ISSS608 2016-17 T1 Assign2 PRASONGTHANAKIT Kanokkorn
Contents
Abstract
In this study, we would like to explore the use of Wikipedia in teaching and learning activities from professors in 2 Spanish universities. Tableau Public was used to create the visualization which could be accessed at Tableau Public Workbook. The following conclusions could be made using the visualization:
- It's uncommon among professors in these two universities to use Wikipedia to develop teaching materials or educational activities
- While UPF professors tend to use more Wikipedia to develop teaching materials, UOC professors were slightly more likely to develop educational activities with Wikipedia.
- Wikipedia registered users tend to use Wikipedia more in educational activities and has more intention to use Wikipedia in teaching activities in the future.
- Engineering & Architecture as well as Sciences were more open towards Wikipedia, unlike Law and Politics
- The intention to use Wikipedia for teaching activities is higher than current usage. This might result from indicating ‘intention’ or actual higher trend of using.
- To promote Wikipedia among professors as teaching platform, the first priority for Wikipedia is a best practice guide followed by getting greater institutional recognition (by promoting its up-to-date information and reliability).
Data Source
Wiki4HE Data Set was selected for the assignment. The data set was retrieved from UCI Machine Learning Repository at https://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/wiki4HE.
Research Objectives
Theme of Interest
We would like to understand the use of Wikipedia in teaching and learning activities. The theme of interest would focus on the current usage and future intention of Wikipedia usage.
Questions for Investigation
In the beginning, we’d start with investigating these three main questions: 1. What’s the current usage of Wikipedia in teaching activities? 2. What’s the future intention towards using Wikipedia in teaching activities in the future? 3. What would be helpful to encourage Wikipedia usage in educational activities?
Tool & Techniques used
Tool:
- Tableau Public
Techniques:
- Divergent Bar Chart
Data Preparation
Before proceeding to our analysis or creating visualization, we should check our data. After investigating data in excel, the following was edited in the data:
- ‘’’Mismatch column name’’’
| Column in data sheet | Meaning |
| OTHER_POSITION | Main job in another university for part-time members (Yes / No) |
| OTHERSTATUS | Work as part-time in another university and UPF members (Position) |
The header mismatch was noted in explanation but not changed in the dataset
- ‘’’Add ID field’’’
- ’’’Create explanation sheet for question and answer code definition’’’
- ‘qexp’ sheet is for question meaning
- section of question and short label were added
- meaning sheet is for answer meaning
- ’’’Add coded meaning for profile section’’’
- The value codes were replaced with actual value in the profile section. For example, code 0 in gender were replaced by ‘Male’.
- ‘’’Missing values’’’
- There were some missing values in many columns.
- For the survey questions, these missing value were recoded from ‘?’ to blank.
- For respondents’ profile section, we’ve replaced the missing value per below:
- Domain: missing values were coded as ‘Unknown’
- Yearexp: missing values were coded as ‘0’
- UOC_Position: missing values are from those not in UOC. Therefore, coded as ‘N/A’
- Other: only UOC professors are asked whether they’re working in other university. If the missing value is from UOC, it’ll be coded as ‘Unknown’. If the missing value is from UPF, it’ll be coded as ‘N/A’
- Other_Position: This question either applicable to UPF professors or UOC professors which has other position. These group will have ‘Unknown’ for missing values. However, for UOC professors who did not have other position, the missing values were coded as ‘N/A’
- Userwiki: missing values were coded as ‘Unknown’
Creating Divergent Bar Chart in Tableau
The trick to create divergent bar chart in Tableau is to create a Gantt Chart by calculating the location. 1. Import the data and Pivot to have the data format as ID / Profile (Gender, Age, etc.) / Question / Answer and change the Answer column to “String”. Also, joining question to be the question label and section as well as answer meaning for each coded were done. 2. Create some calculated fields for location and start of Gantt Chart
Percentage will be used as the width of Gantt Bar
- Total Count = Total(Sum([Number of Records])) *Calculated on Answers
- Percentage = Sum([Number of Records])/[Total Count]
Gantt Percent will be used as location of the Gantt Bar
- Count Negative =
IF [Ans] = '1' THEN 1 ELSEIF [Ans] = '2' THEN 1 ELSEIF [Ans] = '3' THEN 0.5 ELSEIF [Ans] = '4' THEN 0 ELSEIF [Ans] = '5' THEN 0 END
- Total Count Negative = Total(Sum([Count Negative]) *Calculated on Answers
- Gantt Percentage = -[Total Count Negative]/[Total Count]
- Gantt Percent = Previous_Value([Gantt Start])+ZN(Lookup([Percentage],-1))
Lastly, Grantt Percent were added as column and questions as row with answers as color to Gantt Bar.
