Section 11.3. Effective Wiki Practices

11.3. Effective Wiki Practices

Wikis are gaining popularity as a collaborative tool in many environments. There are now several commercial vendors offering wikis for group collaboration in corporate settings. Many social web sites also have wikis to allow their members to collaborate on documents. Effective management practices are the key to a wiki's success. You'll need to think about your wiki's editorial policy, as well as its educational objectives.

11.3.1. Wiki Basics

Wikis are a simple, flexible tool for collaboration. They can be used for everything from simple lists of web links to building entire encyclopedias. Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org) is the largest wiki in the world. As of September 2004, Wikipedia contained 358,000 articles on everything from general topology to split infinitives. The entire Wikipedia is written by volunteers from around the world. An article is started by someone with an interest in the subject, and then anyone in the community can add content, edit other people's work, or add another page elaborating on a sub-topic. It has become so large and so frequently used that there is a lively debate about how authoritative a collaborative work without a central editor can be.

Of course, wikis in your own class probably won't be that extensive. But it's important to have a plan for your wiki before you release it to the class. Students need to know the purpose of the wiki and how it fits in with the class. If it's a personal wiki, will they be graded? Is it simply a staging area for group work that will be submitted later? Students need to know so they can submit appropriate work. A brainstorming wiki is very different from one that will be submitted for a grade.

You'll also need to decide on an editing policy. Will you be a central editor? Or will you let the students be completely responsible for the work? How will you deal with offensive content?

In most circumstances, you'll find that you can trust students. But on the rare occasion a student does do something offensive to others, you will need to have a policy to deal with it. Will you roll back the changes by that author? Or will you create a new version by deleting his content? Creating a new version leaves a trail you can use for evidence later, but it also makes it easier for the perpetrator to restore his comments.

11.3.2. Creative Wiki Practices

The free-form, collaborative nature of wiks makes them easy to apply in creative ways. Any sort of group process can be facilitated using a wiki.

11.3.2.1. Group lecture notes

Usually, lecture notes are a solitary activity. But one person can easily miss an important point during a lecture either through daydreaming or trying to understand a prior point.

Students also have difficulty deciding what information is important and what is elaboration or example. Creating a wiki for group lecture notes after a lecture gives students a chance to combine all their notes. Those that missed information can get it from their peers. The group can also decide what information is critical and give it proper emphasis.

Group lecture notes could be done with the entire class, if it is small enough, or with small working groups. Groups can also compare notes for further discussion and refinement.

11.3.2.2. Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a creative process in which ideas are elicited from a group of people. In a face-to-face meeting, a brainstorming facilitator will usually stand in front of a big piece of paper and elicit ideas from the participants in the room. You can use a wiki to create an online version of this process. Set up a wiki for the entire class, or for student groups, and ask people to submit ideas around a brainstorming topic. People can add ideas as they occur to them and link to other pages for elaboration.

11.3.2.3. Contribute to other wikis

Consider assigning your class the task of contributing to Wikipedia, or to another wiki on the Web, on a topic in your class. Assign your students to groups (or make it a class project if the class is small enough and the topic broad enough) and challenge them to collaboratively create an article they would feel confident posting to a public-information space. Your students will use the course wiki to create drafts of the article they will publish to the community at the end of the semester.

This type of assignment has a number of benefits.

• It gives students additional motivation to do their best since they know their work will be viewed and critiqued by the public instead of just their instructor.

• It can act as a summarizing activity for an entire semester's worth of material.

• Students will know their work will be used by other people, not just graded and filed away.