Building Collaborative Knowledge Bases: An Open Source Approach Using Wiki Software in Teaching and Research

To open-minded students and professors alike, a classroom is an experience in which all participants collaborate to expand their knowledge. The collective knowledge is typically documented via a mix of lecture slides, notes taken by students, writings submitted by individuals or teams, online discussion forums, etc. A Wiki is collection of hyperlinked web pages that are assembled with Wiki software. It differs from the traditional process of developing a web site in that any registered participant can edit without knowing how to build a web site. It enables a group to asynchronously develop and refine a body of knowledge in full view of all participants. The emergence of Wikipedia and Wikitravel demonstrate that this collaborative process is scalable.1 In this tutorial, we will provide an overview of the Wiki collaboration process; explain how it can be used in teaching courses, and also how it provides an efficient mechanism for collaborating researchers to document their growing body of knowledge. For teaching, students can collectively post and refine each others writings. Participants: If possible, please bring a laptop with Wi-Fi capability