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Interview
Tips for Getting Started with Educational Wikis
9/3/2008
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"Using a wiki in an organizational context is radically different from Wikipedia," according to wiki consultant Stewart Mader. In this second portion of a two-part interview, Mader discusses choosing between commercial and open source wiki products, getting started with a wiki--and why Wikipedia is the single biggest stumbling block to wikis in higher education.
Mader consults for organizations, including higher ed, on wiki implementation, and offers information on wikis at his Web site, ikiw.org.
Campus Technology: When you go in as a consultant to a university and try to help them get started with wikis, what are some of the typical stumbling blocks? What is keeping more schools from using wikis?
Stewart Mader: The biggest stumbling block, bar none, is Wikipedia. It's funny; I've been fascinated by wikis for close to six years now, and they've really dominated my professional work. All that time, I've found myself wrestling with my perception of Wikipedia.
I think there are things about it that are incredibly transformational in terms of the way that people can work socially with technology--people who would otherwise not interact--including the whole idea that people who are not necessarily experts can build content together.
So there's a lot of great stuff about Wikipedia, but there is a huge dark side, which is that it's anonymous, it's a very flat structure, and people don't necessarily have to log in and identify themselves to contribute. That leads to a lot of the problems you hear about in the mainstream media. I'm sure you've heard of various incidents where people have erroneously edited each other's entries or introduced errors on purpose or deleted entries....
But the problem for higher ed, and really for every organization where people hear about a wiki or where somebody says for the first time, "Hey, let's use a wiki," well, people immediately think of all the negative [incidents with] Wikipedia. They start thinking, "I don't want a tool where everything I do is seen by the world. I don't want a tool where anybody can come and edit what I've done, or vandalize it."
So the biggest road block is educating people that using a wiki in an organizational context is radically different from Wikipedia.
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