Wiki

Wiki means "quick" in Hawaiian and has become familiar as a common online editing space. This tool could be useful for group contributions to a joint group paper or project in class, or a class-wide creation of a lecture, or a committee production of a policy. All versions and additions are saved, along with each version's contributor, so it is easy to see who is doing what and how much they are adding. Text and images may be added, as well as additional linked pages for more content.

I. Add a Wiki to your course.

• From the homepage of your course, Turn Editing On.
• Click on Add an Activity... and choose, Wiki.

• Fill out the form with a Name and Summary if wanted.
• Type: Click on the question mark to see the nine different types of instructor and student access to the wiki. If you want one wiki that everyone can contribute to, just keep the default at Groups.
• Keep the Wiki name at Yes
• If you and your students plan to type directly into the HTML editor, keep the HTML Only choice to allow for the editor. (Note: if you copy and paste from Word into the HTML editor, the subsequent function, History: Differences, will not work.) If you and the participants want to be able to copy from Word or other word processors, choose No HTML. The document will be in plain text, but no faulty html code will be introduced by copy/paste, so all later administrative functions will work.
• Binary Files: Images are binary files. If you will only be using text, then keep the default at No. Clicking Yes on Binary Files will allow you to add images and attachments.
• There are two ways to create and link to new pages in the Wiki.
  • CamelCase--any two words that are next to one another, without a space, and capitalized, will create a new page with that name. For example, if you type Power Point, a new page will be created called Power Point. The problem with this is obvious. New pages may be inadvertently created because of a title or URL in your text that is CamelCased for non-Wiki reasons. The solution is to turn this off or edit all words that are inadvertently CamelCased.
  • Brackets--any words that are bracketed with the square brackets will create a new page and link. An example is: [Manet group project] This is the recommended method.
• The remaining choices may be left at the default, as in the image below. Click Save Changes.

II. Set Up the Wiki pages with an index page.

• After filling out the form, you'll be taken to an Edit page. This is where you'll type in your index page, if you will want more than one page. Use brackets around each new page title that you create. Of course, if you only want one Wiki page total, just type in all content here.

• After saving, the new page titles will have a question mark at the end. Click on the question mark to go to the new page and add content. Once you've added content and saved, the questions mark disappears and the phrase, e.g. Manet group project, becomes a full link to a new page.

III . Add Content to the pages.

• Click on the first page's question mark.

1. Text

• For the option HTML Only: To add text, type directly into the html editor box, format with the editor, and Save.
• For the option No HTML: Open a word processor, like Microsoft Word, select text from a previously constructed file and copy. Open the Moodle Wiki and choose proper page and then the Edit tag. Click in the text box and paste.

 

 

2. Images

• Click on Update this Wiki.

• Make certain that Binary Files is enabled and has Yes beside it, which will allow you to add images and attachments (any type of binary attachment). Click Save Changes.
• Click on the Edit tag.
• Click on Browse to search your computer for a .jpg or .gif image file. (Use the Attachments tag if you want to include any other type of file.) Then click on upload. The image shouldn't be more than about 65KB and 250 by 250 pixels, which could fill about about half your screen. The name of the image file should be lower case letters and contain no spaces, e.g. manet.jpg.

• After clicking on Upload, you should see a dark red or black page, with the location of the image. Select everything in the brackets, including the brackets and copy.

• Paste the bracketed information into your HTML editor as seen below:

• This results in the index page as seen belo, with the Manet link to an image and a new page completed.

 

IV. Manage and Administer a Wiki.

• Once you've set up a Wiki, the students can then edit pages and add information. For example, the instructor sets up the project page below, giving projects and due dates. The student group then use this page jointly to add information and edit one another's work.

• If you click on the History tab, you can see three items:
  • Browse--This allows you to look at each version before and after changes are made. All versions are saved.
  • Fetch-back--This allows you to edit older versions of the page. After saving changes, it becomes the latest version that everyone will work on. This is useful if someone mistakenly edits out text and needs it later.
  • Diff--This means differences between the versions.

• Differences are shown by means of a plus sign and added text in green. Subtracted text will have a minus sign and be in red.