Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/59185
"In higher education, student input and responses are often wasted. At the end of the semester, we often throw away much of their work. By creating their own textbook, my students produced something they could feel proud of and leave behind as a resource for the next group of students." —Richard Watson, University of Georgia, Terry College of Business A Professor Puts Wiki to Work The wiki movement may not have caught on yet among aca- demics at large, but one professor at the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business in Athens isn't sure why. Richard Watson, the J. Rex Fuqua Distinguished Chair for Internet Strategy and director of the school's Center for Information Systems Leadership, recently charged the 15 stu- dents in his course in XML, a computer language used to build Web pages, to create their own textbook. Watson used wiki software, which allows users to post Web pages that other users can modify. By collaborating to write their own wiki text- book, says Watson, students learned the material more thor- oughly than they would have using a traditional resource. Watson admits that, at first, writing the wiki textbook took a great deal of effort—not because of the technology, but because of the planning involved. Each student wrote a chapter, which comprised 40 percent of his or her overall grade. In addition, students served as the editors for the chapters that directly preceded their own to ensure continuity. Watson read each chapter in draft form and discussed it with the student author and editor. Now that the book has been written, Watson has much less work to do. He and his newest group of students are reviewing and updating each chapter. He also has assigned one student to teach and develop support material for each chapter. The collaboratively written textbook has been a wonderful teaching tool, says Watson. Rather than accepting informa- tion passively from a standard textbook, students learned the material more thoroughly and with more enthusiasm by cre- ating their own. Moreover, they were able to leave behind their input for future courses. "In higher education, student input and responses are often wasted. At the end of the semester, we often throw away much of their work," says Watson. "By creating their own textbook, my students pro- duced something they could feel proud of and leave behind as a resource for the next group of students." Surprising Reluctance Given these advantages, Watson has been very surprised at his colleagues' reluctance to use his textbook and the wiki format. "Other professors have said that it's a wonderful idea, but no one has picked it up for their own courses," says Watson. Their fear, he notes, is that a student-created textbook in a wiki for- mat is less rigorous and accurate than a conventional textbook. 30 BizEd JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006 That fear may take a while to overcome, even though large numbers of users already trust the wiki system. "Wiki documents are meant to be self-correcting," Watson explains. "Every change made is logged. I can go back and restore any page to an earlier version. Or if students tell me there's a mistake, I'll simply tell them to fix it." Watson regularly promotes the book to his colleagues and invites them to use it for their own students. As a wiki docu- ment, the textbook is open to revision by users around the world. In fact, Watson is working with students at Sudan University in Shanghai to translate the book into Chinese and is anticipating an Italian version soon. Adopting Wiki Watson encourages professors in all disciplines to experi- ment with the wiki format as a way to engage students in a given topic. Those who would like to give wiki a try can visit sites such as Wikimedia.org, JotSpot.com, or WikiSpaces .com to be guided through the creation of their first pages. Setup is simple and takes only a few minutes, says Watson. Watson also offers a few recommendations for integrating a wiki project into the business classroom: s Choose the course carefully. Full-time students are often more enthusiastic than part-timers about the work a wiki- based project entails. "I suggested this collaborative method to a class of IBM consultants, but they rejected the idea. They thought it would take too much time," says Watson. s Take the role of designer, rather than professor. The professor needs to have a clear plan for what kind of information the book must contain and how the individual chapters will flow together. s Expect some missteps. In the beginning, there will be errors in the text or glitches in the system. The beauty of the collabo- rative process, says Watson, is that students can watch how these areas work themselves out over time and learn how the collective efforts of a group can come together successfully. "For faculty, creating a wiki project is a blend of academ- ic research, teaching, and practical management issues. For students, it is motivating because their class projects live beyond the semester," says Watson. "All of my students have included the fact that they've written a chapter of this book on their vitae." The XML textbook that Richard Watson's students created can be found at en.wikibooks.org/wiki/XML. Faculty with questions about cre- ating a wiki textbook can contact Watson at rwatson@terry.uga.edu.