In the fall of 2006, Karen Uehling asked her Basic Writing graduate course to contribute to the Basic Writing portion of the CompFAQs wiki that had been started by Linda Adler-Kassner’s students in the spring of 2006. Upon announcing this as the main project for the course, all of the students, myself included, stared blankly at the assignment sheet and shot each other looks of uncertainty. Our uncertainty compounded after we asked Karen what a wiki was—none of us really knew, other than a vague reference to wikipedia, and—to top it all off—Karen really couldn’t tell us what a wiki was in definitive terms; our goal for the course was to figure it out, including finding out what a wiki was and how to write for one.
We soon discovered that the defining feature of a wiki is that it is designed for people to collaborate. With this insight, my group—consisting of me, Mike Peterson, Joy Palmer, and Bill Schnupp—decided to explore the topic of collaboration in Basic Writing classes. Yes—we were collaborating about collaboration in a format designed for collaboration; it seemed like we were destined for success—if only we could figure out what in the world a wiki was! We referred to entries already posted on the CompFAQs wiki by Linda Adler-Kassner’s class, and for the most part, they seemed not too far different from regular essays—they differed only by being on the web, and they had some links attached.
One concept that became quite clear early on in our project was the idea of audience. The CompFAQs wiki was designed to be an educator’s resource, and while Adler-Kassner’s class certainly added something innovative to the academic community, we felt that something was missing. While some educators may search for theoretical insights on the web (and this wiki in particular), we felt that educators would also benefit from having a practical section as well. With that in mind, we posted a question to Basic Writing instructors on the CBW-L: what kind of collaborative activities have you used in your Basic Writing course that have been successful? Our goal was to compile not only the theory of how collaborative activities may or may not work in Basic Writing, but also a list of activities that instructors could draw from if they decided to attempt collaboration in their classes. It seemed crucial to have this practical side of our wiki if it was to be an effective resource for busy Basic Writing instructors.
Having identified our audience, we soon discovered that writing for the web was absolutely not like writing standard essays. Effective web writing consists of paragraphs that are short and to the point, and information needed to be able to be scanned over for main ideas—making bullet point lists ideal. This was a difficult concept for us to grasp—after all, we had been trained to write in the standard university format—the essay.
By the time we finished our project, we felt we confidently understood what a wiki was and how it could be a valuable resource for educators. We, however, were missing one very important component of writing for the web—being able to publish it ourselves. Because we didn’t understand how to add to the current CompFAQs wiki site, we had been communicating with the designers of site: Rich Haswell and Glen Blalock. After completing our project, we forwarded it to Glen Blalock in the form of an extensive word document. I’m still not sure of what it took to get our portion of that wiki up—we just got word over email one day that it was done. We did not physically publish our wiki to the web and had no idea on how to do so. Although I was proud of the work that my group produced for the wiki, I had a difficult time claiming the innovativeness of the wiki. It is important to note, though, that a few short months prior, we would not have been able to join in this kind of a conversation with Basic Writing instructors.
Span ahead one year: during the first week of the TA seminar course, Heidi introduced us to our class’s wiki. I was hesitant at first; after all, a wiki is a complicated idea—or so I thought—and I was unsure about jumping back in to that kind of project. After the class returned Heidi’s remarks with a glazed over look, she reassured us that our wiki would be as easy as making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich—it was on PBwiki. Heidi spent the next 30 seconds showing us how to edit and/or add to a page. I was shocked at how easy it seemed.
PBwiki is a free, open-access wiki. And, unlike the CompFAQs wiki, PBwiki has strived to be user-friendly and because of this has increased in popularity. Computerworld recently named PBwiki as one of the web applications that one shouldn’t live without. One of the user-friendly features that PBwiki offers is a video tutorial on how to start a wiki. The video below shows the simplicity of creating a wiki:
After watching this video, I was able to create my own wiki in about 30 seconds!
PBwiki also offers many features that allow people to customize their sites. PBwiki also offers examples of successful wikis, which would help people see how other people have used wikis, including how they’ve incorporated the different kinds of features.
While PBwiki can be used for a variety of reasons, this application targets small businesses and educators as potentially significant audiences. In the same way that the CompFAQs wiki intended to be a resource for educators, so does PBwiki—but, PBwiki offers specific help to educators. And to go one step further, PBwiki offers a video (seen below) of how some educators have used wikis in their classes, another way to help people envision how to use a wiki.
In the spring of 2007, Katie White, Joy Palmer and I presented about the CompFAQs wiki at the “Passports and Passages” conference—its purpose being to give college and high school writing instructors the opportunity to talk about writing. We spent the majority of our presentation discussing this question: what is a wiki? We even tried breaking the ice by making jokes:
