What Is It?
A wiki is a website that is collaboratively authored by a group of users. The wiki site keeps track of the changes by contributing authors and makes it easy to roll back to earlier versions. At its most basic, editing a wiki page is like editing a word processing document.
Key Features
- Provides an easy-to-use framework for creating content.
- Easy to collaborate with other individuals.
- Share resources with others.
Who Uses It?
Wikis are used in some fashion by virtually every internet user. Wikipedia, the most popular wiki, is used by researchers, instructors, students, and experts.
How Does It Work?
A wiki provides a space for users to create and edit content collaboratively by providing a predetermined structure for users to operate within, pushing the focus from design to content. Most wikis allow for anonymous viewing, but some may be entirely private and require a distinct username and password for each individual. Content is usually written in simple text editor that is part of the wiki site with tools that are similar to Microsoft Word and other text editors.
Things to consider before using Wikis
- If you just need a space within which to communicate, a chat client or forum might be a more appropriate choice.
Uses as an Instructional Technology
- Group research projects.
- Class projects.
- Administrative groups that need collaborative space to create and revise information together, or to manage Word, Excel, PDF and other documents.
- Share resources.
Resources at Wooster
- Instructional Technology is presently piloting a wiki platform called Confluence.
- 7 things you should know about Wikis
- 7 things you should know about Collaborative Editing
The content on this page was derived from webpages maintained by the Duke University Center for Instructional Technology