[DG: Teaching & Learning] [DG: User Experience] Wiki's and Sakai
Stephen Swinsburg
s.swinsburg at lancaster.ac.uk
Fri Apr 3 13:19:02 PDT 2009
Just to chime in on this as I've been preparing the wiki for the 2.6
release so I'll try to allay some concerns.
The original toolbar that takes care of the wiki formatting for you,
ie bold, italic, heading, table, image, link etc is all still staying
in for 2.6.0. This places wiki formatting around the text you
highlight, draws a wiki syntax-style table for you, allows you to pick/
upload an image etc. So it's not all back-to-basics in learning the
syntax, you can still use the basic editor included.
It is the FCK style editor that is not being included. This editor
never made any final release, ie it wasn't in 2.5.
A tip using the original editor is to toggle between Edit and Preview
so you can see what it looks like, then back to Edit to make your
changes, repeat as desired, then Save.
cheers,
Steve
---
Steve Swinsburg
Portal Systems Developer
Centre for e-Science
Lancaster University
Lancaster
LA1 4YT
email: s.swinsburg at lancaster.ac.uk
phone: +44 (0) 1524 594870
On 03/04/2009, at 8:56 PM, Christopher D. Coppola wrote:
> 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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>>>>
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