Wikis are a great tool for class or group projects where you want groups to have a central repository of all the material they have used in the projects. Wikis are the best tool for knowledge base building by groups, especially over time.
Wikis can also be used by individuals to create projects and make web sites which are much easy to make, maintain, and use than traditional highly static web pages.
The UPS Campus Wiki
As of Fall ‘08 UPS has a campus wiki open to anyone at UPS to use. It is built on Dokuwiki. It can be viewed by anyone on the web, and can be edited by anyone with a valid UPS network account. See here for more.
Wikis being used by UPS departments
Both these wikis are hosted by the Instructional Technology group since 2006 and run on Mediawiki, the wiki software that runs Wikipedia. (Use of Mediawiki for department wikis has been phased out and new ones will go in the campus wiki instead.)
Wikis for Class Group and Individual Projects
There are many wikis out there. Two that we recommend which are full featured, easy to use, and educator friendly are:
- Wikispaces- see our page on how to set it up for class. Also, you can contact us if you would like to have class training on it.
- Some people prefer to use a similar wiki called PBwiki. The UPS Politics and Government Department uses PBWiki for their wiki to share information with alumni.
Alternatives to Wikis for Group Work
All wikis provide the ability to have many people edit the pages at the same time, which is why it is a good group tool. Recently, some blogs such as Wordpress.com and also sites that provide free web pages have added the ability to have more than one person editing them. Here’s a list of some of them.
Resources on Teaching with Wikis