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

[Cherry Stewart]

I think that it is very important to include a wiki. Collaborative  
learning requires tools that allow several users to work on the same  
documents. We use the Sakai wiki a lot for group work. Some students  
find it very difficult and have opted for Google docs.  While other  
students have adapted quite well. I have been amazed at how quickly  
students adjust when they focus on the learning activity rather than  
learning the technology. Their learning of the technology is a by  
product of their other skill developments.

Using the wiki has highlighted the need for a group of students  
(independent learners) to adjust their attitudes. Quite often, I  
receive complaints from students who are concerned about their marks,  
and doing work for 'lazy' students, or about 'vindictive' students who  
delete their information. Usually, it is not anyone being perverse,  
but not understanding how to use the tool (and thus changing page  
links), or being unskilled in working cooperatively and establishing  
group process guidelines first.  However, for these students  
ultimately they gain very valuable skill, which they might not  
otherwise be forced to engage with.

I would like to see a wiki that supports a lot more interactive  
processes. In a recent activity, students needed to create tables / 
grids, and use graphic organisers collaboratively. The current table  
macro in the wiki is not great, and the 'run-on' nature of the editing  
view makes it very difficult for the untrained eye to understand what  
needs to be done, and where entries are best placed.

As we move to providing more and more 'anywhere, anytime' learning, it  
is also important to ensure that the tools are available for  
cooperative knowledge construction. (I think it is up to the human  
element to turn the cooperation, into collaboration.)

I would like to see improved integrated options in the wiki, and a  
more integrated tool platform (e.g. tikiwiki).

cherry

Cherry Stewart
Educational Designer
Sakai Distance Education Projects
School of Education
School of Health
University of New England

61 2 6773 5069

On 05/04/2009, at 2:12 AM, Nate Angell wrote:

> 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
>> ________________________________________
>>