Implementing a Wiki as a collaboration tool for group projects

A Wiki is a web-based tool that allows people to contribute, edit, and read content on a particular subject. Wikis are commonly used as repositories of information and technical notes in fields such as software applications development. This paper describes one professor’s experience using a free Wiki as a collaboration tool in an undergraduate course in project design and planning. In the past, students in this course worked together to produce a highly detailed project specification in printed format that was then used to create a significant project in a succeeding course. The Wiki was used to not only replace the printed document, but also as a tool to gather ideas, make decisions, and capture knowledge. Introduction A Wiki is a relatively new service that is readily available on the World Wide Web that allows for the creation and management of content by anyone who is able, and hopefully qualified, to contribute. Perhaps the best known Wiki is the Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org), which is the Web's largest and most popular reference site. The Wikipedia, itself has become the subject of much debate in academe because of the means by which any person can contribute to the reference with no systematic editorial oversight or factchecking mechanism. However, if the Wikipedia can be upheld as a model for education one need not look at the legitimacy of its content, but in the ways in which it empowers individuals to supply and edit said content with little or no experience in Web authoring. As an assistant professor of media arts, I was curious to know if this model could serve as a means for collaboration and knowledge capture in my courses so I implemented a free Wiki into two courses during the '06-'07 academic year.