Using Wikis to Enhance Squadron Emergency Procedure General Knowledge
Target Audience:
1. Aircraft Commander and Instructor Pilot Upgrade candidates
for design and initial input
2. All squadron members for follow on use
Learning Objectives:
Upon completion of the wiki project, each upgrade candidate
will be able to:
- Successfully edit a Google Doc in accordance with the provided format with less than 3 errors.
- Compose a concise and detailed summary of all applicable references to the assigned emergency procedure in the Google Doc wiki format
- Brief the prepared wiki information to squadron personnel in a manner that copilots understand
Rationale for the use of wiki:
Using wikis in formal education is becoming well established
but less so in a non-formal education setting.
Many of the advantages of a wiki already reside inside formal
institutions Learning Management Systems (LMS) but non-formal settings do not always
have an LMS. This lack of an integrated
online tool allowing multiple people to work on the same system at the same
time leaves an ideal gap that wikis can fill. The squadron is consistently min-manned with personnel
scattered all over the world. Using a
wiki will allow candidates to connect with others in the upgrade program as
well as when not on a government network.
The wiki will be used to create a “Class Encyclopedia” (West & West,
2009, loc. 1363) for the entire squadron to reference. Emergency procedures are supposed to be written
in a particular location within the flight manual and each procedure’s
checklist should cover everything about the emergency. The problem arises when the checklist is
incomplete or missing critical items that could be need to know or at least nice
to know. The squadron’s flight manuals
contain a lot of such emergency checklists and an encyclopedic wiki would be extremely
beneficial.
Details on how to use the wiki:
As stated in the rational, the wiki will be set up as a
Class Encyclopedia as described by West and West (2009). The wiki format will be contained within
Google Docs to allow for world-wide read/write capabilities. The
first page will be an index of all the emergency procedures already covered
with a link to the corresponding location within the wiki. The following pages will be the candidate
write ups of each emergency procedure with one page dedicated to each
emergency. The candidate will create the
wiki throughout their training program to ensure completion before briefing to
the squadron. During the squadron brief
the candidate will receive feedback from more senior squadron members for
improvement or changes to the wiki. The
candidate will then have until the completion of their training folder to finalize
their emergency procedure wiki. As each
candidate finishes their upgrade, the list of emergency procedures that were
meticulously researched and vetted at the squadron level will grow on the wiki,
creating an encyclopedia of knowledge available to the whole squadron.
Suggested wiki-related learning activities:
In order to ensure conformity throughout the wiki, the
squadron’s training section will develop a sample emergency procedure within the
wiki. This sample will be used as a
template for the candidates to follow. At
the beginning of each candidate’s upgrade, the training shop will provide an
instructional brief on how to use the wiki and the expectations of when and how
it will be completed. For those familiar
with Google Docs no further training will be required due to the relatively simple
formatting. Following the initial
briefing, those who have not used Google Docs or are not comfortable using it
will be given time to rearrange the sample emergency procedure to build their skill
level and comfortability with the wiki. The candidate will then have 90-120
days to complete the project before their training folder closes. As stated above, the initial input to the
wiki needs to be completed prior to the brief and will normally be scheduled no
later than 30 days prior to folder closeout. This allows time for the candidate to make
final edits to the wiki before finalizing the wiki section and closing out the
training folder.
Wiki Evaluations:
The wiki will be graded in accordance to the learning
objectives stated above. The majority of
ground training complete in the squadron is based on a pass/fail grading system
and the wiki project will mirror that as well.
Overall project grade
P: Passed
all three lesson objective rubrics
F: Failed
at least one lesson objective rubric
|
Lesson Objective
|
Pass
|
Fail
|
|
Google Doc Formatting
|
Less than 3 errors
|
3 or more errors
|
|
Wiki Summary
|
The wiki was concise and didn’t miss
any applicable references to the emergency procedure
|
The wiki was too long and missed references
to the emergency procedure
|
|
Squadron Briefing
|
The brief was given to squadron personnel
and the copilots present were able to understand the content
|
No brief was given to the squadron or the
content was too complicated for copilots to understand
|
Resources:
Anderson, L.
Krathwohl, D. et al (Eds.) (2001) A
taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of bloom’s
educational objectives. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
Krathwohl, D.
(2002). A revision of bloom’s taxonomy: An overview. Theory into Practice,
41(4), pp 212-218
St. Clair, R. (2015) Creating Courses
for Adults: Design for Learning. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass
West, J. A. and West, M. L. (2009) Using Wikis for Online Collaboration.
[Kindle PC Version]. Retrieved from
Amazon.com
Your learning objectives are strong, Chaser. I like that they include clearly measurable standards. Given the nature of the training, I infer the GoogleDocs would be behind a firewall or otherwise secured.
