Instructors who are interested in integrating wikis in their own courses, can find more information on this page about how I designed and developed the course in 2007 and 2008, including the syllabi, assignments, and workshops for both courses. I have written a short piece about the integration of wikis in anthropology courses for Anthropology News. If you have any questions about integrating wikis in higher education courses, please do not hesitate to contact me (moc.liamg|ztirom.kram#moc.liamg|ztirom.kram).
How this wiki came about
In the summer of 2007, I decided to integrate a wiki into my undergraduate course on hunter-gatherers for autumn quarter 2007. I had never used a wiki in a course, but I imagined how it could further my pedagogical goals and engage students more actively. By integrating a wiki into my course I was hoping to improve student’s critical literacy of internet and scholarly materials, writing and editing skills, and awareness of the complex responsibilities and ethical concerns anthropologists face when writing about other people.
I thought that the nature of the wiki would be particularly well-suited to achieve these goals for several reasons: 1) it is public and students are therefore more invested because their work is visible to not just the professor but also anyone how visits the wiki, including the people students write about; 2) it is a collective effort in which an important part of learning is to discuss and work with others; 3) it is a work in process that is never finished and is continuously evolving; 4) it is democratic, collective and cumulative, as is the production of scientific knowledge; and 5) it is open and allows students to be creative and make contributions in different forms and formats, to actively engage with and author course material according to their skills and interests.
My goal was to create a wiki that was a hybrid between Wikipedia (created and edited by potentially everyone) and the Encyclopedia of Earth (created and edited by members who are academics). The intended audience was anthropology majors at universities in the US and abroad. The course was built around Robert Kelly’s book The Forager Spectrum (2007) and John Marshall’s film Death by Myth (2002), and focused on the goal of “scientifically studying the diversity of forager societies without recreating myths”. I wanted students to gain a deeper understanding of the course material by synthesizing scientific research and ethnographic descriptions of forager societies for the wiki, while avoiding stereotypical descriptions of all forager societies as some version of the Ju/’hoansi.
Course Materials
The course Anthropology 620.01 Hunter-Gatherers was taught in Autumn 2007 and Autumn 2008. The goal in 2008 was to improve the existing wiki and I redesigned the syllabus and assignments to achieve that goal.
Syllabus and Assignments Autumn 2007
In 2007 I designed three assignments for the wiki. The first assignment was to write individually an annotated bibliography of a forager group and then to write collectively an entry for the wiki about foragers in a particular region. The second assignment was to write individually a critical review of a research article on a topic discussed in class (e.g., optimal foraging theory) and then to write collectively an entry on that topic for the wiki. The third assignment was to make ten contributions to the wiki in addition to the other two assignments, such as through creating pages on topics not covered in class, adding audiovisual materials, reorganizing pages, or editing other student’s contributions.
Syllabus Autumn 2007
Reading list
Annotated bibliography
Critical review
Wiki contributions
Final exam
Syllabus and Assignments Autumn 2008 (in progress)
In 2008 the goal was to build on the existing wiki and improve the scope and quality of the wiki content, in particular, a critical evaluation of the source materials, an evaluation of copyrights of materials on the wiki; and a critical examination of web 2.0 materials on wiki and how they represent foragers. Students had to write a research paper in which they examined a theoretical question by comparing three forager societies, the Netsilik, the Ju/'hoansi, and a society of their choice. Writing the research paper would prepare students for making critical contributions to the wiki. In addition, I designed three small wiki assignments that asked to students to evaluate the existing wiki, make ten significant contributions, and reflect on their contributions in the light of the course motto and the nature of the wiki.
Syllabus Autumn 2008
Wiki Writing
Research Paper
Workshops
We had multiple workshops throughout the course to support the work on the wiki.
Wikidot Workshops
Nicholas Johnson of OSU's Digital Union gave a one-hour hands-on Wikidot instruction that taught students all the basics of wiki editing, including creating new pages, modifying texts, creating headers and lists, making links to other wiki pages, making links to other web sites, inserting pictures. All these exercises were done in the sandbox associated with this wiki (the sandbox is now private to protect the privacy of my students).
Writing Workshops
Dr. Chris Manion, Coordinator for the Writing Across the Curriculum of the Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing (CSTW), led two workshops in Autumn 2007 and one in Autumn 2008. One addressed how wikis fit into disciplinary attitudes toward writing and knowledge production. The other was focused on developing a style manual for the wiki. Dr. Manion has written about these two workshops on the blog WAC E-Thoughts, Ohio State Writing Across the Curriculum News of the Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing at the Ohio State University (Workshop 1 and Workshop 2). For the first workshop we read Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past by Roy Rosenzweig, which was originally published in The Journal of American History Volume 93, Number 1 (June, 2006): 117-46.
Copyright Workshop
Dr. Trisha Davis, Associate Professor at the OSU University Libraries, led a workshop on copyright in Autumn 2008. Dr. Davis gave a comprehensive overview of copyright law, fair use, and the creative commons and answered specific questions about the use of photographs and videos on our wiki. The important lessons were: 1) always attribute; and 2) link rather than host materials (e.g., pictures, videos).
Library Workshops
Nancy Courtney, OSU University Libraries, led workshops in 2007 and 2008 on how to find scholarly materials through the library catalog and the various research databases.
TELR Five Minutes of Fame
I presented the wiki at TELR's Five Minutes of Fame on April 24, 2009. It is a short - less than five minutes! - presentation about my experiences in integrating a wiki in the 620.01 Hunter-Gatherer course.
