[DG: Teaching & Learning] [DG: User Experience] Wiki's and Sakai

Fri Apr 3 12:56:29 PDT 2009

Interesting conversation. Nate Angell and I were talking about this  
the other day and agree that these are the desirable characteristics.  
There's a screen cast of a product called Mindtouch Deki that I think  
demonstrates these essential elements. They stay away from calling  
their product (which is open source) a wiki. It doesn't use wiki text,  
it uses standards compliant xhtml. Check out the screencast: http://www.mindtouch.com/

Another potential solution at least for the 2.x branch that we've been  
talking about is to integrate with an existing product like this.  
Anyone else thinking about that?

/chris
--
rSmart
Chris Coppola | 602.490.0472
blog: coppola.rsmart.com

On Apr 3, 2009, at 12:07 PM, John Ansorge wrote:

> I completely agree that the Sakai 3 content authoring shows great  
> promise and it would be great to see a little bit of that  
> functionality function in 2.x.
>
> While wiki syntax can be useful, I think for most student and  
> faculty needs WYSIWYG is far more desirable.  I think what most of  
> our instructors/students are looking for in the wiki is this:
> simple versioning/rollback
> WYSIWYG
> easy page generation and page linking
> basic level of access control (group-aware would be great, but role- 
> based is ok, too)
> That's enough to allow group collaboration on a project in the wiki  
> tool without needing to know wiki markup.  The current wiki is  
> close, but I don't think we should underestimate the learning curve  
> that wiki-markup presents for many users.  It's really easy for a  
> typo or small formatting mistake to mess up an entire page when we  
> leave it to humans to generate markup code.
>
> John Norman wrote:
>>
>> FWIW we see the content authoring solution planned for Sakai 3 as
>> combining the best of both worlds for site creation and wiki pages.  
>> We
>> haven't quite figured out what the UX should be to separate out  
>> 'wiki'
>> use of authoring (i.e. students can edit pages) from 'content
>> management' use of authoring (site owners - faculty - can edit  
>> pages),
>> but the technology is there.
>>
>> So there are (at least) two options for a collaborative project:
>> 1. Fix up the nearly done work that exists (should be a small task)
>> 2. Introduce the content authoring paradigm into the Sakai 2 roadmap.
>> Mostly working, a step towards Sakai 3, but with a larger QA load and
>> requiring JCR to be active in the deployment.
>>
>> Michael's Sakai 3 demo (running on Sakai 2.5/K1) shows what this
>> intermediate solution might look like (focus on the 'create new web
>> page' parts and imagine you give your students permission to do  
>> this).
>> There would almost certainly need to be some UX work to make this  
>> work
>> well for a combined 'content management' and 'wiki' scenario.
>>
>> John
>>
>> On 2 Apr 2009, at 01:37, Hardman, Gloria wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Hello all
>>>
>>> Our faculty have generally found the Wiki too difficult as well.  A
>>> few have done wonders with it and their students participated with
>>> enthusiasm.     For most, it is too much effort to figure it all  
>>> out.
>>>
>>> For those who have used more user-friendly Wiki software it is hard
>>> to understand why we can't offer a more user-friendly solution.
>>>
>>> We were also hoping for a better editor in 2.6.
>>>
>>>
>>> All the best
>>>
>>> Gloria
>>>
>>>
>>> On 4/1/09 4:59 PM, "May, Megan Marie" <mmmay at indiana.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi everyone,
>>>  Here at IU we're disappointed that the WYSIWYG editing capabilities
>>> aren't going to make the 2.6.0 release (see message below for the
>>> announcement/rationale).     We've found that faculty try the wiki
>>> in Sakai but end up switching to free and inexpensive hosted
>>> solutions because they are so much easier to use.   Obviously, the
>>> wysiwyg would greatly improve the user experience but it wouldn't
>>> resolve the 'ease of use' issues we're hearing about.  This has made
>>> us wonder if it might be wise to explore other options, like
>>> integration with existing wiki applications.
>>>
>>> Do other institutions receive similar feedback?   Has anyone looked
>>> into integrating Sakai with a different wiki solution?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Megan
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> From: Pete Peterson [mailto:plpeterson at ucdavis.edu]
>>> Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2009 4:45 PM
>>> To: 'Sakai Developers'; 'Sakai QA'; production at collab.sakaiproject.org
>>> Cc: Michael Korcuska; Knoop, Peter; Anthony Whyte; Pete Peterson;
>>> May, Megan Marie; Stephen Swinsburg; David Horwitz
>>> Subject: Important information about Sakai 2.6.0 and the rWiki tool
>>>
>>> Greetings Sakai Community,
>>>
>>> We have been unable to resolve a number of issues with the 2.6 rwiki
>>> code, centered around the WYSIWYG editing capabilities and data loss
>>> under certain conditions.  At this point in the release cycle we are
>>> opting to replace it with the 2.5.x version of rwiki, making the
>>> necessary changes to make it compatible with the 2.6 codebase.  We
>>> are also re-applying some of the minor fixes and improvements
>>> intended for the 2.6 version of rwiki to the 2.5.x-based version
>>> (see SAK-15866 <http://jira.sakaiproject.org/jira/browse/ 
>>> SAK-15866><http://jira.sakaiproject.org/jira/browse/SAK-15866
>>>
>>>>  for more details).
>>>>
>>> Summary
>>> *        We have rolled the rwiki code back to the 2.5 version which
>>> has proven stable in many production instances.
>>>
>>> ·        Many of the updated rwiki features that are present in
>>> trunk/ the original 2.6 version, have been merged back into this
>>> version. Details of this effort can be viewed at SAK-15866 <http://jira.sakaiproject.org/jira/browse/SAK-15866
>>>
>>>> <http://jira.sakaiproject.org/jira/browse/SAK-15866>  (many thanks
>>>>
>>> to Steve Swinsburg for his work on this issue).
>>>
>>> *        This new hybrid-rwiki has been tested and seems to work as
>>> expected.
>>>
>>>
>>> With regards to the WYSIWYG editing capabilities for rwiki scheduled
>>> for inclusion in  Sakai 2.6 (SAK-8535 <http://jira.sakaiproject.org/jira/browse/SAK-8535
>>>
>>>> <http://jira.sakaiproject.org/jira/browse/SAK-8535> ), we will
>>>>
>>> continue explore options for implementing such functionality at a
>>> later time.  This is an oft requested features, so if you are
>>> interested in helping us explore and implement possible solutions,
>>> please contact Peter Knoop <mailto:knoop at umich.edu><mailto:knoop at umich.edu
>>>
>>>> , Sakai Project Coordinator.
>>>>
>>> If you have any questions, comments or suggestions please send them
>>> to us by 3/31/2009.
>>>
>>> Thank you for your time and support,
>>>
>>> Pete Peterson
>>> QA Director, Sakai Foundation
>>> plpeterson at ucdavis.edu
>>> Phone: +1-530-754-7259
>>>
>>>
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