The Interactive Result
Results
Respondent’s Profile
Majority of respondents were from UOC with only small portion comes from UPF. Also, most of the professors surveyed at UOC are adjunct professors.
1. What’s the current usage of Wikipedia in teaching activities?
The data for this question could be found in usage behavior section in USE1 and USE2. The questions for these columns are: USE1: I use Wikipedia to develop my teaching materials USE2: I use Wikipedia as a platform to develop educational activities with students The scale for all survey questions are Likert scale from 1-5 where 5 means always and 1 means never. Looking at top 2 boxes (those who rated 4 and 5 for the usage), it’s quite uncommon for the professor in these two Spain university to use Wikipedia to develop teaching materials or develop educational activities with students.
However, there is one interesting finding that although the usage is not significantly different among universities, the trend is different. We can see than more portion of professors in UPF used more Wiki to develop teaching materials than UOC. However, when it comes to using Wiki as a platform for educational activities, professors at UPF utilize Wiki more than UOC
WikiUser tends to use Wikipedia more to develop teaching materials in their teaching activities. When it comes to domains, Engineering & Architecture and Sciences seems to be more open to Wikipedia while Law and Politics seemed to be least favorable towards Wikipedia.
2. What’s the future intention towards using Wikipedia in teaching activities in the future?
The future intention towards using Wikipedia in teaching activities in the future was reflected in BI2 question: “In the future I will use Wikipedia in my teaching activity”. The distribution of BI2 showed higher portion of people who intend to use in the future compared to current usage. This might be interpreted as more users will use Wikipedia in the future. However, since it’s only intention, the answer might be higher than actual intention.
Looking at the subgroups, it’s still a problem for Wikipedia to introduce Wikipedia among non-users. Also, it’d be more likely for Engineering, Architecture, Science, Art and Humanities domain professors to use Wikipedia in teaching than in Health sciences or Law and politics domain.
3. What would be helpful to encourage Wikipedia usage in educational activities?
The answer to the question could be derived from these questions in incentive section. Incentives INC1: To design educational activities using Wikipedia, it would be helpful: a best practices guide INC2: To design educational activities using Wikipedia, it would be helpful: getting instruction from a colleague INC3: To design educational activities using Wikipedia, it would be helpful: getting specific training INC4: To design educational activities using Wikipedia, it would be helpful: greater institutional recognition All of the proposed campaigns would be helpful to encourage the use of Wikipedia in educational activities. When comparing, the most important would be providing a best practice guide followed by greater institutional recognition.
To investigate the institutional recognition, we’d look at the ‘Quality section’ of the questionnaire. The quality of wiki was considered lower compared to other academic sources with 14% strongly agreed and 25% agreed. However, its up-to-date contents and reliable contents could be the strength of Wikipedia. Therefore, to promote Wikipedia among professors as teaching platform, the first priority for Wikipedia is a best practice guide followed by getting greater institutional recognition (by promoting its up-to-date information and reliability). Note: Most of the questions in the questionnaire is positive at ‘5’ and negative at ‘1’ except Qu4 ‘Low quality’. As we do not want to modify the data, it was leave as-is but must be used with caution.
Citations
Data Set
Data Set Retrieved from: https://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/wiki4HE Lichman, M. (2013). UCI Machine Learning Repository [1]. Irvine, CA: University of California, School of Information and Computer Science./
Meseguer, A., Aibar, E., Lladós, J., Minguillón, J., Lerga, M. (2015). “Factors that influence the teaching use of Wikipedia in Higher Educationâ€. JASIST, Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. ISSN: 2330-1635. doi: 10.1002/asi.23488.
Creating Divergent Bar Chart
Likert Scales — The Final Word? Retrieved September 24, 2016, from http://www.datarevelations.com/likert-scales-the-final-word.html
