Quotes About Wiki

From WolfWikis

This page offers quotes from teachers involved in writing and using wiki technology in their courses. All quotes labeled by name, date, and source. For anyone looking at this wiki and finds their name here: I am assuming that since you posted the information on a listserv or public source (and due to the nature of your kindness and willingness to help other teachers) that you are providing permission to post the information under your name, thus giving you credit for the quote. If you feel that you would like to be removed from the wiki, please email me through the Contact Info.

January, 2007

From : M C Morgan
Sent : Friday, January 5, 2007 4:42 PM
To : Toby Coley
Subject : Re: Wiki Research Questions

I use wikis for the writing courses for a number of reasons. One course, Weblogs and Wikis, is *about* writing with a wiki, so we explore what's involved there. Very meta. In other courses, I use it for students to manage their writing work( Web Design and Web Content Writing), or to write and post comments on the work of other students in the class (Intermediate Writing).

But *why* a wiki? Mainly because it defeats / complicates / forces users to change the typical pen and paper or word-processor process of writing. Composing on a wiki is different than writing for paper, print, or even static web pages. It doesn't matter if the wiki is being used to put together a meeting agenda collectively, or posting a first draft for comments, or engaging in a thread to move towards a new understanding of creativity. Moving to a wiki means learning a new process, which means learning a new rhetoric and a new epistemic.

At the very least, writing with a wiki gives students a chance to see that changing the technology of writing changes the way we write, and the way think about things. Some users don't pick up on the new process; they use the wiki like a word processor, to produce static, one-off, unlinked documents.

So, I try to devise tasks so students can explore what we can do with a wiki, and what doing might mean. As I teach it, writing on a wiki proceeds from ThreadMode to DocumentMode via Refactoring.

More here - - http://199.17.178.148/%7Emorgan/cgi-bin/blogsAndWiki.pl?StyleGuide and here - http://199.17.178.148/%7Emorgan/cgi-bin/blogsAndWiki.pl? WritingOnAWiki

(I place your idea of Wiki etiquette in the wiki's StyleGuide. That is, each wiki, being both a community and a writing space, develops customs. The wikizens make those customs known to others in their StyleGuide. Wiki etiquette is local, not global.)

That's probably another reason I use wikis in writing classes: It becomes the students' workspace, in large part, their collective - if not collaborative - workspace. My stuff is part of the wiki in the form of exercises and assignments, but I let the students have major control of their own WikiNamePage; and when they work collaboratively, over their group's spaces.

A few other reasons for using wikis -
- easy to learn: no more than 10 - 20 minutes to get it
- low barriers to entry: single pw or no pw
- minimal formatting: just enough with lists, headings, etc to create structured pages
- few bells and whistles: the focus is on the writing
- easy for me to manage. I run my own wikis on a local server in my office
- easy creation of linked topic pages on the fly. This is an important one in Weblogs and Wikis, especially. Writers see how writing branches out to NewTopics, and how they can use that branching for invention. This is why I prefer using dedicated wikis and leave CamelCase turned on. I want the wiki to work like a wiki rather than an encyclopedia.
- student classes can work in the new genre of the wiki document - the entirety of the wiki web - in new ways, and across semesters. each semester joins and adds to and modifies the previous ones.

Some more Virtues of Teaching Writing with a Wiki here - - http://biro.bemidjistate.edu/~morgan/wiki/wiki.php/NoteBook/ VirtuesOfWiki

The wiki lets students accomplish the writing goals I outlined above: to work with others to create both individual pages and interlinked pages of expository consideration.

November

All WPA-L messages can be found here.

November 30, 2006

Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 10:20:51 -0600
Reply-To: Writing Program Administration
Sender: Writing Program Administration
From: "Kimball, Miles"
Subject: Re: Wikis have arrived

Shelley, I think you may be setting up a false opposition between wikis and CMS's here. They're complementary, not competing technologies. Wikis are great for open-ended collaboration. CMS's are great for secure record-keeping. Both are necessary functions in teaching.

But to answer your question more specifically, wikis are more than just a "rough equivalent of a discussion board" - there are a number of things wikis do better than CMS's like BlackBoard, WebCT, and Moodle:

1. "The ability to edit others' texts" conveniently shouldn't be underestimated as a big step in teaching collaborative writing skills. CMS's don't typically foster this kind of collaboration, or even peer evaluation (although some CMS-like tools for doing so are in the pipeline). Outside of their support of threaded discussion lists, most CMS's tend to be much more teacher-centered - students turn in work and do quizzes; teachers evaluate; teachers are in total control of the site.

