Educational Wikis

Wikis are simple websites that are shared by multiple users. If you have no previous experience with wikis, I highly suggest this YouTube video that covers the basics of wikis in simple, easy to understand language.

Wikis are incredibly useful in an educational setting. They can be used to post course materials, facilitate group projects, and even act as a CMS (see my last post to learn more about CMS). To start, I suggest everyone watch the following video which will walk you through setting up your own educational wiki. The narration is dry, but it is an incredibly useful tutorial.



One tool mentioned in the above video that did not receive much attention is student collaboration via wiki. Now, the video suggests that the way to accomplish collaboration is to have students upload a word processing document and update that after each change is made. Unfortunately, that method can cause some problems. If two students make changes to the same version and upload them one after another, the changes made by the first would be lost.

My suggestion is to have students create their own group wiki for their project. That way they can create pages for different pieces of the project: one for an information outline, one for resources, even one for division of responsibilities. Only one person can edit the wiki at the time, so changes will not be lost.

As a quick final note, I wanted to expand upon my earlier suggestion that you use a wiki for you course management. If you are interested in using a wiki as your CMS, please check out Moodle. Moodle is a free, open source wiki-based CMS. I have used it, and it is incredibly simple and easy to use.

Resources:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q90qzQnfsI
• http://www.wikispaces.com/
  
• http://moodle.com/
  

Course Management Software

Course management software (CMS) is a fantastic way for teachers to keep course data organized and accessible to all parties. Most CMS comes in the form of a website with various layers of protection. CMS often come with some or all of these key features:

• Information dissemination (such as the course syllabus)
  
• Assignment release and submission
• Grade posting
• Educational modules
• Quiz and test facilitation
• Chatrooms and discussion forums
• Wiki
  

Unfortunately, CMS can also have a number of issues. The following are a few of the most common problems and some simple solutions:

• The site could go down at key times, such as right before an assignment is due. Some systems offer the option of setting a grace period, or unannounced extra time after an assignment is due, which allows students to submit late in the event of a problem. Alternately, the instructor could allow for emailed submissions in emergencies.
• The server hosting the site could die and all the data could be lost. Therefore, it is important to always backup data, including assignment submissions and grades.
• Not all CMS offer all of the features I mentioned above; some have less, and some have more. Therefore, it is key to research all options before making a decision. This wikipedia page offers a list of several popular CMS solutions.
• It is also important that an institution use as few CMS options as possible. For example, Georgia Tech uses only one solution, a tailor-made CMS called T-Square. Alternately, Georgia State allows each instructor to choose their own CMS. This results in students needing to learn and regularly check a number of websites, causing a great amount of frustration.

Finally, I would like to include a screenshot of uLearn, a CMS solution I have used at GSU. I opened up the assignment for which I created this blog.


(click to enlarge)

The leftmost menu lists all the tools available for the course, while the second menu lists the various topics for this particular learning module. The main content is the text of the assignment.

Resources:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_learning_environment#Course_management_systems