Collaborative Wiki Building Project:
Contemporary Issues Group Wiki
Collaborative Wiki Building Project
• What is a Wiki
• How are Wikis used
• Goals of the project
• Project Overview
• Steps for Students
• Potential Problems
• Grading Rubric
• Results
What is a Wiki?
• “Wikis in Plain English”
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY
How are Wikis used?
• Wikipedia:
• Wiki bills
• Wiki class notes
Goals of the Project:
• Motivate students: students more interested in learning things they
think are worth learning.
• Connect course material to outside world, specifically to recent
events reported in the media, in online news sites, broadcast media,
or printed news sources.
• Convince students that course material is worth mastering as it has
value and meaning in their own lives—the course is relevant.
• Encourage students to speak to one another about course topics and
high level issues. Also, encourage feeling of community in the class.
Project overview:
• Together in small groups build a Wiki on a contemporary topic of
interest to them.
• This is an exploratory project: In the end, students do not produce
one single, cohesive piece of research. Instead, the end result will be
an ad hoc group exploration of a set of related issues.
• In some ways, the research students do here is what one would do
before actually choosing a research topic for a paper—before
developing a thesis statement.
• At the end of the session, students will report on what they learned.
Step 1: Groups choose a topic
Step 2: Students contribute summaries each week
Students write one 150 word summary of an article and post it on the Wiki once a week
for six weeks. (Six article summaries in total). The summary should include:
• 1. Name and date of news source
• 2. 150 word summary
• 3. URL of source
New York Times, April 23, 2014
150 word summary xxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(URL of source)
Step 3: Begin to organize articles
• As the weeks progress I provide students with in-class group meeting
time (about 15 minutes each week) to discuss what they are
collecting.
• Early on, I encourage students to organize the data into categories or
even chronologically, thus making sense of what they are collecting,
looking for patterns, categories, ways to break up the subject matter.
• Students are free to “specialize” in collecting only articles pertaining
to one aspect of the larger subject.
What is/is not a summary?
A summary is: About 150 words. A brief and carefully worded statement of the
essential meaning and critical points of the article read.
A summary does not: 1. Include your own opinion. 2. Repeat the words of the author
(this is plagiarizing). 3. It also does not paraphrase those words. To paraphrase means
to state the same idea in slightly different words. Instead, a summary describes the
central idea of the article. Thus, you need to read the article usually a couple of times
at least to understand the main concepts in order to summarize.
What is a legitimate source?
We are looking at non-scholarly sources. The most appropriate source material for
this assignment is major newspapers: The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal,
The Christian Science Monitor. These can be accessed through the MSU Sprague
library website. (Call the reference desk if you need help accessing).
If you choose to use another sort of source: be certain it is legitimate. If it is not, your
summary will not count towards your grade. (No Wikipedia, no about.com).
Following your summary with the URL for the source is a sufficient way of citing the
material for this project.
Legitimate sources worksheet.
Step 4: Finalize Wiki Organization
• After six weeks, students stop collecting articles.
• I provide class time to ensure that they have or will conceptualize
some way of organizing the material.
• Students finalize organization and categorization of articles.
• Students elect one or two “lead editors” who will make sure the Wiki
is ready for final discussion.
• “Lead editors” job is simple: Run a spell check, make sure the
headings are acceptable.
Step 5: Present the Wiki
• Students will stand in front of the room, as a group.
• They will tell us what they know.
• They will pull the Wiki up, show us their categories, show us what
they learned.
Potential problems:
• Student sabotages another student by changing the other student’s
work without permission.
• Rogue captain re-works the whole Wiki without group permission.
• Non-contributors.
Solutions:
• Wiki Regulations sheet provided to students:
You are not allowed to edit, alter, delete another student’s contribution.
Elected editors have very limited rights, agreed on by the group.
Non-contributors will not damage the grades of individual group
members.
Please report to me any rogue students (students who are actively
interfering with group progress).
Grading Rubric
A:
Student contributes weekly for the prescribed number of weeks and contributes the prescribed
number of articles.
Summaries are well-written, and posted in the format prescribed.
(All of the above standards must be met for an A grade).
B:
Student contributes less than weekly for one or two weeks; student posts fewer than the prescribed
number of articles.
Summaries remain clear, well-written and presented in the format prescribed.
Grades lower than an A or a B are given as deemed necessary based on the extent to which
students fail to:
•
•
•
•
Contribute weekly
Contribute the prescribed number of articles
Submit summaries that are clear and well-written.
Submit summaries that are not in appropriate format.