2. Wikis allow students to collaborate in a flexible environment they control and create themselves. In Deleuze and Guatari's terms, wikis are rhizomes; discussion boards and CMS's (both course and content) are trees. Threaded discussion lists are inherently hierarchical, allowing few connections from one thread to another. And CMS's depend on a directory/folder hierarchy to create the structure for users. Wikis, however, allow a community of people to create a dynamic structure that grows and changes with use. In my experience, this flexibility leads to greater creativity in collaboration than hierarchical technologies do.

3. Wikis allow students to create a communal knowledge base that grows as they learn and remains valuable after the course is over. For example, my students in a graduate pedagogy course (which I described the other day) still use the collaborative annotated bibliography they developed a year ago.

4. Wikis (I think, at least) are easier to learn than course management systems. The name, "wiki," after all, comes from "wiki-wiki," the Hawaiian term for "quick." The syntax is purposefully simple; most people need no more than five minutes of training to do basic things like edit text, make links, and create new pages. And WYSIWYG page editors are now popping up in more and more wiki engines, avoiding the need to learn even this basic wiki syntax. WebCT and BlackBoard might be more familiar to users now than they used to be, but they're still clunky and confining apps that take longer to get used to than wikis do. This simplicity makes wikis great for efficient collaborative work.

5. Wikis have limited user rights management. Some wiki engines (including PBwiki) allow site managers to lock down some pages of content. For example, in my course wikis students, shouldn't be able to edit some pages, such as the course policies - I lock down those pages. Some wiki engines also allow group management, allowing you to assign students to groups that have control over their own pages.

What wikis *don't* do (and CMS's do better):

1. Wikis aren't a good way to communicate sensitive information, like student grades. Course management systems are designed primarily for that task - in fact, they're more like *user* management systems, because their user rights management is locked down tightly at a very low level granularity - the individual user. Wikis, on the other hand, are designed primarily for web 2.0 openness.

2. CMS's work better for managing simple assessments like multiple-choice quizzes.

3. CMS's link student work to grade reporting automatically. If you have students submit work to a wiki, you have to hunt for their submissions or develop conventions for students to report their work to you consistently (I create a submissions page for each assignment, then ask students to create a link from there to their work). CMS's gather the submissions for you and put them in a convenient table.

In the end, though, there's no reason we can't use both technologies to great effect. Use wikis for student collaborative work, and use CMS's for final assignment submission and grade reporting. Eventually, I think we'll also see a coalescence of these technologies - plone (an open-source content management system), for example, has an add-in module that allows users to create wiki pages within the CMS.

Miles Kimball
Texas Tech

Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 11:03:41 -0500
Reply-To: Writing Program Administration
Sender: Writing Program Administration
From: Chris Anson
Subject: Re: Wikis have arrived

That's a good point, Shelley. For me the advantage is being able to compile information collectively (across courses, or by students within a course. Many of the other functions can be handled using other methods, as you point out.

Chris M. Anson
Professor of English
Director, Campus Writing and Speaking Program
Box 8105, North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC 27695-8105
(919) 513-4080

Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 10:53:19 -0500
Reply-To: Writing Program Administration
Sender: Writing Program Administration
From: Dayna Ottens
Subject: Re: Wikis have arrived

Shelley, My feeling, and I may yet be unable to put it fully into words, is that the collaboration that happens when a person downloads and comments on, even overwrites a text, is a very different kind of collaboration then when someone is working on a collaborative wiki document. This may go back to an older, text bound sensibility, but it's one I think we share with our students to some extent, that when one gets something off of webCT, for instance, it is just a copy; it's still someone else's work. Because a wiki is spatially and temporally disembedded the sense of authorship really can ( and in the best classes) does extend to everyone using it. It's a different, I'd argue better, kind of collaboration than the download-feedback-upload cycle.

The other, maybe greater, benefit is that one can build wiki webs in seconds. When students use wiki they rarely create just one page. The build links, often to staging pages at first, Then to other information for their project and those often get linked to an index page of that student's work that becomes a homepage, and then they link to their friends, and then.... it goes on and on. That process of webbing opens up so much more when it comes to really talking about composing and getting students to think about the plurifunctional ways a text can operate in various contexts. That where the return is for me.

Joyfully,
Dayna Goldstein
Teaching Fellow
LRSP, Kent State University

Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 10:09:51 -0500
Reply-To: Writing Program Administration
Sender: Writing Program Administration
From: E Shelley Reid

What I saw posted to the list about wikis made it sound as though -- since teaching *real* collaboration remains difficult regardless of the technology -- many people have ended up using their class wikis as rough equivalent of a discussion board: an assemblage of individually-composed postings.

