Posted by SMAD October 23, 2007
Story by BETH McCARD

HARRISONBURG, Va. - Wiki, what? No, a wiki is not a part of an 80’s rap song. It's a user-contributed website similar to the widely used wikipedia.com online encyclopedia. Wikis can be used in businesses, education systems, and by individuals. James Madison University's School of Media Arts & Design has begun using wikis to interact with students and faculty and it seems to be catching on.

Wikispaces are identifiable with the higher education portal Blackboard that holds grades, syllabi, and assignments that students have access to. Having a wikispace is easier to use, more interactive, and most importantly, can be edited by members of a particular space. An administrator can post links to other pages, members can place stories to be edited and are able check the history of a page. All the while, a user has access the various wikis they are involved in from their wiki homepage.

SMAD professor Dr. Dave Wendelken has just started using a wiki for his Newspaper Production class, which largely feeds into JMU’s student newspaper, The Breeze. He says, “it’s a way to handle a large amount of resources at once.” The collaboration and productivity involved in wikis is perfect for improving students’ writing.

Wendleken has his students place stories on the JMU Student Media wiki for collaborative editing as well as news going on at the Breeze office. His class’ wiki has had over 800 edits in 3 weeks. Wendleken says that the site is great for writing classes. The associate professor claims Wikispaces to be the “most useful thing I have ever seen to supplement a class.”

The name of SMAD’s faculty wiki, SMADDAV perfectly explains what a wiki can do. D: distributing to lots of people; A: authoring, allowing multiple contributers to collaborate in authoring; and V: versioning, which keeps track of edits that a user can revert back to at any point. SMAD Interim Director Dr. Steve Anderson said he got the idea for implementing wikis into SMAD after reading articles about using wikis for business productivity. He says he feels the blackboard interface is too clunky and hard to use. Anderson has started using a wiki for his Web Communication class (SMAD 341: http://smad341.wikispaces.com) instead of the usual Blackboard. It has come with growing success and he will include it in his other classes in the future.

Other professors have found wikis to be incredibly easy to use once they have had a week or so to look around. A professor new to JMU, Mike Grundmann has found the interface to be important for The Breeze writers and editors. As Faculty Advisor to the paper, he is taking the wiki to new levels in terms of adding tutorials on how to better run The Breeze’s website. There is a drop-box for editors where stories can be placed. An upcoming publicity section will add to the functionality. Grundman says, “Heck, I surprised myself” when realizing that he could manipulate the site to his advantage.

You have to make sure that when starting a wikispace to claim it as either private or public. If it is a public wiki, anyone that has an Internet connection can log on and change whatever they please, as the LA Times found out a few years ago. The former editor in chief started “wikitorials” as an asset to the editorials section and left it open for public input. People found it to be funny not just to add comments, but to add porn to the site as well.

Having a website that allows a user, especially a student to be able to post and edit papers, have a discussion board, send email, post links, check grades and calendars, and even make a part for themselves is outrageously simple. Wikispaces allows all of this to happen with low stress and a low price. JMU’s School of Media Arts & Design has gotten the word out on wikis. Woohoo!