Collaboration
The wiki and Forum tools can be used to foster collaboration.
Wiki
A wiki is a website which allows anyone to easily add and edit content, and thus is particularly geared toward collaboration. The Wiki tool allows you to contribute to a wiki, as well as view the history of changes to the wiki.
Ideas:
A wiki is a collaborative authoring tool, allowing participants to work together to create content and track all changes made to the content. One of the best examples of a wiki can be found at www.wikipedia.com, home of the collaboratively built online encyclopedia.
The Wiki tool can be used to facilitate:
• collaborative learning
• group interaction
• sharing and distribution of knowledge and expertise
• exchange of ideas.Students can use wiki pages to work on projects as a team. A big advantage to the user is that wiki pages can be quickly edited and saved, and the results seen straight away: there is no delay waiting for changes and page edits to be updated. Tasks associated with a Wiki include:
• the straightforward creation of simple websites
• Collaborative Bibliographies: Groups can work together to build a collective list of sources. Anyone can add new entries and edit existing entries.
• Collaborative Knowledge Base: Groups can work together to collect and organise information for a project before writing a paper, or compile data gathered from different sources
• Peer Review: Peers can review and edit each others' work and use the wiki's text formatting features to make comments and show where changes were made.
• Any other project that does not require specified authorship or protected documents. Wikis are authored by communities, not individuals.
A wiki may consist of more than one page. Links to new pages can be made from an existing page, and a menu can be used to navigate through the pages.
Images can be included, and any type of file or document that can be stored in the Resources area of CSU Interact can be attached to a Wiki page.The Wiki stores the history of the development of a page. It records all changes made and allows you to revert back to a previous version of your page. While editing, if you accidentally delete information, it is possible to get it back.
Forum
The Forum tool facilitates structured conversations organised by category or topic. Lecturers have the option to allow students and other site participants to post their own discussion topics. This tool allows users to save drafts, attach files, and format the posted content (bold, italics, lists, etc.).
Ideas:
Try using the Forum tool for more than just straightforward discussions. Role plays, summaries and peer review are just some of the creative ways in which this tool can be used.