Chapter 6 Collaborative Writing and Knowledge Creation in a Social Media Online Community

Abstract This chapter deals with teaching and learning knowledge creation in higher-education institutions (HEI) via collaborative writing. The challenge of HEIs is that teaching should build capabilities that enable learners to make use of and advance academic knowledge while simultaneously developing skills relevant for the future work life. In practice, teaching at university is often disconnected from authentic work life and the tasks are far more simplified than those in the future jobs. Therefore, to address the challenge HEIs face, this chapter focusses on knowledge creation, expanding it from bounded-learning communities to online communities in social media. In online communities, it is intrinsic to act and think globally, as demanded by the new imperative. This chapter portrays the case of one knowledge management course at an HEI in which the syllabus included collaborative writing for both a bounded-learning community and the online community of Wikipedia. The student group was multidisciplinary and multicultural, with both classroom learning and distance learning options available. The research material, analysed with qualitative methods, consisted of pre-course and anonymous post-course feedback surveys, as well as learning diaries. The results show that although prior to the course many students held a prejudice and lacked knowledge about social media as part of knowledge management, they expressed they had had eye-opening learning experiences because of the expanded learning community from the traditional bounded to the online community. Based on the results of the study and the experience of teachers, recommendations are given for developing learning activities of knowledge creation in HEIs.