Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

From UMassWiki

Welcome to the wikispace of English 122, Section 68, Fall 2006. As a largely experimental endeavor, we were unable to use this wiki to its full potential. We wish to equip future classes with more knowledge so as to build up to that potential. Not only does an internet venue such as this allow public access to the works of a class, it allows interaction between students far beyond a classroom's capability. Without the hassle of meeting in person or exchanging email addresses, course members can freely converse and work together. This is especially important in a writing class which values and emphasizes peer reviewing. Unfortunately, our class has not truly taken advantage of these features.

Two particular reasons held us back from Full Wiki Potential. One was unfamiliarity: Several classes reserved for wiki time became devoted to learning how to use it and/or fix problems, rather than using it for writing development. This led the wiki team to decide that writing a brief tutorial, clarifying basic wiki formatting and usage, would benefit future users who don't want to go through the more comprehensive (but less user-friendly) wikimedia help pages. We also recommend trying to familiarize yoursellves with the wiki on your own time. In the classroom, with so many students logged on at once, errors are bound to occur. Often, the atmosphere can be overwhelming. Try exploring and editing the wiki when you have some free time. You may find that wiki literacy comes more naturally than you would think.

The second reason is that we needed a place to conduct fluid conversations. The wiki provides a great place to put work and class information, and does facilitate discussion. However, these discussions must be carried out on specific pages and are hard to organize. They are not visible to the general wiki user, unless they are searched out. A forum, on the other hand, provides multiple advantages over the wiki's discussion set-up. (lucky you, we created one.) Topics of discussion are organized into sections (i.e. General, Identity Narratives, Peer Review, whatever) and within those sections people start threads. Each thread is a separate conversation with each post contained inside, so there is no cluttered mass of comments. Threads are sorted by date and most forums support a "Recent Posts" feature, allowing users to see new activity easily. Finally, a forum centralizes the discussion rather than the class. In the wiki, if a student wanted to ask a question, they could post in the class discussion page, the instructor's discussion page, another student's page...who knows! Replies could also be posted anywhere but the student would only be notified if it was posted in their user page - meaning conversations go back and forth between pages! As icing on the cake, one forum could be used by any and all writing classes at the same time! Class-specific topics could still be organized by class, but anyone could mingle with the rest of the student/faculty body invovled with writing. The forum could provide the means for multiple generations of Writing 112 wiki users to interact with each other. A forum organizes conversation in a simpler manner, allowing for improved communication.

When familiarizing yourself with the wiki, the most important consideration is time. Do not write it off as pointless because you don't understand the interface the first day. Like anything else, learning to use the wiki takes a bit of effort on your part. There is a reason why Steph chooses to implement the UMASS Wiki instead of WebCT in her classes. Trust in Steph's plan. She knows what she's talking about.

-The section 68 wiki team