Wikis in education: is public better?

Wikis are being used in educational settings more and more but they are often installed within existing institutional Learning Management Systems (LMS) and as such are private, readable and editable only with a password, or semi-public, readable but not editable without a password. What differentiates the use of social software tools such as wikis in the classroom from other traditional computer mediated communication (CMC) tools is that they enable communication between people and knowledge sharing beyond the limits of the classroom and classroom activities. This paper investigates whether or not closing a wiki limits the very potential the tool has in education. Based on a brief review of the literature on wikis in education, the first section discusses how the benefits of wikis might be greater when they are public. This is followed by a description of two courses carried out at the University of Padua, one using a semi-public wiki and the other a public wiki. The same groups of students contributed to both wikis over two semesters and conclusions on the advantages and disadvantages of using a public wiki are drawn from a qualitative analysis of the data gathered. The preliminary findings are then used to suggest that a compromise between public and private wikis in education might provide the ideal learning environment.