Web based platforms in co-located practice - The use of a wiki as support for learning and instruction

This study describes how a wiki platform worked as a resource in a university course on applied ethnographic research method. The platform was primarily used for uploading field notes from students' ethnographic work. We describe the use of the wiki in terms of how it supported orientations among students towards relevant competencies involved in fieldwork, and how teachers used it as a way of gaining access to students' work. We discuss these functionalities in relation to ethnomethodological work on learning-and- instruction, showing how wiki entries were used as references in students' and teachers' talk. Distributed activities were thereby made available for instructive practices, and the competencies involved in note taking and observation could be collaboratively oriented to. We thus show that although the wiki was a web based distributed tool, its primary pedagogical functionality lay in its being used as a resource in co-located face-to-face talk.