Project Dates: March 16th-April 10th

Description

The purpose of this project is to familiarize you with the practices of writing on a wiki. As you probably know, a wiki is a web application that allows users to easily edit and add pages. If you've completed the introductory wiki assignment by creating your own page and making a link to it from Writing in the Digital Age then you've already seen the functionality of the wiki in action. Of course the real advantage, and challenge, of the wiki is the capacity it creates for multiple users to contribute to a single page. This collaborative authoring is likely a new experience for you, and it is the main experience I want you to have through this project.

Assignment

Over the next four weeks, you will participate in this project. You will have two basic responsibilites.

1. You will contribute to this wiki by creating one new page each week and by contributing to three of your classmates' pages each week.
2. You must document your activities on the member page you create. I will only evaluate you on the activities you document.

Wiki Contributions

First, you will create a new page each week. This page should deal with a topic from either current or prior course readings.

• The page must be added to the Writing in the Digital Age folder.
• It should be given appropriate tags.
• Your page should have a minimum of 200 words.
• It should contain at least one link to another page within the wiki and one external link.
• Ideally you should include images, video, or other media.

Second, you will contribute to three of your classmates' pages each week. Contributions should include

• Substantive textual additions or editing (e.g. reorganizing/revising text, adding sections, etc.)
• Thorough and accurate copyediting/proofreading (e.g. grammar, spelling, fact-checking, documentation)
• Adding internal and external links and tags
• Adding other media (e.g. adding an appropriate YouTube video)

Documenting Your Work

Keep a running diary on your member page. It can be a weekly diary. Provide as much detail as you think is necessary to explain what you did. Include links to the pages you created and/or edited.

Evaluation

When I evaluate your work, I will look at your own documentation, evaluate the work you did, and evaluate the overall quality of the pages to which you contributed. I will consider the following criteria.

1. Did you meet the basic requirement of one new page and three edits per week?
2. Did your work address issues of current or prior course readings?
3. Were you able to collaborate effectively with your classmates to produce effective and interesting wiki pages?
4. Did you demonstrate at least some experimentation with the various possibilities on the wiki (e.g. inserting video, links, images, etc.)?
5. Did your contribution demonstrate thoughtful engagement with the course material?

Put in a different way. I want to see three things.

• Did you do the work?
• Did you collaborate well with your classmates?
• Did you demonstrate a strong understanding of course material?

Tip

One of the challenges of this assignment is trying to figure out how to use our Ning discussion in conjunction with the wiki. A threaded discussion like Ning is a great place to generate ideas, but it isn't very good for curating those ideas and developing them over time in a collaborative way. We should be able to start conversations on Ning that will help us identify good ideas for pages here in the wiki. In turn the wiki might spur good conversation back on Ning.