reflections of teaching with wikis
Im going to start posting some of my reflections from teaching with wikis based on my experience through the last semester. I probably should have been doing this as I went, but, I'm terribly slack at times.
I suppose I should start from the begining.
Preparing to teach with wikis
The hardest part of getting ready for this semester was getting an actual wiki running on uni servers. Everytime I spoke with someone, they said they could help and then pointed me to someone else. Had I not been on a particular committee, I don't think it would ever have gotten off the ground.
But, seeing as I eventually found the right person, the wiki was up and running two weeks before semester started. I will admit, at this juncture, that I had never admin-ed a wiki before, and indeed had very little real experience with a live wiki on the web. Most of my previous experience was with TiddlyWiki which is a local wiki, that is, it runs on a computer within a browser. It is a java-based application and requires very little technology to get it running. However, the linking process and the 'chunking' of information available in TiddlyWiki provides an insight into the use of wikis, particularly the syntax for formatting and creating 'tiddlers' (chunked information). Seeing the potential of interlinking information was the impetus for embarking on the Wiki project.
So my experience is almost indicative of the average potential user of wikis within education. The majority of students and teachers (instructors, etc) have likely read wiki pages, most frequently in Wikipedia, but have not added content. Administering a wiki proved to be a steep learning curve although most tasks (such as adding users, updating pages, locking pages, setting the style sheet) were relatively simple. Understanding specific terminology for TikiWiki provided some challenge, particularly as, like most open source projects, the documentation was not developed for all features.
Hmm, in my next installment, I'll talk about the mismatches between the course profile (that is, what I expected of students) and the actual participation. I still need to look at the frequency of visits by students, their patterns of interactions and come up with some questions for interviewing them (either face-to-face or by email).
I suppose I should start from the begining.
Preparing to teach with wikis
The hardest part of getting ready for this semester was getting an actual wiki running on uni servers. Everytime I spoke with someone, they said they could help and then pointed me to someone else. Had I not been on a particular committee, I don't think it would ever have gotten off the ground.
But, seeing as I eventually found the right person, the wiki was up and running two weeks before semester started. I will admit, at this juncture, that I had never admin-ed a wiki before, and indeed had very little real experience with a live wiki on the web. Most of my previous experience was with TiddlyWiki which is a local wiki, that is, it runs on a computer within a browser. It is a java-based application and requires very little technology to get it running. However, the linking process and the 'chunking' of information available in TiddlyWiki provides an insight into the use of wikis, particularly the syntax for formatting and creating 'tiddlers' (chunked information). Seeing the potential of interlinking information was the impetus for embarking on the Wiki project.
So my experience is almost indicative of the average potential user of wikis within education. The majority of students and teachers (instructors, etc) have likely read wiki pages, most frequently in Wikipedia, but have not added content. Administering a wiki proved to be a steep learning curve although most tasks (such as adding users, updating pages, locking pages, setting the style sheet) were relatively simple. Understanding specific terminology for TikiWiki provided some challenge, particularly as, like most open source projects, the documentation was not developed for all features.
Hmm, in my next installment, I'll talk about the mismatches between the course profile (that is, what I expected of students) and the actual participation. I still need to look at the frequency of visits by students, their patterns of interactions and come up with some questions for interviewing them (either face-to-face or by email).