[Air-L] wiki tool suggestions?

Emma Duke-Williams emma.dukewilliams at gmail.com
Fri Sep 7 06:11:54 PDT 2007


I personally like Wikispaces, which, by default, has a discussion
board attached to each page. That could be good to ensuring that
discussions between students about changes, are tied to a particular
page, rather than getting lost in other discussions/ emails that
they're having.

I've recently been to ALT-C - a conference in the UK for Learning
Technologists. One of the papers (
http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2007/timetable/abstract.php?abstract_id=1220
) looked at how students were using wikis etc. They found that
students found the group work aspects very difficult, and the most
common way of creating a wiki was for them to divide up the content
and create a "page" each. Reference was made in the presentation to a
different session, when "Wiki etiquette" was discussed (not sure which
session, as i didn't go to it). They made the point, however, that
they'd spend a lot more time discussing how much work most students
need to help them effectively use a wiki.
(The presentation doesn't seem to be linked to from the page. Others
that I went to were, so hopefully this one will appear at some point)

I know that when I had students creating wikis, they were definitely
of the "I'll do that page & you do that page" variety. So, getting
them to understand what a wiki really involves is, I think, going to
take quite a bit of work.


-- 
New URL: Blog: http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/



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