Integrating Wikis into the Curriculum
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Wiki Authorship Types
The following are a few ideas on how different types of Wiki authorship can be utilized.
Faculty Authored
- Authoring and maintaining a set of course support materials with a team of faculty (curriculum, text books, exam papers etc) Use of a wiki allows materials to be refined over time rather than rewritten each time a new faculty member delivers the course.
- Creating and maintaining course reference lists.
Student Authored
- Group assignments - page revision history allows instructors to monitor contributions and observe development of the assignment and individual contributions. This can be done throughout the writing process so issues can be spotted and feedback given before the submission of the assignment (e.g. a non-participating student can be contacted, a lack references to evidence addressed, an error in direction corrected).
- Group debates - opposing positions argued and evidence presented.
- Peer self-help pages - student directed wiki dedicated to students helping other students with the problems they identify themselves.
- Student feedback to faculty - a wiki enables feedback to be controlled and owned by the students as opposed to the hidden and directed feedback gathered via questionnaire (Lamb 2004).
- Study guides - students can create collaborative study guides in preparation for exams.
- Subject glossary - individuals/groups of students assigned responsibility for creating definitions for identified terms to build an extending subject glossary overtime. Wiki functionality means this glossary can be subject to continual peer review.
- Peer review of assignments during their creation - students assigned to guide other students during the process of creating their individual assignments. Marks can then be assigned for the contributions they make to their peers, recorded within the assignment wiki page revision history.
- Individual portfolios - the flexible nature of wiki's allows an individual to be very creative in their personal portfolio creation and also allows very flexible portfolio mentoring.
Faculty and Student Authored
- Marking schemes for assignments - ideal for allowing students to really become involved in defining the marking scheme by which their assignments/papers will be assessed.
- Subject glossaries - faculty can identify terms for inclusion and also peer review additions.
- Frequently asked questions - students/faculty can pose questions and appropriate faculty (or students) can answer these questions.
- Building case studies, field reports etc.
- Reporting research findings - students and faculty can use the tool to post research notes and resources.
Click on the following tabs and links to learn more.
- Planning & Design
- How-to Tutorials
- Resources
- Samples
Planning and Design Considerations
How-to Tutorials
Guidelines
- For Teachers New to Wikis (At the University of Southern Florida) - site provide summary of how wikis can be used in teaching and learning.
- Using Wikis as Collaborative Writing Tools (At Texas A&M) - An instructor's account of how she used wikis in her courses.
- Seven Things You Should Know About Wikis (From Educause)
- Wiki Pedagogy (by Renée Fountain, Université Laval) - author addresses some of the pedagogical issues associated with using wikis in the teaching environment.
Articles & Blogs
- Barton, Matt. "Embrace the Wiki Way." Posted May 21, 2004. http://www.mattbarton.net/tikiwiki/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=4
- Lamb, Brian. "Wide Open Spaces: Wikis, Ready or Not." Educause Review vol. 39., no. 5 (September/October 2004): 36-48. http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm0452.asp?bhcp=1
- Lamb, Brian. "How to Start a Wiki." Posted March 23, 2004. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wiki_Science:How_to_start_a_Wiki
- Madder, Stewart. "Using Wikis in Education." Using wiki in education blog
- Mangan, Katherine S. and Jeffrey R. Young. "Students Create Online Legal Manual for Hurricane Survivors; U. of New Orleans Students Will Take Some Courses Online." The Chronicle of Higher Education. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i08/08a03102.htm
- Read, Brock. "Romantic Poetry Meets 21st-Century Technology." The Chronicle of Higher Education. 15 Jul 2005. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i45/45a03501.htm
Some Courses Using Wikis
- BIOL 414/614: Eukaryotic Genetics And Molecular Biology Biology course at UMBC using a wiki as course web site. Here's an assignment asking students to research a topic in current literature and present their analysis to a scientifically informed lay audience on a wiki page. Taught by Dr. Philip Farabaugh
- Blogs and Wikis - a course on blogs and wikis in the English Dept. at Bemidji State University
- Computer Management Courses - Associate professor, Gerald Kane of Boston College uses wikis to replace textbooks in his Computers in Management and Computer Information Systems courses.
- Teaching Social Software with Social Software: A report Ulises Ali Mejias writes about a graduate course he taught at Teachers College, Columbia University, in which social software tools (blog, wiki, rss) were used to teach students how to use and critically evaluate social software.
- English 15 Rhetoric and Composition one of three required core courses in Rhetoric at Penn State University uses a wiki for students to blog about their experiences during the class, develop ideas for their writing projects, and benefit from community input. There's even a section where students can leave advice for the next group to take the class.
- Rebuilding the Seventh - Nils Gore, a professor of architecture at the University of Kansas uses this wiki to coordinate a joint project with architecture students at Tulane University (LA), to help rebuild a New Orleans community center ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. Through it, students use the wiki as a password protected place to share and edit documents.
- The Collaborative Writing Project - SUNY Geneseo. Administered by Paul Schacht, Department of English. He created this wiki in Fall 2005 to enable students in his classes to do various types of collaborative writing.
- Wikipedia school and university projects - The projects "exists to provide guidance to educators who incorporate Wikipedia writing assignments into their classes. Post questions for experienced Wikipedia volunteers at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classroom coordination. Wikipedia:school and university projects - instructions for teachers and lecturers and Wikipedia:School and university projects - instructions for students are useful resources. There is also a syllabus boilerplate that you may want to use."
- WolfWikis - a wiki service that is available to current students, faculty, and staff at North Carolina State University.
