Week 7 #16 Wikis

The realization that Wikis are a collaborative tool where individual members of a group can log on and make his contribution to the research project from anywhere in the world makes this feature one of the most interesting aspects of web 2.0. In open format a wiki can deal with anything anyone is interested in and anyone may join and make contributions to the individual wiki.
Obviously, the most popular wiki is Wikipedia, a highly suspect source of information. There has been so much misinformation put out by individuals who pass themselves off as experts in a certain field. One example was man who passed himself off as a college professor with a PhD degree. While passing himself off as an expert, he wrote a vast number of book reviews as well as adding erroneous information about his field of expertise. This person was finally exposed and allegedly his misrepresentation of the true facts was correct. But, in my opinion the damage has been done and the credibility of Wikipedia is a source for accurate research information should be viewed with a grain of salt. Most of the contributors may be honest and above board, but I don't know these people and their credentials could be fraudulent just like the information that they post. I think poeople ask for trouble when they create something in open format where anyone can pass himself off as an expert. In a closed environment, things might not be so suspect, depending on where students get their information.
Having stipulated that Wikipedi is quetionable at best (as are other wikis no doubt are as well), I had a wiki set up with Patty's help for a research project with my honor students. This particular process has worked very well; I divided the class into small groups and assigned research topics on The Once and Future King. The collaborative effort would have been more difficult without the wiki because the group members would have had to arrange a time and a place to meet and discuss what they had found in their research. The Wiki project required no specific time or place to meet. Each member worked on his own section of the project wherever he happened to be (at home, the library, or a computer lab) and then he wrote the results of his research effort in the wiki section reserved for the group's project. All other members could read what he wrote. They could also edit his research or question the results of his research or correct any grammatical mistakes when it was convenient for them to do so. In addition I could monitor the group's efforts and progress, adding comments to their paper finding out who was doing the work and who wasn't contributing anything.
This format could work well not only in virtually any academic endeavor but also it would lend itself very well in the business world as well where special projects and research and reports would need to be done in a collaborative way.