MediaWiki for Collaborative Writing

Resource Title:

Technology Type:

Online Writing and Discussion

Technology Tool:

Wiki

Pedagogical Goal:

Facilitating collaborative authorship, editing, or peer review

Promoting student reflection and critical thinking

Increasing engagement and/or interactivity

Course Type:

Discussion

Academic Area:

Science, Technology, and Math

Paul Conway in the School of Information had students complete a MediaWiki project that encompassed four weeks of course time and included inâ€class and out of class components. The course assignment guidelines were:

contribute substantive raw material for at least one article on a person, artifact, or concept related to the course
edit and improve at least one article submitted by a fellow student
contribute an appropriate illustration to at least one article

MediaWiki is the open source software platform originally developed for Wikipedia, but now freely available for private use. The University of Michigan, through ITCS, supports a campusâ€wide instance of the MediaWiki toolset and, importantly, has linked online access to the University's Kerberos authentication system. MediaWiki supports content creation in the site or through cutâ€andâ€paste routines. The tool allows collaborating users to view and edit source content, view and manipulate the editorial history of the individual pages, and discuss individual pages outside the content structure of the webpage itself.