"Willing to be disturbed"…Margaret Wheatley

If you want to create writing that includes the ideas of many then a collaborative space, such as a wiki, allows the opportunity to invite co-authors and work together. The challenge in collaborative space is participation and ownership. Some groups establish a system to identify who has made changes or additions and select membership to edit.  The collaborative authoring requires a level of trust and openness, otherwise unequal participation can occur. Additionally, your work is no longer “yours” but becomes “ours”.   If you are close to a piece of writing and want to maintain ownership then a blog is more appropriate.

For collaborative authoring, wiki is user friendly but does not work as well for discussion forums, such as Vista. Following posts or discussions in wiki often results in re-reading everything on the page because it doesn’t support tracking of back and forth conversation, nor the most recently added comments. Similar to reading a transcript, it lacks organisation tools available in Vista and discussion forums.  Wiki’s benefits, however, are in collaborative authoring.

Consideration needs to be taken when adding a wiki or other social media to a course.  Students become accustomed to seeking course material in a few places and need to know where to go.  Choosing the best  social media requires thoughtfulness.