How to use ETEC 533 Wiki

From UBC Wiki

What is the Design Wiki?

The Media/Education/Design wiki is a writing space where you will engage actively, over the duration of one semester, with the twin goals of learning and communication in a publication medium that affords editing, linking, and dialogue as persistent and critical elements in the production of useful knowledge. The Media/Education/Design wiki will take the form of an online set of entries that follow the standard Wikipedia encyclopedia entry genre. Our primary model for wiki entries will be Wikipedia. Wikipedia represents an important contemporary example of how a specific medium (Internet) and a particular environment (collaborative editing) intersect in such a way as to enable the most prolific and significant example to-date of public knowledge production that blurs the boundaries between producers and consumers.


What is My Responsibility?

In ETEC 533, you are an author or an editor, of the Design wiki. This is the first iteration of the Design Wiki for ETEC 533, and as such, this year, you have a unique opportunity to decide how ETEC 533 Wiki should look like, what should the entries in the ETEC 533 Wiki be in order to build a community of mathematics and science educators exploring educational technologies in these subjects. I expect you to contribute actively to the Media/Education/Design wiki to build our collaborative knowledge base and I hope you will continue referring to the Wiki after the course is over. For this particular course, you are responsible for authoring collaboratively with another student or solo, one major entry on one of the topics listed in the Table of Contents (e.g., Learning Theories) OR for making a major revision to an existing entry that has been authored by other students in the course. I expect you to make smaller weekly contributions to Wiki, such as listing important resources you have discovered during the week.

How is the Design Wiki like and unlike Wikipedia?

Wikipedia Entries are explicitly written using a Neutral Point of View style (NPOV). Our wiki will not use NPOV. Rather, entries will be written that explicitly situate members of the wiki community as educators with a very specific set of interests, contexts, and priorities. Your first task in thinking about planning your wiki entry will be to determine what specific aspect of your topic will give your entry a unique perspective. You could choose to highlight the work of one or two researchers whose scholarship is particularly relevant to your own interests, or one or more online environments, or a school- or district-based intervention project of which you are aware, and so on… When you have decided what will be the specific focus of your entry, you will add that as a sub-title on the Table of Contents. And so in the Table of Contents, for “Learning Environments, Game”, the entry could become, “Game: Second Life as Educational Space”.

Large wiki projects like Wikipedia are made possible because a significant community of Wikipedians is constantly available and at-work creating new pages and editing existing articles. Our wiki is significantly different from Wikipedia. We are a community with a very short shelf life of 13 weeks. As such, the purpose of our wiki needs to be differentially articulated. The Media/Education/Design wiki is a space for experimentation with an important tool in collaborative knowledge production.


Who is the Audience?

For the duration of this term, all members of the ETEC 510 community are the audience. It is envisaged that by the end of term, you will have created a comprehensive first draft of the entries. ETEC 510 is taught once a year. Every iteration of the course will constitute a set of authors and editors who will start working on the wiki where the previous course community left off. A wiki is a public site, and the Media/Education/Design wiki is publicly available, though only students who are registered in the course (past and present) have the ability to author or edit any of the material.


What Does An Excellent Wiki Entry Look Like?

  1. Look at the M/Cyclopedia of New Media and at [www.wikipedia.com Wikipedia], and pay attention to what are the attributes of a good entry. Look closely at how the authors make use of (a) layout to structure knowledge and their argument, (b) stylistic devices, like headings and subheadings, (c) diverse knowledge sources, like images and links, (d) a Resource section, to add value to their entry.
  2. Look at the Wikipedia: Guide to Writing Better Articles and the Wikipedia Annotated Article, where all the Wikipedia style conventions are highlighted in a single annotated article.
  3. Sketch out a draft entry. Post your sketch in the Discussion area, with relevant resources. You can use this location as a public and accessible workspace.
  4. Whereas Wikipedia entries are authored using a strict “Neutral Point of View” rhetorical style, our wiki will explicitly leverage your point of view as a professional in the field of Education and Technology to create entries that present a relevant overview of whatever the topic, with that particular point of view explicitly foregrounded. And so if you are working on, say, the Major Entry for Learning Theories: Behaviourist, your entry will provide an overview that represents how it is that Behaviourist theories of learning are relevant to an understanding of the Design of Educational Media. Did you know that in 1958, B.F. Skinner, one of the most important theorists of Behaviourism, developed a “teaching machine”? You could, in this entry, then, choose one or more software packages that promote skill development and whose design is premised on a Behaviorist learning theory. Your entry would link up key elements of Behaviourism with critical affordances and design attributes of the chosen exemplary learning environments. When you have decided what will be the specific focus of your entry, you will add that as a sub-title on the Table of Contents. And so in the Table of Contents, for “Learning Theories, Behaviorist”, the entry could become, “Behaviorist:Verbal Learning and Reading Software”
  5. Don’t write a comprehensive overview of your topic. Think about the links between your topic, and the concerns and curiosities of folks interested in the Design of Educational Media. Do your research. Sketch out an organizational structure for your entry. For a major entry, stay in dialogue with your team and discuss how to present your research effectively.


Wiki Authoring Resources from Wikipedia


Examples of good posts


Examples of bad posts

Acknowledgement: this document was modified from the original Wiki posted for UBC ETEC 510 course.

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