Using Wikis for Collaborative Work

While I have used wikis for a long time to present work of my own and have worked collaboratively in other MET courses to add to and edit wikis, I don’t think I used the discussion tool quite as effectively than in this course.  For me, this solved one of the challenges that I have often faced with wikis, that is the problem of organization.  Too often I found that in the ideas gathering stage the wiki would get so confused and overlapped that it made it unmanageable.  However, using the discussion area helped sort that out.  Nonetheless, the organization of ideas on a wiki is still an important challenge that needs to be addressed by any group (especially larger groups like our class) to make sure the information is manageable.  Another challenge is being able to have synchronous communication while the editing is going on.  This is a feature that I find makes collaborative work in smaller groups quite successful.  Google Docs has this ability and it often speeds up the process.  Nonetheless, I am not sure if that would work with such a large group.  Finally, the last challenge I see with wikis is that of attribution.  While changes can be seen and tracked, I think it is important for people to use a common form of attribution for their contributions to the wiki.