Wiki

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Critical Evaluation in the Collaborative Era: What role should a wiki play in authentic research?

How can teachers use wikis to facilitate teaching, writing development, and learning?

 * Provide a space for free writing
 * Debate course topics, including assigned readings
 * Share resources such as annotated bibliographies, websites, effective writing samples, conferences, calls for manuscripts
 * Maintain a journal of work performed on group projects
 * Require students to collaborate on documents, such as an essay written by the entire class
 * Discuss curricular and instructional innovations
 * Encourage students to revise [|Wikipedia] pages or take on new wikipedia assignments
 * Inspire students to write a [|Wikibook]
 * Support service learning projects (i.e. use wikis to build a website about a challenge in their city)

What obstacles can teachers expect?

 * Wikis conflict with traditional assumptions about authorship and intellectual property.
 * Students are sometimes reluctant to contribute to wikis because they lack confidence in their writing, they worry about not receiving credit for contributions, or they do not like their ideas, words, contributions being revised or deleted without consent.
 * Some teachers and students are uncomfortable about the advantages and disadvantages of public writing.
 * Some technology averse students do not like having to learn how to use wikis and/or find even the relatively simple steps for editing or posting work daunting.
 * Because Wikis are not presentation software, use of visuals and design options are limited.
 * Although selecting "restore" to replace content that was inavertently deleted or intentionally hacked is easy, the editing process is nonetheless a hassle.