The LTC Wiki - Experiences with Integrating a Wiki in Instruction
By Stuart Glogoff
Sr. Consultant, Learning Technologies
University of Arizona Learning Technologies Center
The University of Arizona's Learning Technologies Center's (LTC) (http://ltc.arizona.edu/) mission is to implement and support educational technologies for the campus community. One way that the LTC realizes its mission is by hosting centrally licensed technologies such as learning management systems, computer and video conferencing systems, webboards, MOOs, and blogs. As Sr. Consultant for Educational Technologies in the LTC, one of my responsibilities is to explore new technologies and evaluate their usefulness for campus instruction. This involves partnering with UA instructors and faculty, and testing technologies with courses that I teach as an adjunct professor with the UA School of Information Resources and Library Science (SIRLS) (http://timon.sir.arizona.edu/). By introducing new educational technologies in my courses, I am better able to assess their applicability.
In May 2004 the LTC installed MediaWiki (http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki/), open source wiki software originally written for Wikipedia (http://wikipedia.org/). This chapter reviews how I have used the wiki in three of my classes since summer 2004, describes the students' experiences with their wiki assignments, and looks at future plans for using a wiki in my courses.
Summer 2004 IRLS 613 Decision Making for Information Professionals
IRLS 613 was a three-credit course taught to approximately 35 students dispersed across North America and delivered virtually over 10 weeks. The course introduced students to the many facets that comprise effective information systems and different decision-making techniques used to analyze these systems. Students studied technological evolution, information architecture, the types of systems available to information seekers, and methods of analyzing and evaluating the impact such systems have on library users. The relationship between different technologies and their design was emphasized as a method to better assess and evaluate a system's effectiveness. In addition to the wiki, students in this class used a learning management system, threaded discussion forums, blogs, chat rooms, email, and the Web. Assignments were posted as entries on discussion forums and individual blogs. Students were expected to add substantive comments to those entries to further our collective knowledge of subject matter.
Before reviewing the summer 2004 students' wiki experiences, an assignment in the summer 2003 IRLS 613 course bears mention. Students were assigned to research two technology topics from a list of fourteen and submit a synopsis of approximately 50-100 words. Topics for students in the summer 2003 course were: Tim Berners-Lee, Bath Profile, client-server architecture, DTD (Document Type Definition), Gopher, Internet2, Raymond Kurzweil, Moore's Law, open source, RSS, semantic web, XML and Z39.50. They were also invited to find a topic not on my list that was new to them. Assignments were submitted as word processing files from which I created a webpage displaying everyone's contributions. Students were instructed to read each other's work and share their thoughts on a learning management system discussion forum.
For the summer 2004 course I revised that assignment to use the wiki and created a page including the summer 2003 students' definitions. I named this page Glossary-pedia. Students in the 2004 course were instructed to read the technology terms created by students in the summer 2003 class and were assigned "to build new content on the IRLS 613 wiki's Glossary-pedia." Each student was paired with another, assigned two topics and instructed "to collaborate on adding an entry to the IRLS 613 Glossary-pedia." Topics for students in the summer 2004 course were: Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, Children's Internet Protection Act, Digital Object Identifier (DOI), Institutional Repositories, Internet Archive and Brewster Kahle, ISOC – The Internet Society, Steve Jobs, learning objects, Clifford Lynch, NINCH, Open Archives Initiative (OAI), Paul Evan Peters, RSS feeds, and Spyware. I provided a short guide to creating entries in the wiki and described my expectations in an email sent to all students.
Screenshot showing my short guide to using the Wiki
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"The purpose of this assignment is to give you a reason to do something mildly collaborative in this wiki. I picked different technology topics that are of current interest in the field or technologists who have been important to furthering a networked society. ...You will need to collaborate with your partner on how you will divide the work, how you will work together to compose your entry and edit it. ... I will grade your contributions to the glossary-pedia in terms of a total value of 20 points and assign whatever I come up with to the two of you equally. ... Most of you are not going to be close enough to each other to meet in person. Adds a level of complexity, doesn't it. I'll be interested in hearing how you worked it out." |
The HTML editor in the wiki is not intuitive. I was interested in seeing, if through the dynamics of small group collaboration, which students would learn how to use the HTML editor to its full potential. That is, include such features as a table of contents (TOC) with HTML named anchors to facilitate navigating throughout their articles, embed images, and successfully add links to external webpages. 
Screenshot showing a student's entry using the TOC feature
This assignment was worth 20% of each student's grade and all but two groups earned the maximum number of points possible. What was particularly interesting to observe was how three of the students worked together virtually to develop a page on the wiki called "Tips on using the Wiki." These three students were in three separate groups, which means that they self-identified to collaborate - within a virtual space - to develop the guide asynchonously over the Internet. 
