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Summary

This section developed into being our communication area - area where we could jot down thoughts on development, let each other know what we had been doing, etc.

The first step in the process was to set the wiki up - this fell on Jessie who was helped by Paul Anderson - see HowISetUpThisWiki. Jessie then put some pointers and thoughts on the site to get familiar with the system; this was followed by Marielle doing the same. Marielle at this stage took the lead and put some structure on the what we were doing; also introducing the idea of individual notepads for each of us to use as we wished - in the end both of us tended to add things direct to the wiki pages as we both felt that things could get lost in notepads. On this page we noted what we had been up to, we also communicated occasionally by email (mainly on technical issues like how to log in, working around a few technical problems (like EASE not working!)). We also decided as we could meet face-to-face to do this and chat about how we were going to bring the whole thing together.

For the assignment the wiki will be presented, along with printed (and pdf electronic) copies of the individual pages. At the submission date the wiki will be made read-only.

Working Notes

Notepads

NotePadMarielle [Marielle's first attempt to create a new page – I was thinking to use it for drafts, then I thought I was getting back to old ways of functionning where I write my bit, you write yours. I rather choosed to leave my notes in the main documents... what I propose is to keep the NotePad as a place you can dump the parts that you believe are not really of interest for this assignment. – but please do so as I decided to only rely on this Wiki to keep my notes and I find always impossible to remember what I had come across and wanted to keep ] [Great idea JP]

Some thoughts on how we actually go about doing this

  1. Need to think about how going to lay this out - one page per section? I'll set up some of my ideas using this and see what happens?

[I did the same :-)]

  1. Need to decide on some conventions - like I'm using H4 headings for sections; is this just my tidy mind or does it matter? Is the "joy" of this the way people collaborate yet keep some kind of personal style?

[Of course a bit of personal style is good... but coherence of the presentation of the information across the Wiki is important too – I may have changed some of them as I initially tended to fill a page and use several levels of subheadings, we should probably clean up and take decisions early on – subheading 5 is a bit too low, so starting at 3 may be a better option... but things will change anyway, I do not really mind you changing some heading back provided the legibility remains good]

  1. How much of these kind of things should we discuss using another tool - discussion forum/email and only bring more finalised thoughts to the wiki?

[The way I usually function is to have two documents – in this context, wiki sections –one playing the role of notepad, with random notes and ideas that we can write down as soon as we have them; another one that contains a draft of the assignment – note that these are also issues to address, Wiki as unique tool or Wiki in combination with others]

These are all things that apply if using in earnest - how much freedom do you give the students and how much is "set in stone" by rules set up by the tutor?

[see last further comment... if you choose to give a Wiki to your students, by definition, you do not have strict guidelines about what they should achieve... then there is the marking issue if this is in an educational context]

Further comments

[I've added mine in square brackets JP]

  • There is a lot of copy/paste in this very early version. My way of working is to read through a set of material, copy and paste and reorganize the material in different sections (get an overview of the field, of the main issues, of how they connect with one another). If you prefer me do that on my own notepad, let me know. I did it here because I thought it would be easier to avoid duplication of effort (you starting along one line on your notepad and me starting along another one on mine, then having to work hard to combine both. Feel free to modify whatever you want... but please keep somewhere, either in my notepad or at the bottom of the page what you believe shouldn't be included in the final assignment.

[I think the way you have done it is good; it makes easier to see what happening rather than just being presented with a summary from the more detailed stuff in notepads - I vote stay with the way you have started; in terms of collaboration your approach seems good. JP]

  • Links are useful, but they are even more if we take the time to write down the title of the paper and the full reference (so I can decide whether I want to go and read it). Again, the basic idea behind a Wiki should be to avoid the reduplication of efforts

[Agree and will try to follow JP]

  • I know this is not this is a pilot year, this does not really count, but let's play the game. Given that you are a computer scientist, an option to aim for highest marks is to try and draw a parallel between Wiki, the attempt for collaborative work and the recent evolution towards 4GL/scripting languages, which encourages the creation of not that complex components which provide very powerful tools when integrating them. I got the idea when coming across this: http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~peters/papers/sutton_brereton_heyer_maccoll_CRPITv25.pdf, but maybe the document there: http://www.tcl.tk:80/doc/scripting.html, will give you a better understanding of the connection I see]. I have a deep interest in these 4GL (oups, sorry, fourth generation programming languages). For reasons similar to my interest in Wiki, they make sharing resources easier. In other words, focus the assignment on use of wiki for teaching, but have some paragraphs that put that move towards wikis in a much larger perspective. Commonality: small ants, with limited capacities, but which together can achieve great things. Sure, this would be for extra bonus point, if we already have an assignement with good cover of the topic and discussion of the learning theories.
  • On the other hand, we may not have time to do all this and we do not have much time to work on this.

