Wikis: Ideas for practice

Models for using wikis in education

1. Class management (teacher-only site): communication tool, announcements, links, lecture notes and powerpoints, advice to students, resource repository.

2. Educational, whole-of-class creates the wiki or wikispaces: knowledge construction tool, links, development of course content, resource sharing, topic discussion. Check out the Media cultures 2 wiki for an example of this model.

ANU class wiki examples

Art and Architecture in South East Asia (Teacher: Hwei-fe’n Cheah )
Continuing Spanish (Teacher: Martha Florez)
Central Concepts of Music (Teacher: Ruth Lee Martin)
Ciné 1 (Teacher: Louise Maurer)
Language Planning and Language Politics (Teacher: Jennifer Hendriks)
Master of Culture, Health and Medicine (Teacher: Doreen Montag)
Medical Anthropology (Teacher: Doreen Montag)
Media cultures 2 wiki (Teacher: Cathie Summerhayes)

What could you put on your wiki?

Here are some ideas for your own class wiki.

NOTE:

Each wiki page normally comes with a discussin forum. However, don’t use wikis to get students to post mini-essays or the like. If you want students to write a mini-essay, then ask them to write a mini-essay.

Class management wikis: teacher wikis for students

Communicate the latest class info
Provide links
Provide advice on how to complete assignments
Provide assignment info
Post lecture slides and notes
Assignment review
Assignment submission
Post prompts for reflection (in the discussion forum) on class topics

Educational wikis: wikis built by students

Group projects
Build resource or research collections
Write pages on news items or current affairs
Discuss the ‘learning journey’ or workshop activities in the discussion forum on the page
Share info, resources, links
Peer review
Group FAQ

Other ideas

Use a wiki as a class management tool: create areas for course details (e.g., syllabus, assignments, course guide), class topics (topic 1, topic 2, etc.), study guide, resources.
Ask students to form into small groups and to build a wiki space around a set topic. Use the history function to check individual stsudents’ progress — for example, you can see who has been making substantive contributions to the wiki, and who has just been adding commas. Have students present their wiki to the rest of the class.
Ask students to use the discussion forum part of a wiki to justify their selection of page content.
Get your class to write a Wikipedia page on a topic that doesn’t have an article yet.
Send students to Wikipedia and have them analyse the development of an article on a controversial topic (e.g., Israeli-Palestinian conflict, George W. Bush). Ask them to look through the discussions that sit behind the article and have them trace major sticking-points, or the ways in which consensus was achieved. Get them to write a report on the issue.

Academic and research wikis