Campus Pack Wiki good practice guide

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The Campus Pack Wiki tool allows tutors to set up Wikis in their AberLearn Blackboard courses for students to use in reflective learning or group projects.

A Wiki is a website in which a series of linked pages are created, usually collaboratively by a group of people. Visitors to the site may be given the ability to leave comments on each article, thus creating a dialogue. Images and links to other websites can be included. See the short Common Craft video clip.

A special feature of Wikis is that it is possible to view various earlier versions of the pages. In a well-designed learning activity, students help each other to refine the content of their Wiki pages, making the pages richer, more complete and more accurate. They can also help each other to improve writing skills. Versioning can help the tutor to identify contributions by different students and to track these peer-learning processes.

Campus Pack Wikis can be linked to AberLearn Blackboard's Grade Center. Tutors can easily see what contributions each student has made to the Wiki. This makes it easy for tutors to assess individual student performance based on Wiki activity.

For more ideas on how to use this tool in teaching, please see the training courses offered by the E-learning Team through CDSAP.

Access

Access to Wikis is constrained to users enrolled in the AberLearn Blackboard modules. The tutor can further constrain access to selected class members or groups within the class.

Please keep in mind that use of Wikis in AberLearn Blackboard falls under the normal acceptable use policy for Blackboard in general. Please keep copyright and data protection issues in mind when using Wikis in teaching. It is especially important to make guidelines clear to students who are posting their own material onto AberLearn Blackboard.

FAQs about using Campus Pack Wikis

These FAQs written by E-learning Support staff contain concise technical guidance in using the tools:

• How do I add a wiki to my AberLearn Blackboard course? - instructions for staff
• How do I add and edit pages in my AberLearn Blackboard wiki? - instructions for both students and staff

Please email us at is-alto@aber.ac.uk if you have further questions or require training.

For more information

• Learning Objects website
• Resources page - articles on effective use of Web 2.0 in teaching
• Social Learning 101 - An Introduction to Social Software for Learning webinar on Wikis and blogs from Learning Objects
• Training courses offered by the E-learning Team through CDSAP
• Common Craft video clip Wikis in Plain English
• Acceptable use policy for Blackboard
• Copyright information at AU