Title: Wikis
Course: TOPkit Sample Course Lite > Section: Module 5 - Enhancing Your Course with Emerging Technology

Notes for Course Facilitator

Summary:

This page defines wikis and provides instructional strategies to incorporate wikis into instructors' online and mixed-mode courses.

Suggestions:

- It is recommended that this page be updated to include specific resources related to wikis on your campus.

Gentle reminder: Update all content highlighted in yellow to reflect your institution.

What is a Wiki?

A wiki, the Hawaiian word meaning quick or fast, is a website made up of pages, which can be quickly created by anyone with little or no experience with web design or programming skills. It allows users to arrange content on the page with the results being similar to a traditional website. Its interface is analogous to most word processing applications and Wikis allow users to incorporate text, hyperlinks, images and video by selecting various buttons which are analogous to most word processing applications.

Most wikis are commonly used as a collaborative workspace. Multiple users can view and/or modify a wiki, which makes it a popular tool for students working on a project or as a place to gather information, images, videos, etc. An advantage to using a wiki is that students can work together with little chance of overwriting each other’s work.

Wikis typically offer a discussion feature where students can discuss the contents of each page. Wikis also have a history feature, which allows you to track not only who has contributed to the wiki but what information each student has contributed. Wikis also support versioning, which allows a user to rollback to view a previous version of a wiki page.

Using Wiki Pages in <Replace - Your LMS>

One option is to use the Pages feature in your online course to create wiki Pages and enable the students to collaboratively add content to these Pages. Within the settings for each Page in your course, you can change the permissions to allow only Teachers, Teachers and Students, or anyone to edit a Page. The benefits of using a wiki Page within your course is that students do not have to use a third party tool, the work stays within your course, and there is a page history that allows you to see who has contributed to the Page. One limitation of this Page history is that it shows you who contributed but does not show what they contributed (e.g., one word vs. a paragraph).

Third Party Wiki Services

There are many free third-party wiki services available for use on the web. Below are three popular services that have different tools used to setup and deliver a wiki. The viewing and/or modifying of a wiki can be public or private depending on the wiki service and the choices it provides. Several of these third party wiki services provide a detailed history that shows who added content and the specific changes each student made to the wiki page.

Visit the links below to learn more about these wiki services:

- WikiSpaces
- PBworks
- Google Sites

Instructional Strategies & Best Practices

There are several possible strategies for using wikis in higher education: informal, formal, and using wikis as a topical resource.

Visit Teaching Pedagogical Repository to learn more about using a wiki for group work and scaffolding.

Optional Further Reading

- UCF Wiki Research:
http://sites.google.com/site/ucfwikiresearch/Home
- WikiSchool: http://www.communitywiki.org/cw/WikiSchool
- Transcript for Wikis in Plain English
- Wikis in Plain English video by CommonCraft.com: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY

TOPKit Sample Course was prepared by the University of Central Florida (UCF). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.