some of the readings and access to the material are difficult for the students, especially if they cannot connect the material in the class to something with which they are familiar. Piaget would identify this as a state of disequilibrium (Piaget, 1985). Hence, when a learning space can be created where students honor their own ways of making knowledge to address the course material, the connections made are stronger, allowing students to use those connections in deep analytical ways in their own work. Knowledge does not have to reside only in academic journals and books. Instead, to counter a master narrative of what counts as knowledge, any form of knowledge that can add to the ways in which people come to know and understand their world should be legitimized.

This study was designed to explore the ways in which learners construct a community of practice using wikis, incorporating multiple voices while they constructed their own knowledge. After analyzing over 2000 pages of raw data, this study reveals that students constructed communities of practice and support in wikis as an extension of the safe learning environments they created and experienced during in-class meetings. The process of creating such communities of practice was mired with anxieties about how the students authored themselves as learners and high performers and achievers. Moreover, creating these communities of practice and support reflected the tensions of shuttling between a familiar teacher-centered model of learning and performing and a student-directed model. Despite the anxiety produced in a new learning and performing environment, students valued their learning experience as something necessary, as something that produced intellectual growth.

Students negotiated their voices online by creating a democratic learning environment, which included a refusal to participate in the most salient function of wiki -- namely, editing each others' work. In order to promote a safe learning and interaction environment, students refused to participate in any oppressive silencing activity. By identifying alternate strategies for collaborative discussions online, the students demonstrated their commitment toward maintaining a democratic learning and performance environment as they constructed knowledge. The communities of support that were built online reflected the extension of the communities of support and practice that developed in-class. Consequently, students worked with each other to navigate both the technology-integrated learning spaces and the mastery of the course content.

Since the course content was unfamiliar to most students, they needed a way to scaffold their understanding. The wiki project became a way to do this in a collaborative learning environment. Through their wiki projects, students constructed knowledge and meaning from what they had access to in their everyday lives. By building connections between these everyday sites of access to academic spaces of knowledge, students were able to develop deep analytical understanding of the course material. This form of bridge-building in the wiki projects produced a counter narrative to academic understandings of the topics. These knowledge sites should not be dismissed as un-academic if they are able to unpack ideas presented in academia in salient, tangible ways from where students can make meaning. The ways in which people construct knowledge about their world should not be distant from academic discourses. Instead, these worlds should be connected in deep, meaningful ways.

Higher education should foster more learning environments that create self-directed learning opportunities for students. The more the students are exposed to these learning opportunities, the better they can sharpen their critical thinking skills, develop the ability to justify their positions, and draw connections between multiple academic and non-academic areas that are relevant to their understanding. Such fostering of self-directed learning or critical thinking is not limited to technology-integrated learning environments but can be extended to any kind of learning environment. However, as this study has shown, technology-integrated social learning environments can serve as effective tools to create collaborative learning online either on their own or as extensions of face-to-face instruction. For collaborative learning to occur using wikis, some ground rules need to be established in terms of the possibilities and barriers of collaboration, hearing multiple voices, and constructing knowledge together. As the pressure to offer online courses increases, the role of wikis and other social networking tools needs to explored vigorously so that these tools can be grounded pedagogically when integrated in higher education.

Bhattacharya, K. (2006). Simulating possibilities in qualitative methods: Enhancing learning through technologies. Memphis, TN: Advanced Learning Center, University of Memphis.

Bhattacharya, K. (2007). Where does knowledge live when using collaborative technology? A performative multi-voiced act exploring politics of evidence in local and global contexts. Paper presented at the Third Annual International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, Urbana, IL.

Bhattacharya, K. (2008). Wiki-based democratic construction of knowledge: Identifying students’ collaborative learning strategies. Unpublished report to Texas A & M University - Corpus Christi Center for Educational Development, Evaluation, and Research.

Bhattacharya, K., & Han, S. (2001). Piaget and cognitive development. In M. Orey (Ed.), Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved January 5, 2010, from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/

Bhattacharya, K., & McCullough, A. (2008). De/colonizing democratic digital learning environments: Carving a space for wiki-ology in qualitative inquiry. Paper presented at the Fourth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, Urbana IL.

Bhattacharyya, S., & Bhattacharya, K. (2009). Technology-integrated project-based approach in science education: A qualitative study of in-service teachers' learning experiences. Electronic Journal of Science Education, 13 (3), 113-138.

Carpenter, P., & Roberts, E. (2007). Going wiki in online technology education courses: Promoting online learning and service learning through wikis. North Carolina Council of Technology Teacher Education Journal, IX, 58-64.

Charmaz, K. (2006). Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative analysis. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Costa, A. G., & Bondia, A. G. (2007). Design of a wiki-based collaborative working strategy within the context of legal sciences. European Journal of Legal Education, 4 (1), 105-114.

Crotty, M. (1998). Foundations of social research: Meaning and perspective in the research process. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Cunningham, W., & Leuf, B. (2001). The Wiki Way: Quick Collaboration on the Web. Indianapolis, Indiana: Addison-Wesley Professional.

Farabaugh, R. (2007). The isle is full of noises: Using wiki software to establish a discourse community in a Shakespeare classroom. Language Awareness, 16 (1), 41-56.

Gee, J. P. (2005). Semiotic social spaces and affinity spaces: From the age of mythology to today's schools. In D. Burton & K. Tusting (Eds.), Beyond Communities of Practice (pp. 214-232). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Gikas, J., Martindale, T., & Bhattacharya, K. (2009). How and why professors use wikis, blogs, and podcasting. Paper presented at the Association for Educational Communications and Technology, Louisville, Kentucky.

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991/2003). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

LeCompte, M. D., & Preissle, J. (1993). Ethnography and qualitative design in educational research. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

McPherson, K. (2006). Wikis and student writing. Teacher Librarian, 34 (2), 70-72.

Minocha, S., & Thomas, P. G. (2007). Collaborative learning in a wiki environment: Experiences from a software engineering course. New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia, 13 (2), 187-209.

Ozkutuk, I. S. (2006). Using wiki based collaboration platform for collaborative lecture notes in higher education. Paper presented at the 2nd International Open and Distance Learning Symposium, Eskisehir, Turkey.

Parker, K. R., & Chao, J. T. (2007). Wiki as a teaching tool. Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects, 3, 57-72.

Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research and evaluation methods (3 ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Piaget, J. (1985). The equilibrium of cognitive structures: The central problem of intellectual development. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Storck, J., & Hill, P. (2000). Knowledge diffusion through "strategic communities". Leadership and organizational studies, 41 (2), 63-74.

Tsinakos, A. A. (2006). Collaborative student modeling -- a new perspective using wiki. WSEAS Transactions on Advances in Engineering Education, 3 (6), 475-481.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

Wenger, E., & Snyder, W. (2000). Communities of practice: The organizational frontier. [online]. Available: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/1317.html (November 27, 2010)

Wheeler, S., Yeomans, P., & Wheeler, D. (2007). The good, the bad, and the wiki: Evaluating student-generated content for collaborative learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39 (6), 987-995.

Attachments:

Appendix A (PDF format), 58 K.

Figure 1 (image format), 103 K.