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Revision as of 16:38, 11 January 2008

A wiki is a type of website that provides a framework for users to interactively and collaboratively build a database of interrelated information quickly and easily. Wikipedia, currently featuring more that two million articles in English alone, is the most well known wiki, but wikis can also be targeted to smaller audiences, such as an engineering class. We will discuss our use of wikis in teaching a capstone senior design course and graduate courses in design optimization and small scale heat transfer. In all three courses, a wiki provides (i) logistical benefits to the instructor compared to a traditional webpage, and (ii) an interactive and collaborative online-environment in which students can drive their own learning experience. In addition to discussing the benefits of course wikis to both instructors and students, we will also describe the process of setting up and maintaining a wiki on a web server.

For the course instructor, the wiki provides a web environment in which to disseminate information about the class. Like a regular website, the course schedule, homework assignments, and important documents can be made available. The wiki interface provides a convenient way to update and modify information, as the editing can be done directly online. Course notes can be posted, and the “talk” feature of the wiki can be used to solicit student questions and feedback. Students may also subscribe to receive email alerts and/or RSS feeds to monitor updates and changes to course material.

The active experience that a wiki offers students is its strongest feature. In the capstone senior design course students used the wiki in teams to collaboratively write design project reports, including pictures and videos to document use and functionality. The wiki enables increased student-to-student and instructor-to-student interaction. Students can be asked to post comments critiquing the work of other teams and can observe the work of other teams to benchmark and build ideas. Instructors can monitor student progress in real time, foresee potential problems in time to offer corrections, and have access to a full history of team member contributions to support individualized feedback and grading of team projects. In the graduate heat transfer course, students developed their own wiki pages on the course fundamentals, and then worked with other students to improve both their initial pages and those of others. This collaborative activity developed community within the class, and provided a series of wiki pages that can be used in subsequent teachings of the course at a level suitable to the students. In the graduate course on optimization and product development, students engaged in independent research on a topic related to the course but beyond what was covered in class, writing a wiki page as a report on the topic and presenting it to the class.

In all three courses, the wiki is designed to grow in subsequent offerings, providing a basis and standard for future students.

Introduction

Wiki software

Most wiki software is open source code and numerous wiki engines are freely available. The most popular one is MediaWiki, the same program used for Wikipedia. MediaWiki is written in the hypertext scripting language PHP, incorporating database management system. We choose and also recommend using MediaWiki to setup a classroom wiki for several reasons. First, it has large-scale database capability and high operation reliability. Second, the installation and maintenance processes are simple and friendly. Third, MediaWiki has its own wiki offering users comprehensive instructions about installing, maintaining, and updating MeidaWiki. Fourth, MediaWiki offers integrated math-formula display function similar to the LaTeX math syntax. This important feature, especially for scientific and engineering courses, provides a convenient protocol to display mathematical symbols and formulations on a wiki page.

Linux is recommended for the operating system platform of a wiki not only because it is open source and has strong security features. Prior to installing the main wiki program, the PHP interpreter, HTTP server (e.g. Apache web server), and database server (e.g. MySQL) should be installed first. The detailed installation procedures can be found in the corresponding websites.

A well-designed wiki program should be easy to maintain by the administrator. From our experiences, the maintenance responsibilities for a class wiki include: 1) user account management, 2) wiki page management, 3) database and file backups, 4) system updating and 5) security issue handing. For management, MediaWiki provides a well-designed web interface for the wiki administration. Backups and updates can be done by following the procedures from the MediaWiki website. Security issues need an additional tool. A plug-in program reCAPTCHA developed by Carnegie Mellon University is strongly recommended. reCAPTCHA can effectively block maliciously automatic registrations and spam.

Course management

Information dissemination

From the student perspective, information dissemination from the instructor through the wiki is the same as it would be on a regular webpage. The course syllabus, announcements, and homework assignments can all be made available. The advantage of the wiki in this regard is on the side of the instructor. The wiki environment provides an easy way to quickly and directly update existing pages with no need for external software. The wiki can be updated from any computer with internet access and has many convenient built-in features (e.g., tables).

Comment about security - can the list of people who can edit a particular page be controlled?

Course notes

Course notes, particularly if they are prepared using LaTeX, can readily be placed on the wiki. These pages can then be made open to students, where they can make changes and initiate discussion of points that are not clear to them. (There's a CMU CS prof who does this - I think I have a newspaper article about it). In this way, the instructor can get immediate feedback from students after they have had time to digest material (such interaction during class is not always effective), helping them to plan out future lectures. Students will also be able to catch small errors (spelling, symbols, math). The notes will be in a dynamic state throughout the semester.

Reward students for their work on the wiki.

Solicitation of student input

Email alerts

Student interaction

Collaborative writing

McGaughey's SSHT class had nine graduate students. In the second (first?) lecture of the class they were broken into three groups and asked to write down what they knew about a cerain topic on the board. After ? minutes, the groups then rotated and were asked to edit/comment on what another group had written. The class then had a discussion on how what they had done was like how a wiki page operates. Their first wiki assignment was to make a page on a term discussed in one of the first few lectures (e.g., conduction, phonon, ...) that would be accessible to a broad audience. (Give some stats) In the second wiki assignemnt, each student was assigned to a different wiki page. Their job was to edit what has been written and add to the material to bring it to a higher level. Thus, each student in the second assignment was responsible for editing a new page, but also monitoring their original page. (stats) (comments) It is easy to leave notes/comments/discussion on the wiki page.

Peer-to-peer interaction

Student-instructor interaction

Monitoring student progress

Contribution history

Community-building

Information growth, consolidation and sharing

Summary and conclusions

References

• Park, K.R., and Chao, J.T., (2007) "Wiki as a Teaching Tool," Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects, 3, 57-72. [1]
• Elgort, I., (2007) "Using wikis as a learning tool in higher education," Proceedings ascilite Singapore 2007. [2]