Wiki Lore and Politics in the Classroom

Cathlena Martin, Lisa Dusenberry

Research output: Contribution to book or proceedingChapter

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

This was a student's response, spelling error and all, when asked her impression of the class wiki. Her opinion was surprisingly similar to those of the other nineteen students, who ranged from college freshmen to seniors. And she wasn't too far off in her attempt to relate this strange word to another culture either. As readers know by now, wiki is Hawaiian for "quick" or "informal," and the exotic origin of the word seeps through into the technology itself even when people don't know what a wiki is. Another student wrote, "I had no clue what a wiki was; my best guess was that it was some kind of tropical themed tavern."1 While a wiki is like a tavern insofar as it is a communal space to sit and share, no drinks with little umbrellas are served. It is a fully editable Web site, which can be a productive addition to the classroom. The first half of this chapter details my (Cathlena Martin) virgin voyage, as well as most of my students' first encounters, with setting up and using a wiki in a college classroom. After two semesters of using the wiki, I shared my wiki experiment with another instructor (Lisa Dusenberry); the second half of the chapter recounts and analyzes her use of the wiki in composition courses. Together, we explore the uses and hierarchies of a class wiki through a range of college English courses and attempt to address several questions involving wikis and the classroom such as the following: Does a wiki truly provide a common, collaborative space where students can be creative and address the theoretical concerns of a college classroom? How do students accept and use their public, online writing space? Do wikis provide the same type of online voice as blogs? Is using a wiki for compositional writing seen by students as a subversive or marginal writing space? Does the writing medium of a wiki place an informal, creative bent on academic writing for a college class? Is a wiki only appropriate in a class dealing with popular media? These are a lot of questions for a short chapter on wikis in the composition and communication classroom, and we don't have all of the answers, but with a new media tool such as wikis, we sometimes just need to start with questions. This chapter is largely in the format of two mini case studies involving Cathlena's ENG 1131: Writing through Media and ENG 2300: Film Analysis classes and Lisa's ENG 2210: Technical Writing and ENG 1102: Introduction to Argument and Persuasion classes. Our anecdotal evidence derives from student comments about our respective class wikis and their wiki projects.

Original languageAmerican English
Title of host publicationWiki Writing: Collaborative Learning in the College Classroom
StatePublished - 2008

Disciplines

  • Arts and Humanities
  • Linguistics

Keywords

  • Classroom
  • Politics
  • Wiki lore

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