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

Nate Angell nate.angell at rsmart.com
Sat Apr 4 08:12:52 PDT 2009


It is these kind of decisions that I was thinking about in my recent  
blog post about lessons Sakai might take from Drupal:
http://xolotl.org/node319

I believe basic content authoring should be part of Sakai's core  
functionality. Collaborative, wiki-style authoring is also core to  
Sakai's purposes as recently defined by Michael Korcuska. Wiki  
requirements are so few above and beyond those for other modes of  
authoring, I think they could be part of core as John Norman suggests.

If we deem wikis outside Sakai core, then the best path is not to  
choose a single wiki to integrate (woe our integration with *only* the  
oft-maligned, unfortunately-named FCKeditor), but to make easy  
integration with *any* external wiki possible.

My rule if thumb would be: either core and generic, or pluggable and  
open.

On Apr 4, 2009, at 5:11 AM, DAVID ROLDAN MARTINEZ <darolmar at upvnet.upv.es 
 > wrote:

> Yes, very interesting conversation. From my point of view those four  
> characteristics (simple versioning/rollback, WYSIWYG, easy page  
> generation and page linking, basic level of access control) should  
> apply to all ways of content generation in Sakai 3.x as they  
> contribute to make the environment much more intuitive and usable.
>
> Relating to integrate existing products within Sakai...Chris, I  
> completely agree with you.. Diego del Blanco and me were talking  
> about this last week. There's no sense in develop what is developed  
> yet. If there is a powerful solution or an application that  
> everybody use, why don't to get it integrated in Sakai? The problem  
> then is which criteria follow to determine to-be-integrated app? Do  
> we integrate only standard-compilant app or do we develop a wrapper  
> layer to be able to integrate several app?
>
> David
> ________________________________________
> De: sakai-ux-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org [sakai-ux-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org 
> ] En nombre de Christopher D. Coppola [chris.coppola at rsmart.com]
> Enviado el: viernes, 03 de abril de 2009 21:56
> Para: John Ansorge
> CC: Sakai UX; pedagogy Learning
> Asunto: Re: [DG: User Experience] [DG: Teaching & Learning] Wiki's  
> and Sakai
>
> 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<http://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><mailto: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<mailto: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 
> ><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><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><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 
> ><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<mailto:plpeterson at ucdavis.edu>
> Phone: +1-530-754-7259
>
>
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