About Mediawiki at Evergreen

Definition

A wiki is a type of website that allows users to add, remove, or otherwise edit and change most content very quickly and easily, sometimes without the need for registration. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative writing. - from Wikipedia

Curricular Uses

• Collaborative Writing
• Create a group knowledge base
• Presentation tool
• Web-based research journal
• Research Coordination and Collaboration
• Conference and Colloquia Web Site / Coordination
• Allows students to create their own areas of a group site

Advantages

• Quick - content can be edited from any internet connected computer
• Flexible - because content does not reside in directories or files (content is stored in a database) the way we approach communicating or organizing information becomes untethered by perceived information containers.
• Focus is on content versus presentation
• Students can post their own work and get interactive feedback
• Large community of users (Wikipedia) sharing tips on wiki usage and best practices
• Handles most multimedia files types
• Leaves a record of who did what (wiki history)

Disadvantages

• Unless structured from the beginning, wikis can quickly become chaotic
• Students need to create their own table of contents to show links to their work
• In order to respond to peers' essays students would need to use the discussion tab which is not a threaded discussion but a another wiki page.
• Need to learn wiki syntax

Wikis at Evergreen

• Index of all wikis
• Digital Humanities - The Common Knowledge program is working on a wiki research guide for the digital humanities.
• Museums Wiki - The Museums program used a wiki for students to collect and document their research.

Wiki Resources

• Wiki Login Help
• Quick Guide to Wiki Syntax
• Mediawiki documentation Evergreen's own wiki documentation
• Wikipedia
• MIT Center for Collective Intelligence
• 7 things you should know about wikis - from Educause