Investigation of using wiki to facilitate group composition in learning engineering knowledge: A quasi-experimental study

The purpose of the study was to explore the effect of group composition by using wikis in classrooms. A wiki system was created for students to learn a chemical engineering theme. A quasi-experiment with pre-test and post-test design was adopted to fulfill the research question. The research participants were 116 eighth graders from three classes at a public junior high school in Taiwan. Students from three classes were divided into three types of group compositions: homogeneous, heterogeneous and natural selection groups. A criterion test defined as a learning achievement was developed to measure the students' understanding of chemical engineering knowledge. The educational experiment lasted for six weeks. 'Added contents directly related to the course' and 'modified contents from other groups' were two online behaviors defined as wiki performances. The results showed that the effect of group composition did not influence the students' learning achievements and wiki performances. Even though students, when engaging in wiki environments, in all homogeneous, heterogeneous, and natural selection groups achieved similar learning achievements of engineering knowledge, there were significant differences between their pre-tests and post-tests in all three groups. In particular, students in the heterogeneous group exhibited a better learning improvement than in the other two groups.