The Wonderful—Yet Misunderstood—World of Wikis

In academia, the word “wiki” often conjures up images of students copying and pasting assignments from Wikipedia, daring the plagiarism police to catch them. The word reminds others of that revolutionary vanguard of the fifth estate known as WikiLeaks—with some welcoming a new age of electronic social justice and others arguing that some dams should never crumble. Wikis can be powerful tools for cataloguing and disseminating information. However, with their ability to inform and misinform, some may wonder about their value for research and classroom collaboration.

What a Tangled Wiki We Weave

The objections don’t stop at leaks or misinformation. Even if Wikipedia were considered a legitimate research tool, it can lead readers down an infinitely convoluted path of tenuously related subjects as comedian B.J. Novak notes in his routine, “Wikipedia Brown and the Case of the Missing Bike.”  When Wikipedia Brown’s knowledge leads everyone down the road to information overload, his partner Sally warns of the dangers inherent in using Wikipedia: “Every time we talk to Wikipedia Brown, we get distracted. We spend hours and hours with him, and we always forget what he was investigating in the first place.”

Such popular ideas about wikis can lead us to the wrong conclusions about their effectiveness as a tool. While many of us sternly forbid students from using Wikipedia, we should embrace the wiki model in the classroom as a way to generate collaboration and effectively manage research. Rather than being a source of misinformation, leaks, and distractions, wikis are actually a solid way to corral a great deal of information.

Putting the “We” in Wiki

I first encountered wikis while completing a Teaching Certificate at the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching. The CFT, which has a nice guide for wikis, utilized Wikispaces for the various phases of the certificate. I soon learned that wikis could be a worthwhile tool for a long-term individual project. My CFT wiki contained lesson plans, reflections on my teaching, and a draft of my final project.

Wikis are even better for group projects. When I taught a hybrid class on ethics for a seminary, I created a wiki that served as a ministerial ethics manual. I included pages such as “The Bible and Ethics” and “Preaching, Plagiarism, and Ethics.” Students added their own topics such as “Worship and Ethics.” Many students enjoyed the wiki, and I found that it worked extremely well in such a practical course.

Last year, I used a wiki for my Literary Analysis of the Hebrew Bible class. As part of their participation grade, each student served as the recorder for a particular day of class. They pasted or uploaded their outlines and notes for the day’s discussions, and presenters included their PowerPoints. In addition to being a great resource for students who missed a day of class, the wiki gave me a record of our discussions that I can utilize the next time I teach the course.

Pop Goes The Wiki!

By far, the most success I have had with wikis came in my Bible in American Culture class. In fact, the subject matter of the class pretty much demanded a wiki. In the course, students collect pop culture references to the Bible from books, movies, television shows, music, comic books, etc. Students have different pages for each of these items—readily available for review and commentary by their classmates.

Students needed various wiki pages devoted to each type of information. One page might contain a summary of articles about Jezebel from feminist scholars while another page would discuss the popular site jezebel.com. The wiki proved to be essential for conducting research and looking for trends to create a thesis for the final paper. The use of the wiki in this course achieved a nice balance between the individual and community aspects of wikis.

Wik-Keys to Success

I highly recommend the use of wikis in the classroom. In fact, I believe they may be a better way to conduct research in the digital world. Our students no longer carry backpacks or briefcases full of articles. Their information is stored on laptops or tablets. While the data may be more easily accessed, it still needs the organization that a wiki can provide.

Of course, the wiki has certain drawbacks. Blackboard often creates formatting problems that are difficult to resolve for students. I offer a tutorial and tell them to do their best when it comes to these issues.

Blackboard users may find this tutorial for creating wikis to be very helpful. Likewise this video guide can be shared with students. Those who would rather not use Blackboard can always try the aforementioned WikiSpaces or Google Spaces or PBwiki.

Wikis have a lot to offer the classroom community. They are also great for long-term individual projects. Wikis could be useful for any of the following:

• Capstone Projects
• Writing Portfolios
• Service Learning Projects
• Collaborative Research

Wikis may be the missing key to the interactive classroom. Indeed wikis may make old ways of conducting, storing, and analyzing research obsolete. According to this 2009 article, Encarta finally succumbed to its long battle with Wikipedia as collaborative volunteers triumphed over corporate teams.

So why not make plans to use wikis in your next class or research project? You might discover that they can improve student engagement and be a great way to manage data.

Photo Credit: “wiki was very good” (Caption:  I’ve been putting a lot of work into the wiki for my video production module that I’m delivering at Leeds Met University. So naturally this comment on one of my student’s feedback forms made my day. Awesome.) by fin5bjh  – CC by 2.0

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