Jerry Kane, Assistant Professor of Information Systems, uses wikis in his Computers in Management class. He feels that the use of wikis in the classroom is open-ended and provides many possibilities for use in the classroom. Both he and his students are continually developing new ways to use them.

Professor Kane finds that wikis create a productive collaborative environment for students. He says it is important to keep in mind that the value of wikis lays in the collaborative environment they create rather than in the tool itself.

Professor Kane feels that wikis work best in classes that deal with non-controversial subjects (otherwise you can end up with ‘warring wikis’) and when you are willing to relinquish some control to the students. Using wikis, you are allowing students to have an active role in the development of the course. Professor Kane has found that while giving up control is difficult, each time he has let students write their own knowledge, the end product is better than what he could have done himself.

You can hear Professor Kane discuss his use of wikis, and view how he uses wikis in his course by viewing his Web site.

Professor Kane uses a wiki for content generation and peer review. He uses no textbook; the wiki serves as the repository for all the course information.

Content generation

Professor Kane creates a wiki with an organizational structure. During the course of the year, students build out the wiki with items such as additional articles, exam questions, and news clips from remote sites such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Business Week.

Student assignments include the following, all of which they post to the wiki:

• Finding and summarizing at least three articles they find on the Internet.
• Creating course content through individual and group projects. This content can be used for both the current class and future classes. Students evaluate the group projects and vote for the best two. The members of the groups most positively reviewed get bonus points.
• Developing exam questions. Whether or not the questions appear on the exam depends on their quality. Students can also post answers. The resulting document containing student-posted questions and answers can serve as a valuable study sheet for exams. Professor Kane has found that students frequently come up with better questions than he could have come up with himself. 

Peer Review

Students post papers to the wiki, which are read by instructor-assigned peer reviewers, who post their comments on the wiki. Only after the paper’s author has evaluated the comments and made appropriate changes does Professor Kane evaluate and grade the paper. Professor Kane has found that students do very high-quality reviews, and that these reviews improve not only the reviewee’s paper but also those of the reviewers.

Among the benefits Professor Kane finds from using wikis in his class are:

• Decreases his administrative workload since students create much of the course content and do peer reviews.
• Results in a more productive partnership between students and between students and professor.
• Results in content that can be used in future classes.
• Makes the class more fun for students, and grants them a greater sense of ownership and empowerment.

Professor Kane’s hints for using Wikis include:

• Start small. Start small and build from there. You do not need to know from the start all the different ways you will use wikis. You will find that your students will create new ways to use them as the class progresses.
• Consider using incentives. Providing incentives encourages students to use wikis. While wikis are easy to use, some students hesitate to embrace new technology and are uncomfortable with the idea that they are responsible for providing class content.
  Some of the incentives Professor Kane uses are:
• Giving bonuses for high quality posts. If Professor Kane uses the material in class, students get an extra bonus point.
• Having students evaluate which peer reviewers make the most valuable comments about their papers. Reviewers rated highly get extra bonus points.
• Giving students bonus points if Professor Kane uses an exam question the student has posted.
• Having wiki participation, which can be tracked, comprise a portion of a student’s grade.