Presented at the 2nd Annual Technologies in Education Conference at College of St Rose in May 2012.

1. Using Wikis for Teaching
Martin A Walker
SUNY Potsdam

2. Overview
 Introduction
 Wikis as resources
 Using a wiki as a platform for collaborative
learning
 Conclusion

3. What is a wiki?
“A collaborative website which can be directly
edited by anyone with access to it.”
(Wiktionary, March 20, 2007)
From the Hawaiian word “wiki wiki” meaning “quick.”

4. Wiki “flavors”
 Mediawiki –
 Used for Wikipedia. Install it on a
local server. Harder to use, but
potentially very powerful
 PBwiki –
 Can create your own free wiki, pay
for more features
 Simple but less sophisticated
 Wikispaces
 Also simple but more basic
 Operated by Google

5. A PBworks class wiki

6. Wiki Tools
 Basic editing tools: Typographical, internal &
external links, media, tables.
 Page tab tools: Attached discussion, page
history.
 User tools: Watchlist, contributions, user talk.
 Advanced tools: Templates & transclusion, bots,
extensions, Javascript tools.

7. Wikipedia, and dBpedia,, and LearnChemistry wiki
WIKIS AS RESOURCES

8. Wikipedia
 The biggest collection of human knowledge
ever created
 Although it has a radically different method for
content creation, studies show that it is as
good, or better than, traditional encyclopedias
 We can’t avoid it – but why should we want
to! Let’s teach our students to use it
properly!

9. WikiTrust
 Downloadable as an extension to Firefox, this adds a
tab above the article:

11. Wikipedia as a resource
 Wikipedia can provide a valuable service to students:
 Context
 A portal to the literature
 Quick definitions, facts
 Source of images
 Quality is now much better, and can be roughly
checked – but Wikipedia is still not 100% reliable
 GLAM – Many museums (e.g., Smithsonian) now have
a “Wikipedian in residence” uploading materials
 Expect to see more books, flash drives etc with
Wikipedia content

12. Related resources
 Wikimedia Commons – pictures, videos
 dBpedia – A searchable database that allows
complex queries: “Find all baseball players
born in NY State between 1918 and 1925.”

13. RSC LearnChemistry
 An example of a more specialized site – but
other wikis exist for many other subjects
 Student-friendly information on over 2000
chemical substances
 Around 120 experiments aimed at UK high
schools
 A selection of quizzes at many levels
 Tutorials and guides on specific topics

14. Global site search for RSC content

15. LearnChemistry wiki

16. Quizzes

17. Write your own quiz:

18. Open organic chem questions

19. Lab pages- overviews

20. Lab pages – teacher notes

21. Lab pages – student procedure

22. Substance pages – built from the
ChemSpider database

23. Structure searching…..

24. takes us here

25. Lessons from LearnChemistry wiki
 Wikis can do much more than text:
 Pictures, video links, Powerpoints, PDFs, etc
 Mashups containing content from other sites
 Quizzes – even open-ended quizzes, with the right
extensions!
 Forms to make it easier to write new content
 “Bots” allow automation of standard edits
 Collaborative projects (in next section)

26. USING A WIKI AS A PLATFORM
FOR COLLABORATIVE
LEARNING

27. An in-house wiki for
“The Sustainable World”
 An online course taught on a MediaWiki platform
set up on the college server.
 All course materials embedded in the wiki (e.g.,
schedules, Powerpoint lessons) or linked from it
(e.g., assigned readings, additional resources).
Blackboard was used only for grades & a final exam
 Regular synchronous discussions held using an IM-
style chat
 Students participate in a role-play where they
share Powerpoints in real time
 Students also share their term papers via the wiki

28. Main course page

29. Course schedule

30. Discussions held in EtherPad

31. RSC LearnChemistry projects
 Organic chemistry students were given a three-
week research project to make anisyl alcohol
from anisaldehyde:
 Research the literature as a group, share results in real
time and choose a “best method”
 Run the chosen method in lab
 Isolate product and analyze results
 Results were recorded in the LearnChemistry
wiki, as well as in the course Moodle site
 The wiki was particularly useful for sharing data
during the literature research session

32. Overview page

33. Literature search results uploaded by
student “scribes”

34. Poster projects shared via the Web
Advanced organic chemistry students write up a
synthesis both as a poster and as a web page.

35. Collaborative experiments
 Students in different lab sessions carry out a series
of related experiments, then results are uploaded
by a TA
 This allows students to contribute to a bigger
overall goal. When they “see the big picture”, this
adds meaning to their results
 Data are open and available for use by scientists
 Students write up a full-length lab report which
includes a discussion of the entire class’s data
 We hope that other colleges may be willing to
share their results on the same wiki

36. Wiki table of recrystallization data

37. UOIW:
Lab students sharing lessons learned
 Students can learn lessons from
their mistakes, and pass that
information on to successor
students.
“Many students do not see traditional
lab reports as communications of
John Stankus,
their findings but rather as an University of the
assignment. Implementation of a wiki Incarnate Word, TX.
© UOIW
communication medium between
peers has allowed students to see the
value of sharing their results”

38. Wikipedia projects
SUNY Potsdam Sedimentary Geology
Students prepare drafts on a college wiki
then transfer them to Wikipedia

39. Help is available for your campus!

40. Benefits of wiki-based projects
Students can:
 Learn about collaboration, and how to behave
appropriately in a group project
 Learn how to follow rules, which can be very strict in
the case of Wikipedia
 Learn about the academic process
 Information literacy
 Peer review
 It’s hard work!
 Contribute to the world’s academic resources
 See their work published on the Web for all to see.
With Wikipedia the reach is amazing -(70,000 hits/year
for the Clastic rock article)

41. Conclusion
 Wikis provide some valuable educational
resources on the internet, especially for user-
generated content
 Wikis can also provide a unique platform for
coursework, especially useful for:
 Group collaboration, especially on writing
 Sharing information rapidly within a group, or even
perhaps between groups
 Allowing students to share their work with the
world

42. Acknowledgements
 Michael C. Rygel (Geology, SUNY Potsdam)
 Wikipedia projects in the classroom
 Thanks to my coworkers at RSC:
 Lorna Thomson, Duncan McMillan, RSC Education
 Dr. Aileen Day, RSC ChemSpider
 Dr. Antony Williams, RSC ChemSpider
 Also thanks to
 Dr. Richard Kidd, RSC Publications
 Dr. James Iley, RSC Education
 Many Wikipedians including Users Beetstra, Physchim62,
Smokefoot
 Dr. Luca de Alfaro and the WikiTrust team

43. Copyright information
 All of my own content in this presentation is
released under a Creative Commons BY-SA-3.0
license
 Copyright information for images is usually attributed
on the slide itself
 Content from Wikipedia and RSC LearnChemistry is
reused via a Creative Commons BY-SA-3.0 license.
For authors, please visit the original page and select
the “history” tab.
 Other pictures not attributed should only be my
own personal pictures, also CC-BY-SA3.