Betreff: Re: [iDC] “All our wiki are belong to you”
Von: “Alex Halavais”
An: IDC list
Datum: 30.04.06 18:59:44

Just a quick comment on class-based wikis. I want to believe, but in using wikis in graduate classes over the last few years, I’ve had only marginal successes.

Generally, they only seem to work if you use them in very traditional ways. Getting students up to speed and willing to edit each others’ work is like pulling teeth–even when you directly assign them to the task.

I’ve been trying to find a model. This fall, my grad students worked on building a Communication Theory textbook:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Communication_Theory

But frankly, there was little added value in doing on a wiki. I have spoken a bit with a colleague about a scholarly wiki on Habermas. Unfortunately, I have a feeling that the model that works may be opening to anyone to read, but limiting edits to a smaller group. This runs against my instincts, but I’ve yet to see a practical template for implementation that works consistently.

In some ways Wikipedia seems to be the perfect mating of software and social task, but this may be the bias of retrospective.

- Alex

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Alexander C. Halavais
Social Architect
http://alex.halavais.net
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