Wiki reflections

Wikispaces is a valuable tool for collaberating on material and creating sites that can be endlessly updated. I reference wiki sites frequently in my personal live and have just begun using them with my classes. The educational benefits of wikis are students can collaberate on developing sites that can act as repositories for information. Students can also use wikis to develop presentations and to collect research. The downside of using wikis is when it comes to work with specific due dates, students can feel frustration in collaboratively completing work.

For instance, if responsibilities and editing benchmarks are not clearly defined, students become concerned about meeting all of the requirements and are unsure whether their partners will step in. Another stumbling block is when students procrastinate. As the due date approaches, all the members begin to modify the wiki synchronously. The program works better when students modify the wiki asynchronously, but the combination of due dates and, in my case, high school students leads to synchronous activity.

I feel wikis work best if students take on clearly defined roles within the wiki and/or are provided an extended time period to complete the work.