Moodle® For Dummies®

Adding Wikis to Your Course

Wiki-wiki is a Hawaiian word meaning quick. In Moodle and other learning content management systems (LCMS), a wiki is a collection of collaboratively authored Web pages that are set up to be easy to add to and edit. The most famous wiki is Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org); you and your class are most likely familiar with this online encyclopedia.

Wikis can be powerful modules for collaborative activities because their structure includes Web page–editing capabilities that help you coordinate information between any number of class members. As a teacher, you can decide whether the entire class can edit a wiki together, or you can create group wikis that are editable by specific class members. Moodle ensures that wikis are easy to set up and even easier to use, which makes them a great resource for any type of course project.

Effectively using wikis with your learners

Use your imagination and make wikis work for you and your class. Teachers and trainers use wikis in various ways: with a whole class, with multiple classes, with groups (subdivisions of courses), or with specific learners for individual research projects.

Here are a few ways that using a wiki can benefit your learners:

• Encouraging creativity: Use wikis to encourage learners to upload images, link to resources, use graphical editing options, and add sound and/or video clips as appropriate for the course. For example, a wiki designed for an introductory fashion design course can allow class members ...