Shared Course Resource

Brief description

A shared online course wiki may act as online writing collaboration and help the students structure their knowledge within a given course. The students must work together to build a wiki that serves as a knowledge database offering easy access to information about course-relevant topics. In this way, they use their collective work to increase their understanding and re-cap of previous lectures.

Motivation for the activity and required outcome

The structure of the wiki provides an overview of the elements of the course, including key theorists, specific studies and important concepts. The students may see it as a meaningful way to practice and reflect on these topics, theories and concepts, which were presented in the course, while practicing putting their new-found knowledge into writing. The wiki may be used by the students as a course resource and by you as a teacher to gain an insight into the students’ understanding of the subject and to include this insight into your lectures so as to correct any misunderstandings.

Performing the activity

Use the activity for peer feedback during the session or in the students’ activities between sessions. The students may then both correct each other’s contributions and go over and adjust their own.
As a teacher you must create a wiki which the students can access and contribute to. This may for instance be done creating a blog in Brightspace where students can create blog posts, or a Word Online co-authoring document.
Define different course topics such as a theorist, a text or a theme from the literature for the students to write about and delegate each topic to either individual students or study groups. Make sure that all students contribute with at least one topic during the course.
The student must then formulate a post about the selected topic and make this available in the service.

Options:

You as a teacher may begin or end each teaching session with a brief feedback on the wiki posts created since the last session or combine the written contribution with a brief oral presentation by the student who wrote it.
You may let the students formulate their posts in the group to alleviate any pressure involved in taking the full responsibility for a text that is seen by the teacher and by the other students.

Activities

Examples of Practice

You will need:

An online service in which you and your students can access and create wiki posts to be shared by you. This may be blogs in Brightspace or for instance a co-authoring document in PowerPoint Online, Word Online, OneNote and OneDrive for writing collaboration.

A list of important texts, theories, people, places, concepts etc, which the students can use when posting in the shared wiki.

Further information: Online writing collaboration

Worth considering:

Do you want to create a few wiki posts to exemplify the design of such a post?

To what extent should the students be involved in choosing the content of the shared wiki? Should they decide the visual design of a post, and should they help choose which topics are worth writing about?

How should feedback be given by you as a teacher and by fellow students?

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Revised 24.11.2023

AU Educate