Wikis as a Collaboration Tool

The term wiki comes from the Hawaiian phrase wiki wiki, which means “quick,” “fast,” “speedy,” or “hurry.” Wiki originated from the work of Ward Cunningham, who created the first wiki called WikiWikiWeb in 1995. The best-known example of a wiki is Wikipedia, the world’s largest online encyclopedia constructed by users. Many other examples of wikis can be found in nearly every domain, including business, industry, and education. Wikis are a type of Web 2.0 technologies that enable people to share information, collaborate, and communicate with each other. Wikis are a type of social software that includes blogs, forums, podcasting, social networking, social bookmarking, Flickr, Facebook, and del.icio.us. More specifically, a wiki is a collection of webpages that are continuously edited collaboratively by multiple users. As such, wiki technology matches the evolution of the networked society that requires collaborative team skills. This entry discusses software for creating wikis, the use of wikis as a repository for shared information, the use of wikis in education, and the implications of wikis for teaching and learning.

Wiki Software Tools

There is a wide range of software tools for creating wikis. These are classified in two broad categories. The first one includes wiki services or wiki farms that are hosted by a service provider. The services may be free or fee-based. Examples of popular wiki farms are Wikispaces, Wikidot, and PBworks. The second category [Page 846]involves wiki tools that can be directly installed on one’s own server, such as PmWiki, TWiki, Tiki Wiki, and MediaWiki, which is one of the best known tools, originally for use on Wikipedia, with thousands of applications. The content of MediaWiki consists of articles with a title and a body that may include text, images, figures, or other media. A community of users edits articles collaboratively. MediaWiki has a number of basic components, such as tool bars, navigation, and user options, that help users edit articles, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 A representation of an article with MediaWiki components

The key features of wiki software tools are ease of use, simplicity, flexibility, and speed of use. These features are implemented through a simple interface that enables multiple users to collaboratively create, edit, and publish content using a simplified HTML language, including text, paragraphs and headings, links, images, tables, lists, and files. Each edit is stored in a history log that records all changes being made, enabling users to “roll back” and recover previous content, and compare different versions of the wiki. Wikis also have a discussion page that enables asynchronous written communication, providing a space for negotiation and communication. In addition, wiki tools provide a number of technical functionalities that support the creation of wiki applications, such as technical support through [Page 847]developer and user documentation, user rights management and registration, tracking and restoring capabilities through the history log, browser and cross-platform compatibility, and installation procedures.