ReplyDeleteI infer from your description that each wiki contribution would be individual. I wonder if you could take advantage of the collaborative nature of wiki to put learners in small groups. This might help take advantage of the intersection of cooperative and constructivists paradigms Lari (2011) describes. Kummer (2013) helped cement my thinking on collaboration within a wiki when he noted that learners will collaborate OUTSIDE the wiki, given a chance. He made two recommendations to overcome this: “Design assignment tasks that are difficult to subdivide into cooperative tasks. Provide a clear xpectation of how students can participate in collaboration (p. 13).”
What I especially like about your plan is how it centers on meaningful, authentic learning that both develops the learners and contributes to the larger benefit of your work community. Very nice, indeed.
Best
--Les
Kummer, C. (2013). Factors influencing wiki collaboration in higher education. doi:10.2139/ssrn.2208522
Lari, P. (2011). The use of wikis for collaboration in higher education. In King, K. P. & Cox, T. D. (Eds). The Professor’s Guide to Taming Technology: Leveraging Digital Media, Web 2.0, and More for Learning. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
Les,
Delete"Class" sizes for each upgrade are usually only one at a time, with only a few overlapping every once in a while. This creates a problem for collaborating on the initial input. Another Learning outcome of this project (which I failed to list) was for the student to become a subject matter expert in that particular emergency procedure. The brief to the whole squadron is where I tried to make a collaborative input because the candidate would take the feedback and edit the wiki prior to finalizing the page.
That makes good sense. Thanks for clarifying, Chaser. I had inferred that the learners were going to become SMEs in their topic areas. It's a good way to build bench strength, too, I think.
DeleteThanks for the response!
Best
--Les
Hi Chaser,
ReplyDeleteYour idea to use the Wiki outside of a formal education class and in the military setting is an innovative idea. I had not seen or heard of Google docs used much in the military, but did so just recently when I conducted an interview for our class video podcast project. The interviewee mentioned using Google maps and Google docs for distance learning collaboration.
Scaffolding your learning objectives is always a sound plan. An end product of an Encyclopedia of emergency procedures sounds like a great side benefit from the projects. Thank you for sharing.
Vee
Hi Chaser,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your blog. I found two strong points in your lesson plan. The first one is the learning objectives. I like how you build them to meet Bloom’s taxonomy, you have great desired outcomes and you know what you want to achieve because you set strong learning objectives in the beginning. (West&West, 2009). Another interesting point is the use of a wiki as a learning tool. You mentioned that "lack of an integrated online tool allowing multiple people to work on the same system at the same time leaves an ideal gap that wikis can fill". I agree that using a wiki should meet the learning purpose of the course and provide a solution for learning problems.
West, J. and West, M. (2009). Using Wikis for online collaboration: The power of the read-write Web. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Best,
Tariq
Chaser, great idea of incorporating the use of a wiki in a military pilot setting. Even more so, a wiki pertaining to emergency procedures is very relevant to a pilot. As I immersed myself in understanding wikis and other tools within an adult learning setting, Kolb (1983) identified four steps relevant to the learning process which he describes as a cycle of experience. The four steps are:
ReplyDeletea. The learner lives a concrete experience.
b. Learner reflects on the experience from different angles.
c. Generalizations and abstract ideas are formed.
d. Learner assesses the implications of the new concepts on different situations.
You hit the nail on the head with this learning opportunity for pilots to learn from each other and the end result is an encyclopedia of useful data.
Kolb, D. (1983). Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Upper Saddle River (NJ):Prentice Hall
Chaser - Using a Wiki as an knowledge construction assignment for Aircraft Commander and Instructor Pilot Upgrade candidates is a great idea. I agree that online collaborative learning tools is less talked about or published for non-formal learning settings.
ReplyDeleteI found it interesting that you were able to design a a pass/fail grading rubric. Your rubric was a very helpful example for me; I see it as something that I could adapt into my lesson plan for military PGY2 medical residents. It seems that because your target audience includes "candidates" similar to my residents, it is possible to give a pass/fail grade with clear expectations. In non-formal learning settings, however, standard grading rubrics used in formal learning environments are challenging to implement when there are no real consequences for failing to meet the rubric standards.
Do you envision that the candidates and other squadron members will continue to have access to the growing class encyclopedia GoogleDocs as they transition on to their follow-on units/assignments? Your lesson plan seems to introduce a great TTP (tactic, technique, procedure) for other military units to engage and collaborate on rather than "re-inventing the wheel" in creating these types of products each time the pilot/service member changes to a new unit. I'd love to hear more about your thoughts/experiences with online collaborative knowledge construction in the military setting.
Hi Chaser,
ReplyDeleteWhat a purposeful topic for wiki and what a purposeful platform to transfer knowledge. You chose the pass/fail grading system which makes sense in this situation. I'm not sure if I would have thought of that. If I understand, you are using Google docs as the structure of the wiki. This was a discussion that we had in our wiki group.