Digital Cre8or wiki: Setting up a pilot wiki

11 steps to a successful wiki pilot

Mader proposes 11 steps to a successful wiki pilot. How might these steps apply to our planned Digital Cre8or project?

1. Establish a time frame

Madar suggests 3 months (1 semester) as an adequate timeframe for getting a new wiki off the ground. This includes time for people to get familiar with it, move content relating to the pilot goal into it, and reach the pilot goal. Mader suggests a further 3 months fo the completion of the entire pilot, including setting up, technical integration, and testing. The actual time frame will depend on factors such as size of organisation, and attitudes towards using new tools. A wiki can take anything from a week to several months to get started.

2. Make it representative

Mader advises, "Include groups that are representative of typical projects and activities within your organisation." This helps to build relevant examples and replicable strategies that can help when you want to expand wiki use to other groups later on. 

In the context of Digital Cre8or, groups could include the following: students with little or no multimedia knowledge, students with some multimedia knowledge, staff who will be supporting the wiki, staff with expert knowledge in multimedia,  staff with training skills and experience.

 

3. Keep it compact

Mader suggests keeping the pilot size small enough that it is possible to work closely with each pilot group. This enables us to respond to potential  problems and provide timely guidance.  

4. Choose participants carefully

Madar advises using multiple types of users in the pilot, and not simply tech savvy users, in order to avoid the possiblity of retricting the appeal of the final product to enthusiasts. It would be useful also to include the sceptical as well as the converts.

5. Seek or be sought?

Should we advertise for volunteers for our Digital Cre8or project, or should we hand pick them? In view of the small number of perticipants required, perhaps it would be more practical to hand pick them. 

6. Wiki with a purpose

What is the purpose of our Digital Cre8or wiki? We have already talked about hosting relevant course materials, and enabling collaboration between course members. What are we talking about specifically? Are there other ways in which our wiki can facilitate teaching and learning of digital media skills?

7. Define house rules

Mader suggests starting with a set of guidelines for content, conduct and community and posting them prominently on the wiki.  These can be used as the basis for a more detailed set of house rules informed by the experience. Mader recommends the Sony Ericsson  Developer World wiki's house rules  ( http://developer.sonyericsson.com/wiki ).

 

8. Personal spaces

Mader recommends setting up personal spaces for individuals and groups, which can be used as a means of helping community members gain familiarity with the wiki. Personal space can be used to post information such as:

• Contact details (email, phone, IM)
  
• Personal Blog and website
  
• Biographical details
  
• In the case of DC wiki, Examples of work (images, audio, video etc)
  
• In the case of DC wiki, Course submissions
  

Any other suggestions or comments?

Mader says blogging in personal spaces should be encouraged, and in fact, blogging on class and project work is a requirement of the DC syllabus. It also helps to build rapport between community members, and get to know each other, and develop editing skills.

9.  Never an empty page

Mader advises that when new pages are set up, the page author should create scaffolding, or a template as guide to others as to what content is expected on the page. This could either be a set of section headers or a set of brief guidelines on information to be contributed.

10. Make it a magnet

Suggestions from Mader include:

• When responding to enquiries where the answer is on the wiki, send email link to it
  
• Put content on the wiki that can only be found there

These should help to get people into the habit of looking on the wiki

11. Be firm and think long term

This item is about avoiding the temptation to slip into old habits of organising certain sorts of activities such as meetings, even if it seems awkward at first. I'm not sure how applicable this might be in terms of coordinating a course through a wiki.  Will people use the wiki to collaborate, or will they be tempted to go outside the wiki and use email, or face to face communication? Would it be a problem if they did, and if so how? Will they request paper copies of documents rather than accessing documents online? Should we be flexible or should we be firm about encouraging students to engage with the wiki?

Once again, your feedback on the items listed above will be greatly appreciated, regarless of whether you agree with them or disagree with them. Let's get a dialogue going.