Class Project

These are my project ideas as they now stand. Beware! This is a long post!

Three Ideas for Using a Wiki

First Possibility: In a weak moment, to help implement the English Department’s Strategic Plan, I volunteered to facilitate a department-wide discussion on how the English Department might improve advising, specifically to “discuss advising strategies and methods within the department.”

I had originally intended to use Blackboard’s Discussion Group for this. I have developed 3 questions that I would post; then I would urge, and urge, and finally beg, my colleagues to respond. As one aspect of analyzing their responses, I might use a Wordle to discover what issues seem most important to the group.

After taking this class, I’m now considering setting up a wiki as the first step. This would allow interested department members to, as ideas occur to them, contribute to the development of the final recommendations.

Second Possibility: All of the classes I teach are face to face, but all require the students to use Blackboard for specific activities. So, they have all developed some familiarity with Blackboard. I might set up a wiki in my class Blackboard sites, one that I could use to collect and distribute information in the case of an H1N1 outbreak. Frankly, I’m starting to drift away from this idea because, as the semester progresses, my initial skepticism about the threat of H1N1 has heightened. It is less of a priority to develop something for a what-if situation; all of the work may prove to be nothing but an exercise.

The third idea is to use a wiki in a specific class. Here's an example. Comm Skillls 2 requires students develop a cover letter and a resume in response to a position description. I could have students put their cover letters and their resumes in a wiki. After these are graded, I could change the criteria by having them respond to the requirements of a different position description. Instead of generating a new document, students could simply change the original. Perhaps each person would be responsible for changing their own document; perhaps groups could work on the documents together—asynchronously.

Comm Skills 2 also requires a lot of peer feedback. If the document were within a wiki, when students do peer feedback, instead of describing changes the writer might make, the peer could actually make those changes so the two writers could see and discuss the results, either immediately (face-to-face) or asynchronously.

I have the ideas developed. My next step is to become comfortable managing the wiki. I asked several questions: What about moderation? Are some sites for wikis more user friendly? Do some sites have more options? Do they all play well with Blackboard? I’ve already gotten some suggestions from both Rita and Mark about choosing a wiki host, whether to use the default that is available within Blackboard or whether to use another one.