I thought I'd create a new page to address this a bit more....

Sure, I have/had anxieties about using something as transparent as wikis or blogs and the like for writing assignments.  Of course, I usually have anxieties about trying something new and different...

I think the structure versus non-structure thing is a big deal, and it's actually something I wrote about in an article I wrote a few years ago called "When Blogging Goes Bad."  You can go check it out for yourself, but basically, one of the points I make is that teachers at any level-- including this one-- can do anything we want to create an inviting and interesting environment were students can be "self-driven," spaces/opportunities where students can "learn" instead of being "taught," places where students can "explore" and "create" and truly practice pure process, instead of completing some "teacherly" assignment that ultimately results in a product that has to be graded.  As I said in this piece, perhaps it's just common sense that my idealistic ideas about blogs (or just about anything else we try in the teaching of writing) were unrealistic; but every once in a while, I guess we need to be reminded about this.

The last time I used wikis in teaching was in spring 2007, and in that class, I used them in a very different way.  The assignment is right here, if you're curious, and the wiki that we worked on in that class, the WWWW Wiki, is here. There were three big differences from what we're doing here, at least as far as I can tell.  First, this was a semester-long assignment where I set up the topics (about HTML and CSS, mostly) about which students could write.  Second, I gave students specific requirements in terms of the number of articles/pages they were to write and edit.  And third, the assignment asked students to write an essay/reflection on the whole process.  On the whole, I think this assignment worked out pretty well, perhaps better than this PBWiki space.  That's something we can talk more about on emuonline.

However, I think the big difference (personally) between this wiki and that wiki is that the goal of the wiki assignment before was to get students to write (and edit) texts within the wiki; the goal of this assignment/experiment was to get students to explore and have discussion in the wiki space.  And while the wiki does some stuff well, I have to say I'm not exactly sold on this wiki spaces abilities to support conversations.

Anyway, the thing about trying new things in teaching is that you don't know how they are going to turn out, and sometimes the results can be pretty crazy.  And the problem with that is if you are a teacher who doesn't have a lot of "security" in different ways (e.g., you're new, you're a grad student teaching assistant, you're a part-timer, etc., etc.), doing something in a class that might blow up in your face can be pretty scary.  Of course, I'm a tenured full professor, so I'm not scared of exploding assignments.  :-)

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