Wikis for education

Type classification: this is a notes resource.

This Recent Changes Camp Canberra 2011 session was attended by nine people to discuss use of wikis for educational purposes.

Jtneill asked to hear about how people use wikis with students.

Diane Phillips used wikis with students in marketing/social media:

• 2 out of 90 students objected to going public with their content (for these two they did a private journal marked by their tutor)
• 8 companies contacted about internships
• Students were very self-managing
• 3rd year UG students in Bachelor of Commerce

Tom Worthington:

• Taught two courses: Writing for the Web and Electronic Records
• Had them edit Wikipedia articles because it was easier to edit existing material than create their own text due to wiki markup etc.
• Public service employees
• Edited the pages about their organisation
• What about Wikiversity for educators?

Rob Fitzgerald

• What tools do we have for examining the process (e.g., qualitative and quantitative contributions) e.g. for assessment? We currently don't have particularly useful tools.
• Face to face editing class (despite edit conflicts) got things flowing

Ben Rattray

• This is not dissimilar to group assignments - we now have a collaboration tool, that's all.
• Groups of students creating resources on different topics.
• Make sure in tutorial environment that they understand recent changes, history etc. so they understand what's going on.

James Neill

• Dedicated lecture early in semester on "how to use wiki" - emphasis on "leap in", you can't break it, have a go, then you'll learn and work it out - hit the edit button.

Kirsty - Tasmanian Polytechnic

• Building student portfolios
• Turn around time much quicker for remote students (compared to printed workbooks - send, mark, send back etc.)
• A surprise: Creation of a single community between remote and on-campus students
• Used wikispaces with subpages and a templating system - wikispaces is almost WYSIWIG but not quite. Some discussion about Mediawiki not being WYSIWIG.

Guy with a beard - Uni of SA

• Problem with adding teaching content on Wikiversity because employer wants to own content.

Oops battery ran out - went to handwritten notes.