There are several reasons why collaborative learning in higher education deserves more attention than it is getting. The benefits of are numerous, with facilitating creativity, knowledge sharing and teamwork just a few of the gains. The single biggest challenge, however, has been a lack of effective technologies that will seamlessly manage the entire process through and throughthat is, until recently.
The wiki technology has fundamentally changed the concept of collaborative learning. Wikis are websites that allow users to create and edit pages easily and directly. One of the most well-known sites abiding to wiki technology is Wikipedia. With over 3 million English articles to date and over 17 million in 270 languages, Wikipedia has proven its collaborative learning success, driving the frontline of wiki technologies. But success does not come without learning points.
Not even a year old, TermWiki.com is the language industrys first collaborative social learning portal, taking Wikipedia a step further to merge wiki technology with social networking characteristics. Instead of accessing large amounts of information in article format, as on Wikipedia, TermWiki allows users access to concise and accurate definitions and translations, while also featuring images, news article links, and videos that pertain to the term. Simply put, an all-in-one package that provides various modes of media and learning techniques, all within one space.
With over 800,000 terms, TermWikis online community version is an excellent platform for students of all studies to work with. The technology behind TermWiki supports industry/category-specific learning. This can be especially helpful for students utilizing, for example, the trigonometry or calculus glossaries, with formulas and graphs available alongside each term and definition. TermWiki is something all individuals (professors and students) as well as whole departments and classrooms can use to create or upload terminologies by subject domain.
As people learn to adapt their decisions to todays economic climate and as the focus on globalization increases, it is no wonder language-based studies are gathering speed in higher education institutions. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that translation and interpretation jobs will increase by 22 percent between 2008 and 2018. The US News and World Report also supports this: translation and interpretation jobs are among their 50 Best Careers of 2011.
Particular to translation studies, accurate multilingual terminology translations are critical as the same term can mean completely different things in life sciences, automotive manufacturing or sports. With its well organized multilingual terms classified by subjects and industries, TermWiki promises to change the way terminologies are translated; it also provides a good place for students to learn a foreign language.
In the eyes of professors and instructors, TermWiki is an excellent hands-on tool, which demonstrates common applications consistently used throughout the translation process.
Since its launch, TermWiki has added a number of very practical features such as My Glossary, which allows users to import, export, share, and collaboratively edit whole glossaries.
Due to its collaborative and wiki nature, the content quality relies heavily on users. This provides students with opportunities to improve efficiency in editing, training them to become more detailed-oriented, and teaching them to work with others to produce the best and most accurate results. TermWiki also drives ambition and motivation by its voluntary collaborative nature. contributions not only help the users learn, but by contributing, users are able to feel a sense of ownership in their contributions and value in their work. Every term and definition or translation that a user inputs includes a user contribution box, which not only supports ownership with the name stamp, but also creates an open tracking system. Users are able to see the history of each contribution, including who, when, and what the contribution was.
With particular regard to translation studies, this feature will prepare student translators for the marketing and networking aspects of a translation career. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 26% of all translators and interpreters are self-employed. That is over one-fourth of total translators and interpreters. Proz.com, an online networking community of translators, cites over 300,000 freelancers registered. On TermWiki, with every name stamp displayed on each pages user contribution box, students will be able to begin having a presence in the translation world, getting a head start on their careers.
Another important function of wikis is that the resulting term and definition depositories can then be used by future students to learn about various subjects and continuously expand, improve and share knowledge. More importantly, these students can improve upon already existing information to make collaborative learning an evolving process.