I can definitely see the advantages of using wikis if we're preparing to teach and require online collaborative generation and revision of texts -- something we should probably do more of, but which not everyone is going to do (yet). In such a case, when the tech is being used to (some part of) its potential, I can also see how it's worth asking students and composition program faculty to learn one more technology, and supporting them through the learning curve.

I'm still a bit fuzzy on whether, for assemblage of individual postings (with maybe a smidgen of collaboration), wikis currently have significant advantages over discussion boards, WebCT, or listservs. If I build in time for students to learn to wiki (I'm assuming that there is, or will soon be, a verb form?!), do I get a return on that time? (Maybe setting aside, for now, the "by 2009 everyone will have to learn to wiki anyway" argument.) What else, besides the ability to edit others' texts, makes something like PBWiki a good classroom tool?

cheers,
shelley

E Shelley Reid
Assistant Professor
Director of Composition
English Department
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
http://mason.gmu.edu/~ereid1

November 29, 2006

Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 19:31:13 -0500
Reply-To: Writing Program Administration
Sender: Writing Program Administration
From: Toby Coley
Subject: Re: Wikis have arrived

For those with wiki interest,
I have created and continue to update a wiki on "wikis," maintained at the following link: [Wikis in Writing Education Research] . It specifically addresses (and will address) questions around the teaching of writing with a wiki. This wiki have been created as part of my master's thesis and in view of this, it is being updated frequently. My goal is that the wiki will be used by teachers to address issues surrounding wiki usage in the teaching of writing and be able to access information and research on the site. At this point, the wiki is only editable by those in the North Carolina State University community, but anyone can access and view the pages. Specifically, if anyone has any pertenant information they would like to add, I would be glad to add it through email (off-list). I hope that this site will be of some use to you Claire. Glenn, you are welcome to use the site in anyway on CompFAQs if you think it is useful. Eventually, my goal is to make the wiki public around March 2007 (when I should have my thesis finished). At that point anyone is welcome to add to, edit, delete, etc (wiki purpose). The posts have been great. I think it is amazing the Bob Cummings has written a dissertation on the topic and has a book coming out. Also, I will be sending out a link soon to a survey for anyone who has used wikis in a course, if you guys would not mind filling it out. It will probably be next week when I get the surveys out, so be on the look out for the link. Thanks.

Toby Coley
North Carolina State University
Graduate Student

Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 10:46:06 -0600
Reply-To: Writing Program Administration
Sender: Writing Program Administration
From: Claire Lamonica
Subject: Thanks for the Wiki Info!

Many, many thanks to all of you who took the time to respond to my "wiki query"! I have learned a lot more already, not the least of which is how many wonderful folks here at Illinois State and across the country are willing to volunteer, time, knowledge, and resources to help a colleague! In response to my query, I got everything from specific teaching tips to thoughtful commentaries, to recommendations for wiki hosting sites, to offers to meet and/or correspond with others using wikis.

I'm even more excited about my project than I was before . . . and that's saying a lot!

All the best,
Claire Lamonica :)

Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 10:20:04 -0500
Reply-To: Writing Program Administration
Sender: Writing Program Administration
From: Robert Cummings
Subject: Wikis have arrived

Claire, et al.:

What a great discussion on wikis! I've been working with them for some years now, and seeing this response on WPA-L reaffirms my belief that as compositionists, we're on the brink of making a much more serious commitment to collaborative writing and anti-foundational knowledge producing structures (ala Bruffee). I'm looking forward to the day when every first-year composition course includes a collaborative writing assignment in an electronic environment. But until then, I have two things to add to the discussion here that Claire in particular (or anyone wanting to teach with wikis) may find useful.

I have just recently completed a dissertation which looks at the very question of how best to teach writing with wikis. In my experiment, I examined first-year composition writers writing in Wikipedia. To jump to the end (if anyone is still reading after seeing "dissertation"), here are two main ideas that my research bore out: (1) one of the main benefits of teaching writing in a large scale wiki environment is that it replaces the writing teacher with a real audience and allows the teacher to truly coach the writers to create more effective prose, and (2) one cannot underestimate the importance of explaining the pedagogical and epistemological validity of wikis to students before implementing them in the classroom. There is a large difference between working in a massive wiki such as Wikipedia and a pbwiki within a classroom. Regardless, student writers often have strong opinions about participating in collaborative electronic writing formats, even if they don't express them upfront, which often break along the lines of foundational/anti-foundational knowledge producing schemes. So I'd suggest that anyone who wishes to teach writing using wikis keep those two ideas in mind.