Screenshot of the guide on using the wiki developed by three students
On the discussion forum, students expressed their impressions of wikis, how they might use a wiki in a real-world library situation, and raised questions about the reliability of wiki content. After grading all the assignments, I sent an email to all students reviewing my thoughts and observations. In my message, I addressed how wikis bring a different model to information dissemination from the traditional tools that librarians have been trained to rely upon for reference services. Interestingly, a number of my thoughts in July 2004 played out in the U.S. media during fall 2005 when misinformation in John Siegenthaler, Sr.'s, Wikipedia entry became a national topic. In my 2004 email message, I wrote:
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I find your comments about the ability to build encyclopedic type information from a community of users an interesting idea. It is certainly the concept behind the Wikipedia project. One of the things you have learned most likely in some other SIRLS course is that reference works such as E.B. (Encyclopaedia Britannica) have been regarded highly because they commissioned authorities to pen essays in areas of their expertise. So it does beg the question: if we collaborate and anyone can share their ideas, how do we control the biases, control the quality, and assure the content of the product? It's an interesting rhetorical question, at least to me. Has the Internet sort of dumbed down our acceptance of the information we find on a given topic? |
Following the Wikipedia-Siegenthaler episode was Jim Giles' Nature article, "Internet Encyclopaedias Go Head to Head," (Giles) and reports of the Nature article's findings by major media outlets such as the BBC. (BBC) These reports expanded discussion about uses for wikis and the Wikipedia in particular. In response to dialogue he heard, well-known futurist Mark Prensky published an essay on his website entitled "Search vs. Research: Or, the Fear of the Wikipedia Overcome by New Understanding for the Digital Era." (Prensky) Prensky encourages educators to teach students to "understand both the power and the limitations of all the new technological tools that are, and will increasingly be, at our kids' disposal. It is our job to show them how they can use all these new tools well, and wisely." In July 2006, a balanced look at Wikipedia's evolution appeared in The New Yorker (Shiff). Instructors interested in discussing the Wikipedia, or more generally the role of a wiki as a factual knowledge resource will find this article an excellent resource.
Fall 2005 and Spring 2006 IRLS 571 Introduction to Information Technology
During Fall semester 2005 and spring semester 2006, I taught IRLS 571, Introduction to Information Technology. IRLS 571 is designed to introduce the basic concepts and applications of Internet-related information technology and its impact on individual users, groups, organizations, and society. Topics in this survey course include computing basics, network applications, human computer interactions, computer-supported collaboration, social aspects of information systems, and some economic and legal issues related to digital services and products. The fall semester class utilized blended instruction and the spring class was delivered online. Each class had a wiki assignment in addition to using a learning management system, threaded discussion forums, blogs, chat rooms, email, the Web and podcasts. Assignments were posted as entries on the students' individual blogs and in podcasts that they created.
The wiki assignment was included in the course content module for communications and collaborations technologies. My primary interest in this assignment during fall semester was for students to have hands-on experience using the wiki and be able to frame, conceptually, real-world uses for wikis in libraries. Students first developed a basic understanding of wikis by reading Wikipedia articles for various communications and collaboration terms. These terms were: wiki, video conferencing, instant messaging, web cam, Internet Relay Chat, chat rooms, WebBoards, and weblogs. Since students were using individual blogs to post their assignments and optional entries related to course topics, I asked them to consider how the Wikipedia article on weblogs compared to their experiences using a blog in the course.
Other activities in this module had the students creating an instant message account and sending an instant message to a classmate; attending an online seminar that reviewed the features and functions of Adobe Breeze; and visiting WebEx's website to learn how this product is used for help desk support, online training and on-demand sales. There were three readings describing online communications and an assignment in which students wrote a blog entry about their experiences using different communications and collaboration tools. Their focus was using these tools in educational, work and learning situations.
The wiki assignment directed them to create a username and password on the LTC wiki. Then they created a page of content about what they had learned in one of our course modules that was previously unfamiliar. Unlike the IRLS 613 assignment, I did not engage them in a collaborative wiki activity. Spending a week reading articles, attending online seminars, and discussing communications and collaborations tools in the forums gave them a strong foundation on the topic. Now they received hands-on experience with a wiki through a reflective exercise. They improved their technology skill set by learning how to use the wiki's HTML editor to create text links. Surprisingly, none of the students took the time to add any of the features that enhance the utility of the wiki's page, such as embedding images or creating a table of contents.
