All the resources and knowledge to design and customize every aspect of an effective online education program.

How Wiki Helps the Online Learner

Arguably, the greatest outdated myth surrounding online education is the idea of student isolation and a perceived lack of ability for collaboration and communication. In reality, the Internet is a powerful worldwide tool of ever-evolving, instantaneous, collaborative communication. Today’s students, both online and traditional, are more in touch than ever before, in both educational and social networking circles.

Recently, the wiki, a powerful, online, collaborative, information-sharing tool, which first came about in the mid-1990s, experienced a huge surge in mainstream popularity. Perhaps the most widely known wiki is Wikipedia, an openly editable, free, Web-based encyclopedia.

Wikis are publically editable Web pages with almost limitless possibilities of application. The name “wiki” comes from a Hawaiian term for “quick” or “fast.” According to the article “7 Things You Should Know About Wikis,” as published on educause.edu, “The possibilities for using wikis as the platform for collaborative projects are limited only by one’s imagination and time.” Therefore, wikis are an extremely valuable resource in the world of e-learning.

Since wikis are Web-based, anyone with Internet can access them. According to Chelan David in his article “Working the Web,” as published on universitybusiness.com, “Essentially, anyone with an Internet connection can access, consume and remix data while collaborating with others.”

While Wikis enable students around the globe to collaborate on group projects in real-time, it carries some element of risk, since virtually anyone can easily add or delete information, without having HTML knowledge. As a result, wikis used in the educational realm must often be closely monitored or have restricted editing capabilities.

For online students, properly structured wikis enable ease of collaboration like never before. Students can easily work together to create group papers, projects and presentations, entirely online and from any location in the world. They can also use wikis to create collaborative multimedia projects.

As stated in “7 Things You Should Know about Wikis,” “Wikis are able to incorporate sounds, movies, and pictures.” The article continues: “Wikis might be the easiest and most effective Web-based collaboration tool in any instructional portfolio. Their inherent simplicity provides students with direct (and immediate) access to a site’s content, which is crucial in group editing or other collaborative project activities.”

The use of wikis is certainly not limited to students. As David points out, “These technologies are not only useful for educational purposes, but for administrative processes as well.” Faculty can also find wikis extremely useful for sharing findings, collaborating on scholarly journals, and even for preparing lesson plans or syllabi.

Wikis can arguably allow collaboration between students and faculty on a level that is above and beyond what is possible in an actual classroom. This provides online educators with yet another powerful tool to dispel the myth of a lack of collaboration in e-learning.

Even traditional colleges and universities are acknowledging the benefits of wikis as collaborative educational tools by adopting them into their class work. As traditional curriculums integrate more online elements into their programs, the gap between e-learning and traditional schooling diminishes, allowing for a united front in educational advancement.

There is little argument against the power of online tools in learning. Functioning in today’s professional world necessitates a solid knowledge of technology. As David concludes, “social networking and collaboration skills are no longer nice to have but business imperatives.” Incorporating the latest technologies can easily serve to energize and excite both students and faculty alike and prepare students for life after graduation.

Thus, Wikis are yet another powerful online tool. When applied properly, they have the ability to take student collaboration to a whole new level and bring people together in ways that far surpass what one can accomplish in a traditional classroom.