Comments on: Wikified class notes

By: jbj

jbj — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:31:13 +0000

Hi, Kristine! (We’ve actually e-mailed about this before, I think.)

Your first point is dead on: Figuring this out is 75% of the battle.

As far as feedback goes: I’ve not been crazy about editing it myself, in order to ward off dependency issues. (”If we just wait, maybe HE’LL do it.”) I already have that problem a bit with the 7-8 most prolific editors in each class. (I will, however, edit directly to help people accomplish a specific thing.)

And, yes, if there’s something genuinely amiss on the page, one possibility is that I didn’t do a very good job explaining it, and it had better come up again in class!!

By: Kristine

Kristine — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:28:19 +0000

Great post!

The huge takeaway for me is the overwhelming need to structure the project so your students know how to interact with the wiki.

For your issue with providing feedback to your students class notes - I think this is a great problem to have! I have two ideas 1) You can intervene either by mentioning the same topic in class again, or 2) by involving yourself in the collaboration process and editing the wiki yourself.

What do you think?

(sorry if I posted this twice!)

By: Kristine

Kristine — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:49:27 +0000

The huge takeaway for me is the overwhelming need to structure the project so your students know how to interact with the wiki.

What do you think?

By: Rebecca

Rebecca — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 05:09:58 +0000

I was so inspired by this as I’m just starting a wiki with two classes - accounting and child-studies students with low-level written and spoken English (except for one or two). Is it possible to find some more on peagogy around this activity to make it make more sense to all of us?

I know intiuitively that this is a great way of teaching - and encourages students to take initiative and to take charge at times - but it’s been a long time since I trained and I’d love to be able to justify this.

By: jbj

jbj — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 19:44:20 +0000

@Brian: For the past year, almost all of my classes. The exception’s the Digital Literary Studies class, because they have part of their class in an online chatroom, and we archive the chats. They then reflect on that work in a variety of other formats.

@Liz: Yes . . . evaluation is a challenge! The wiki helps in one respect: I can see who’s made what changes by using the history and statistics features. So, unlike other group assignments, it’s trivial to suss out who is doing the heavy lifting.

As far as content goes, each iteration of the assignment has prompted me to use the “comments” feature more early in the semester, to help establish a threshold for quality. This semester, I’m also hoping to set up a rubric-type-thing. Will post when it’s done.

By: Liz

Liz — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 23:12:08 +0000

I like this a lot, and may try to adapt for my own classes. I knew wikis could be useful for teaching but hadn’t figured it out yet. My own experiment with wikis for organizing student group projects wasn’t very effective. But as a system for keeping class notes - brilliant.

I’m concerned, though, about how to evaluate it. I’ll be interested to see if you figure out a solution.

By: Brian

Brian — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 16:29:31 +0000

One question: how many classes are you using this in? All of them?

By: Brian

Brian — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 15:32:01 +0000

Very nicely thought through, JBJ. I’m looking forward to lifting this lock, stock, and barrel and adapting it (if/when a particular institution in Atlanta ever feels like letting me teach again…).

By: Katy

Katy — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 19:18:56 +0000

This is really interesting and helpful. I’m trying a wiki log this semester for class notes and other assignments. I’m kind of figuring it out as I go along, but your guidelines look a lot more thorough than my initial ones. The resources on your wiki site are great - hope you don’t mind if I use some of the web-based ones I’ll be following this discussion with great interest.