The spring 2006 IRLS 571 class had similar activities as the fall class for the communications and collaborations module. However, serendipity struck with the John Siegenthaler, Sr.,-Wikipedia episode and subsequent media attention. The 32 virtual students in the spring class listened to a this WEEK in TECH (Laporte) podcast in which panel members gave their opinions on the Siegenthaler-Wikipedia event. In addition, students read reports about it in the New York Times, CNET News, and the BBC as well as the Nature article. With this background, the students' assignment was again a reflective exercise.
See what you think of a wiki as a collaboration and communication tool. Follow the link to your name and create a wiki entry on this page in which you review the Wikipedia (http://wikipedia.org). Refer to the course readings, and include at least three links to other articles that you read on the Web or in the professional literature. Conclude with your impressions of using a wiki as a collaboration tool. Be sure to put in your signature and time stamp. It's the second box from right in the above toolbar. Consult the Tips on using the Wiki created by a few students from a 2004 summer SIRLS course. It shows you how to create a link correctly, set up a table of contents, and other things "wiki."
The majority of articles were well written and included a great deal of content. I sensed that the students were interested in this topic and ascribe their interest in large part to the media focus on the Siegenthaler-Wikipedia incident.
Screenshot from a spring semester 2006 entry
Observations on Using MediaWiki
Our Linux systems administrator found little documentation with MediaWiki, often the case with open source software. Asking him to invest in the requisite time to develop a more secure interface could not compete with existing priorities. Our installation of the MediaWiki remains open to anyone who goes to the registration page and creates a username and password. Had we been able to close this open access, and thereby control who could have authoring privileges, we would have promoted the wiki to the campus. It will come as no surprise to readers that although we have not published the wiki's existence, spammers have found it. I periodically have to delete automated spams and send requests to our campus network admistrators to block the spammers' IP addresses. An option that would make this a moot point, is passing anyone coming to the LTC's wiki registration page to login first through the campus' authentication system. This requires linux programming and, although not an easy task, was accomplished earlier this year with our Movable Type installation. We may investigate this option in fall 2006.
Confluence
The LTC recently has installed Confluence, enterprise wiki software (http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/). Staff is using Confluence now to comment and share ideas on different projects. Programming has already been completed that passes users to the campus' authentication system when logging in. At the time this chapter was drafted, I was developing a wiki assignment for the fall semester 2006 IRLS 571 class using Confluence. I plan to place students in groups of three and assign them to research, write and edit articles related to information technology topics.
Conclusion
Having a wiki for students adds value to their learning because of the opportunities for hands-on experience. Many of my students, although matriculating in a master's level program with a strong information science focus, have limited experience with technology. The program attracts a broad mix of students from a wide variety of disciplines. Some are in their early twenties and recently earned a bachelor's degree. Others are re-entering the workforce after raising a family or are making a career change. Students taking my classs the past two years have entered the program with better computer/computing skills than students enrolled in previous classes. For example, I have had students who worked in network support or on help desks, and who provided direct PC support within an organization. While these students bring a willingness to learn about technology, they rarely have had experience with information technologies such as wikis, blogs and podcasting. Beyond those students, I regularly have students who have little experience with any technologies beyond word processing. Furthermore, even among students who have experience with technology, most have not been exposed to educational technologies in the majority of their classes. Traditional bricks and mortar classroom experiences are more the rule than the exception.
The use of wikis is growing in the public and private sectors, and the tool lends itself well to a variety of learning styles and instructional applications. Assignments that I have had students do on the LTC wiki have been learner-centered, community-centered, and knowledge-centered. They have supported receptive information acquisition as well as guided discovery. Instructors who incorporate a wiki in their instruction will find that this tool affords students the opportunity to work collaboratively and improve skill sets through hands-on experience. A wiki is certainly a tool with great application for educators. Students who use a wiki will develop skills suitable for different work situations.
References
BBC. "Wikipedia survives research test," BBC News, 15 December 2005. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4530930.stm> (accessed July 26, 2006).
Giles, Jim. "Internet Encyclopaedias Go Head to Head," Nature 438 (2005): 900-901. 15 December 2005. <http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html> (accessed July 26, 2006).
Laporte, Leo, et. al. Podcast. "Surrounded by TWiTs." this Week in TECH. TWIT 33. December 4, 2005. <http://www.twit.tv/33> (accessed July 31, 2006).
Prensky, Marc. "Search vs. Research: Or, the Fear of the Wikipedia Overcome by New Understanding for the Digital Era."
<http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky-Search_vs_Research-01.pdf> (accessed July 28, 2006).
Schiff, Stacy. "Know It All: Can Wikipedia Conquer Expertise?" The New Yorker, issue of 2006-07-31 posted 2006-07-24 <http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060731fa_fact> (accessed July 25, 2006).