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Group Wiki Ideas 

To use group wikis you will need to either have your students create a wiki using one of the many available online tools (see A Little Bit About Wikis) and then make links for them in a content area of your course or, enable the use of the wiki tool if you are using a wiki tool that works within your course management system as a building block (see Wiki Tool). 

If you use a wiki tool within your course, you will need to decide how you will divide up the class into groups and how you well set up the wikis for use in the course.  Will each of your groups have their own wikis that can be shared with the rest of the class, or will they have private wikis that will be viewed by only you and the group members?  Depending upon what kind of wiki arrangements you choose, you will either need to have your students set the permissions on their wikis, or you will need to set the parameters on the course wiki tool to allow for the type of interaction that you want to achieve.  For group wikis you can use many of the same assignment ideas as explained in Coursewide Wiki Ideas, but you can also incorporate multiple group projects that groups can work on privately and then share with the entire class, or that can be viewed by all the other groups for the entirety of the course.

Private Group Wikis.

Private group wikis are excellent for allowing group members to have a place in which they can brainstorm, share ideas, and work together on a project.  With their own wiki space they can create their own pages and hierarchy scheme, and have a place where everyone can see the work that has been done so far, and contribute in an asynchronous manner allowing for the most flexibility in everyone's schedules.  This format is especially good when using the wiki as a "staging ground" for other larger projects.  For example:

• Utilize group wikis as a staging ground for group discussion board interaction.  Each group is assigned a different set of questions or activities related to the content being studied.  They have a certain amount of time to work together to answer the questions or complete the activities.  Once they have completed their work, they format a post for the discussion board and post as a group.  This activity can be further expanded by assigning each group to create a response to a particular group's posting.  Assignment of groups to respond to can rotate throughout the semester so that there is a variation in who students are interacting with throughout the semester.

• Groups can be assigned a project which they will be required to present in their wiki to the rest of the class at a certain date and time.  They can use the wiki to collaborate and then hide those pages for the presentation portion.  Once they are ready to present they can either post a link to their wiki (if they are using a wiki tool outside the course) or the instructor can simply enable the rest of the course to view their wiki on that date and time (if they are using a wiki tool within the course).  In this way the wikis themselves can become showplaces for the groups' projects.

Private group wikis are a great way to encourage collaboration and comfort between small groups within the course.  If they are utilized as a way to communicate with the class as a whole, it can give encouragement and a sense of accomplishment to those learners who do not feel as confident working on their own.  In addition, they create an ideal environment in which peer tutoring and reviewing can occur.

Shared Group Wikis.

In this case, each groups' wiki would be available for the rest of the class to see during the entirety of the course.  Most tools allow for users to create hidden pages, or to select viewing priviledges for pages, so even though the wiki is shared, there is still the opportunity for private collaboration.  While most of the other ideas discussed for assignments can also be done in this manner, there are some assignments that might be especially suited for this kind of arrangement.  For example:

• Each group could be assigned research over a different aspect of the course content (for example in a course on fiction, each group could be required to research one of the elements of fiction, provide samples of their elements from the stories read over the semester, find outside resources that discuss their elements, and even create original content of their own to display how that element appears or can be used).  They could then begin building their wiki around what they find while researching their topic.  Additional discussions or reflective assignments could be used to allow the rest of the class to utilize the group wikis as ways to complete assignments.  In this manner, the different groups would each be creating a research component for the use of the rest of the course.

Shared group wikis are a great way to let groups show off what they know and their creativity in displaying it.  In addition, they are a good way for groups to learn from each other by observing what others do in their wiki and either learning to do the same thing, or sparking new ideas of their own.  It also allows students the opportunity to act in the position of an authority on something, and is a great teaching tool for the responsibility that comes with not only providing information for others use, but also the appropriateness of what information should be viewable by others - an important lesson for today's wired world.

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