Wikis for education

Type classification: this is a notes resource.

Wiki for education

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.