Using a mixed research method to evaluate the effectiveness of formative assessment in supporting student teachers' wiki authoring

• To evaluate assessment for learning (AfL) approach to improve the quality of wiki projects.
• Student teachers actively contributed ideas to their peers and also took their peers' comments seriously.
• Questionnaire findings suggested that students embraced the teacher's comments most.
• The given assessment rubric was also helpful in providing guidelines for their projects.
• Opinions expressed in focus group meetings substantiated the value AfL in improving wiki authoring.

This study aims to investigate whether for preservice early childhood teachers, integrating assessment for learning (AfL) is a viable pedagogy to improve the quality of their wiki-based projects. A total of 76 student teachers who were in their first year of study at a teacher training institute in Hong Kong participated in the study. The student teachers were required to apply the skills and knowledge they had learned about ICT skills and concepts of ICT in education to create digital learning materials for young children in a wiki environment and to peer assess their projects prior to formal submission using an assessment rubric created by the author. The data were triangulated from the responses collected from a discussion forum, a questionnaire, and focus group meetings. The content and number of comments made in the discussion forum indicated that the student teachers not only actively contributed ideas to their peers but also took their peers' comments seriously. Their comments were mainly related to project design, followed by content, organization, and credibility. The questionnaire findings suggested that although the students felt that feedback from their peers could facilitate their own learning, they valued their teacher's comments the most. Seven students participated in the focus group interviews to substantiate the opinions they gave in the questionnaire. The interviewees believed that even though their peers provided comments from different perspectives, their teacher's comments were the most important because she graded them. It was concluded that integrating AfL from the teacher and peers could improve the quality of wiki projects.