“Post it notes”: Students’ perceptions on assessment and reflective learning in the foreign language learning process using wikis

Abstract

This paper describes the experience of a qualitative case study
in which a WIKI was implemented as a strategy for independent
and interactive learning/practice of the receptive foreign
language skills of reading and listening. The main objective was to make an in-depth exploration of students’ perceptions and responses to the implementation paying particular attention to the influence that a small percentage of the overall grade of the course could have had in the students’ active, passive, or disengaged response to the exercise. The study observed and analyzed the voices of a group of Level II Spanish students of the Spanish Degree Program at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus during the first semester of the academic year 2009-2010. This paper serves as a mode of reflection of the benefits and challenges that technology in the form of WEB 2.0 carries in the learning process of a foreign language, in this case Spanish, analyzing motivation and students’ dis/engagement with their own learning process at higher education.