Like others working on the “teaching” or “instructing” aspect of service learning I first found myself explaining what a wiki is and how we were going to use it. At the same time I encouraged students to construct more pages and enhance information by adding links, tags,etc. I have encountered distinctly different approaches from the undergraduate interns who are completing this work for course credit (150 hours) than the information sciences graduate students who receive tuition benefit in exchange for about 150 hours per week over the term. I provided, through e-mail and in-person orientation, a quick “how to use the wiki”.
I specifically selected software that would allow for simple but clearly formatted display settling on PBwiki (see www.pbwiki.com) which is dedicated to educational projects.
The undergraduates are a little more intimidated by the atmosphere at the archives and naturally are unsure of what to expect. They tend to engage immediately with the case files and are eager to write about their findings on the wiki. Each of the three undergraduates were able to log in and join the wiki and left detailed journal entries. Gradually they began adding their own links for themes (we set up a list of categories for types of deaths).
The graduate students have not responded to developing the wiki in the same manner. Again, the students were engaged by the text they were reading, but when it came to thoughtful interpretation presented on the wiki it seems that few understood how to log in to the site. I spent individual time with some of them explaining how to do this and met with more resistance than their younger counter parts.
I will include more information on my encounters in service learning with wiki usage in the next posting!