[I think expanding to the wider issues is good - there is i think parallels anyway and things to learn/think about from using in different ways. Your ideas got me thinking about the days when I use to do some Perl coding - the way we were using it; it was very much like glue linking things that didn't quite fit and i can see wikis in a similar kind of light - need a good reference to back this up.... JP]

  • Then, it may be that the game we want to play is not the one of getting a high score for the assignment but rather the one of setting up a useful resource for the UoE community (or larger). Choices!
  • As I read somewhere: "To understand something of the thinking of WardCunningham, the creator of Wiki, consider what he wrote at almost the same time as that of launching this NobleExperiment. Interestingly enough it is titled "Episodes." http://c2.com/ppr/episodes.html. I skimmed it, not read fully, but an aspect that I see important is: "We are particularly interested in the sequence of mental states that lead to important decisions. We call the sequence an episode. An episode builds toward a climax where the decision is made. Before the decision, we find facts, share opinions, build concentration and generally prepare for an event that cannot be known in advance. After the climax, the decision is known, but the episode continues. In the tail of an episode we act on our decision, promulgate it, follow it through to its consequences. We also leave a trace of the episode behind in its products. It is from this trace that we must often pick up the pieces of thought in some future episode". As a matter of fact, an important component of the Wiki format is that you have no idea what will come out of it. Is it good or bad for teaching? Do we want to encourage the acquisition of a solid basis of knowledge or promote original thinking?

[ good question - bit of both???]

Progress notes

I have typed 'using wiki for collaborative assignment' in Google and checked up the first 20 pages and their derivative links.

The result, the current organisation of these pages. Eventually, spend your morning checking up some more links, starting here:. But, clearly, there is a huge amount of material on this. We will need to decide what structure and line of argument we would like to expand quite early on... for instance next week.

The wiki is all yours for a few days... I have no more time to work on this before the week-end. Good luck with this!

Some more links I have spotted but had not time to integrate:

Progress Notes JP

This is tremendous - you have worked hard. I haven't had as much time as hoped this morning so concentrated in looking at more references - did another 2 pages google so start at http://www.google.com/search?q=using+wiki+for+collaborative+assignment&hl=en&lr=&start=40&sa=N. Really loads there and good stuff.. I hope to find sometime later to work on this and will update the progress.. NotePad idea is super - I did a quick copy and paste from an email exchange from someone using wikis in earnest

Didn't get back to this on Thurs and having short burst on frid evening.... did some more google so now starting place is http://www.google.com/search?q=using+wiki+for+collaborative+assignment&hl=en&lr=&start=50&sa=N Still loads of excellent stuff but rather now being examples of usage in different subject areas rather than anything substantial but... Signing off probably until Tues. Did backup of everything this morning and will repeat on Mon - suggest if you do loads you send me an email. unfortunately machine on not automatically backed up - if in production this would be a must!

Tues 7th Carried on going through google search and got to http://www.google.com/search?q=using+wiki+for+collaborative+assignment&hl=en&lr=&start=100&sa=N Most of what is now coming up seems less interesting - maybe some more but think probably we have covered most. My feelings are we need to consolidate and I certainly need to read and follow up what we have here, maybe think about how we are actually going to organise... All going well I'm planning to work more on this tomorrow (Wed) - might try to put together my thoughts on a plan for consolidating; if you any ideas that would be gerat. We have some very interesting stuff here and could carry on for a long time. I asked Paul (helped me set up this wiki) to add a section on how he set it all up technically..

Thurs 9th - did new section PlanAction to start the ball rolling on how we start drawing this all together... My personal views to be argued with please..

Fri 10th - spent sometime incorporating PlanAction into the sections

Tues 14th - started work on the summary sections

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