Using Wiki in Student Affairs

     Marie wrote a very interesting post about the potential use of wikis in the field of student affairs eac539classblog.blogspot.com. I really like the idea of using a wiki for students to create a “guide” and share their suggestions for successfully navigating the first year of college. This could be set up as a public, inquiry-based wiki that is organized according to various topics (Lamb, A. and Johnson, L., 2009, p.51). These topics could include areas such as educational resources, local shopping and dining, tips for meeting new people, upcoming events, community resources, etc. The challenges with using a wiki in this situation would be finding someone to monitor the site to weed out inappropriate comments or suggestions and to have IT staff available for answering questions related to using the wiki, solving computer glitches, and other technology related issues. Most importantly, it would require students willing to put in the extra work to post on the site. Perhaps a prize, such as a Starbucks card, could be given every month for the best post to encourage participation.

     Although I think wikis are wonderful tools, I do want to point out that they also have their quirks. For example, we used a wiki for our teachers at the school where I work. They used a wiki to communicate with their students and parents. Everybody loved the increased communication. The only problem was that the wiki did not always work. It had a wysiwyg interface, but it didn’t always post what was written in the editor. We finally figured out that if the teacher used too many colors or changed fonts too often the wysiwyg editor became overwhelmed and stopped working. Also, whenever we had system updates the wiki would stop working until we contacted the hosting company for a fix. Although these glitches did not stop us from using the wiki, they did provide a reminder to always be prepared for glitches and hiccups when introducing any new technology.

Brunsell, E. and Horejsi, M. (2010). Wiki,Wiki. The Science Teacher. Vol. 77(4) 12. 

Lamb, A. and Johnson, L. (2009). Wikis and Collaborative Inquiry. School Library Media Activities Monthly. 25(8) 48-51.