Also, keep in mind that Wikipedia has a protocol for university course work, which can be found here: [Wikipedia:School and University Projects]

Lastly, I offer a shameless plug. I'm currently co-editing with Matt Barton a volume entitled _The Wild, Wild Wiki: Unsettling the Frontiers of Cyberspace_, which looks at wikis and teaching with wikis. It is scheduled to be published by digitialculturebooks (a new imprint of U of Mich P) in 2008 under a share-alike license. Many of the essays in the collection address these questions, and I think will prove to be a good resource for readers on this list.

Yours,
Bob Cummings
Director of First-Year Composition
Columbus State University
Columbus, Georgia, USA

November 28, 2006

Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 19:02:47 -0500
Reply-To: Writing Program Administration
Sender: Writing Program Administration
From: Joan Mullin
Subject: Re: Have You Used a Wiki?

It sounds like those who have posted about wikis have experienced among students a learning curve (despite some reluctances). My students, once exposed to wikis, decided to use the medium for their projects--quite successfully. They dont' mind additions once they have their material up. Have others found this response? What has been student reaction to wikis (via class evals?)

Joan

Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 13:47:46 -0600
Reply-To: Writing Program Administration
Sender: Writing Program Administration
From: "Kimball, Miles"
Subject: Re: Have You Used a Wiki?

I've used PBwiki for about two years now with (I think) a lot of success, in both online and f2f courses. I've used it exclusively in tech comm graduate courses, where the students are perhaps a bit more mature - but they've almost universally loved having such a flexible space to work within.

I set up wikis primarily as a collaborative knowledge-base, giving students credit for their contributions. In one theory class, each student was required to find and read one article per week (in addition to the assigned readings) on the topic we're discussing, then contribute their reading notes to build a collaborative annotated bibliography. In a more practice-oriented class, students kept design project portfolios - basically content management sites in the wiki, where they kept their design prototypes, planning documents, correspondence with clients, and reflections on their experiences (much like a blog). The possibilities aren't endless, but they're pretty darn flexible.

The downside to using a wiki is the unavoidable messiness of social construction. Wikis are much more rhizomatic than tree-like. But with good wiki software, you can roll back any damages or errors pretty easily.

I turn these lemons into lemonade by treating the development of structures and conventions for the wiki as a class project. The students get to determine the major pages and structure of the wiki, as well as the requirements and forms of contributions. This approach teaches students valuable collaboration and negotiation skills. This does make the first couple of weeks of the semester seem a bit chaotic, but once everyone gets in the groove, it's a very efficient way for students to interact online.

Miles A. Kimball, PhD
Technical Communication & Rhetoric
Department of English, MS 3091
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, TX 79409
806.742.2500x227

Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 13:09:38 -0500
Reply-To: Writing Program Administration
Sender: Writing Program Administration
From: Robin Farabaugh
Subject: Re: Have You Used a Wiki?

Hi Claire, I've been using wikis in a literary (Shakespeare) classroom for three years. I recently added a science writing course to my schedule and have used it for that as well. I find that it works best to generate ideas for larger writing assignments, and for short writing assignments with comments and linking. I like its open conversational feel and try to design assignments that exploit that feature and its ability to enhance connections between ideas. Like Chris Anson and others I notice that students feel a little reluctant to mess around with the wiki. Chris's idea of taking a class to set up the wiki at the start of the semester sounds like one worth trying.

I've given my students discussion assignments like "Midterm forum" where they are told to generate ideas for an (essay) exam. These forums work well, as the students have an interest in learning the technology and contributing ideas; without realizing it they also engage in preliminary writing for the exam. At my university we've formed a group of wiki users and have developed an icon editor in place of php code that we use with mediawiki (the wiki used for wikipedia). You're welcome to have a look at this semester's wiki, which is now moving into a journal assignment centered around a performance of the Tempest that my students will do on December 7th in class. URL: [ENG250 Fall 2006].

Good luck,
Robin

Robin Farabaugh, Ph.D.
Senior Lecturer
Department of English
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
1000 Hilltop Circle
Baltimore, MD 21250
01-410-455-2384
01-410-455-1030 fax

Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 10:34:39 -0700
Reply-To: Writing Program Administration
Sender: Writing Program Administration
From: Matthew Hill
Subject: Re: Have You Used a Wiki?

Tiddlywiki is an excellent and easy-to-use wiki. It might require some time setting it up for your specific needs, but the time and labor spent learning it pays off well. You can make it more collaborative if your students can access files across the same network. You would just have to set up a password-protected space, which your Sys Ad should be able to do. Plus, neither you nor students need to be on the network drive in order to make changes to the wiki. The single file structure allows you to fit the entire wiki on even the smallest of flash drives. Make the changes on that drive, then drop the file into the shared space.

Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 11:08:31 -0600
Reply-To: Writing Program Administration
Sender: Writing Program Administration
From: Sharon James McGee
Subject: Re: Have You Used a Wiki?

Claire--I'm using PBWiki this semester in my graduate research methods class. I don't think that particular interface is as intuitive for some students as it could be, but it's fine. Perhaps it's just that some students were eager to try out the Wiki technology; others were hesitant. My class has had some of the same problems that others have expressed regarding collaboration, so when I use a Wiki again, I plan to spend some time discussing collaborative strategies for an on-line environment.

--Sharon

Sharon James McGee
Department of English Language and Literature
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
P.O. Box 1431
Edwardsville, IL 62026-1431
618-650-5028 (office) / 618-650-3509 (fax)

Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 10:57:15 -0500
Reply-To: Writing Program Administration
Sender: Writing Program Administration
From: David Kellogg
Subject: Re: Have You Used a Wiki?

Two thoughts, neither exactly relevant:

1. Program wiki. Our program (Advanced Writing in the Disciplines or AWD) is just launching a wiki (AWikiD) for teachers to develop content collaboratively. We're using TikiWiki to run it, which has a lot of interesting features. (It's password-protected; contact me off-list if you want to see it). Right now AWikiD is pretty much just a shell; I'm adding content slowly and we're hoping more teachers will contribute those great ideas that often stay locked within an individual classroom.

2. Individual wikis. There's a neat little program called TiddlyWiki (www.tiddlywiki.org) that is a single-file wiki that can be used by an individual. I have thought about having students do individual projects using TiddlyWiki, because it's very easy to use and invites interesting ways of thinking about textual arrangment. Not exactly collaborative, but offers other benefits as a kind of alternative word processor. As with many of the ideas one has, this has sat on the shelf.

David Kellogg
Director, Advanced Writing in the Disciplines
Department of English
465 Holmes Hall
Northeastern University
Boston, MA 02115

Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 09:43:40 -0600
Reply-To: Writing Program Administration
Sender: Writing Program Administration
From: "Blalock, Glenn B."
Subject: Re: Have You Used a Wiki?

Claire / others

We can create space on the CompFAQs wiki CompFAQs for your students' writing project, and if you/they choose, the product could become part of the CompFAQs site.

If you / others are interested, I can create a demonstration space in the next day or so to offer possibilities.

Also, you might look at this article in Kairos (one of several on wiki use): Using Wikis as Collaborative Writing Tools: Something Wiki This Way Comes-or Not! (see article in Bibliography)

Glenn Blalock

Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 10:40:52 -0500
Reply-To: Writing Program Administration
Sender: Writing Program Administration
From: "Pryor, Chester"
Subject: Re: Have You Used a Wiki?

I recently used Wikipedia to explain Stanley Milgram's "obedience" experiments. Their article is so clear that (since I have a projector and a smart-station) I showed it to an entire class. Some of their links were valuable too and we were able to print them out in class.

Chet

Chet Pryor
Germantown Campus
Professor of English H/SS/E
Montgomery College of Maryland

Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 09:36:33 -0500
Reply-To: Writing Program Administration
Sender: Writing Program Administration
From: Marc Pietrzykowski
Subject: Re: Have You Used a Wiki?

Claire--

I can echo most of the sentiments here: when I've used a wiki, I've found students are resistant to collaborating on content, and still a bit shy about posting comments on other people's papers, unless they could do so anonymously. For creating a porfolio they are great, and you can teach them something about managing a large network of links; since linking and pagemaking is so easy with a wiki, the number of links can quickly grow unmanageable unless you have some architecture in place from the beginning. That said, some course management systems like Moodle and ATutor have wikis modules you can use along with other functions. You can demo some here: http://www.opensourcecms.com/

bye,
Marc Pietrzykowski
Georgia State University

Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 09:07:19 -0500
Reply-To: Writing Program Administration
Sender: Writing Program Administration
From: Donald Unger
Subject: Re: Have You Used a Wiki?

Hi Claire, I've been using a wiki this term in a slightly different context. I've been piloting a "wiki-portfolio" in a Tech Comm course. The course software we usually use unifies work by assignment; so you see the full set of Paper #1. The wiki setup provides a space for each student; so you see all of their work, and all of your responses, in one space, a complete portfolio incrementally assembled over the course of the term.

This has gone well, once it was up and running. It took the first third of the term, however, to get out all of the bugs, and get everyone on board (until then, there had to be fallback methods of manuscript submission and response).

Don