Wiki Lessons

The third session of my HR Technology course is winding down, and the final class 'Wiki as intranet'project is coming together really well.  The students have really embraced the technology and have created some really outstanding content, and have extended the 'core' functionality by embedding video, chat rooms, polls, and presentations.

In my experience using wikis as a class tool as well as deploying wikis in the organization for faculty use there are a few key considerations and lessons learned that are important to understand if you plan on introducing wikis to your class or organization.

1. If Wikis are new to your program or organization, chances are 90% of the students and staff will have never 'used' a Wiki, beyond reading entries on Wikipedia.

2. Even though Wikis are touted as simple, no-training-required tools, doing more than adding simple text will initially require demonstration and review for most non-technical users.

3. Wikis that make as simple as possible the steps for embedding video, slide shows, Flickr images, chat, and polls (love Zoho Polls for this), will be most effective in the classroom

4. For the best chances of adoption of the Wiki as the primary class or organization communication platform, put everything on the Wiki. for your class this means Syllabus, course overview, assignments, presentations, and any 'sign-ups' should all be Wiki pages. Encourage the class to post questions and comments everywhere. For an organization wiki, meeting agendas, minutes, project plans, status reports and announcements should all be placed on the wiki.

5. For a class, old habits are still hard to break, you may need to 'cross-post' for a time in both the Wiki and the old course management system. Certain items like the gradebook still have to reside in the CMS. Try not to make the students have to bounce back and forth between the two platforms too often. In your organization, you may still need to resort to e-mail blasts to be sure important announcements are getting seen, while you are building wiki awareness and use.  If you do resort to e-mail, be sure to 'cross-post' to the wiki and provide a link the the associated wiki page in the e-mail message.

6. Keep the wiki alive even after the class or project ends. There's lots of good information there. Figure out a way to keep it accessible for students in the future. In an organization this is less of an issue, but be mindful of 'stagnation', many wikis start out with a flurry of activity, then sort of slowly die out as the novelty wears off.

I am absolutely convinced that Wikis are an incredibly effective tool for almost all class activities, with the added bonus of giving the students exposure and experience to a technology they will see in the workplace. In fact, a current student has already implemented her own company-wide wiki for here small business, largely based on the experience and lessons learned from using the class wiki.

These tips and observations are really vendor neutral, I have implemented wikis from Socialtext, Confluence, and PbWiki, and while they all have their individual strengths and weaknesses, they all support the essentials for class or organizational use.

What are your best tips, tricks and observations from using wiki?

Comments

[HR Maven]

Great post! We use wikis at my college as well. I wonder about the broader appeal outside higher education and if businesses use them much? Would be an interesting poll.

[Steve]

Thanks for the comment Maven. More and more businesses have adopted wikis in the last few years, so their usage is slowly becoming more mainstream. They are such a flexible, simple, and low-cost tool that they are often a good solution for small business, as they don't usually require any specific IT or programming skills. I would never run my class without using a wiki, as it has helped my so much.