dkimmey: Perhaps, to get things started, it might help if we each took a turn discussing what worked in using the wiki as part of your course. Glenn, would you mind starting?

glennhendler: Sure. So, what worked: Unhelpfully, perhaps, what worked varied from group to group. Some actually took the online collaboration idea to heart; some didn't. Those groups that really went for the wiki from the start--who archived each usage of their keyword there, who used the dictionary definition assignment to move toward their keyword essay--for them, it worked well. I think one mistake I made was easing them into the wiki too gently; I let them start out discussing and archiving stuff on Blackboard, or in person. So for some, the wiki was an added task at the end, rather than part of the class from the start. 

tobiasucla: I made the site central to all aspects of my course. Students worked in groups and tracked two keywords/group throughout all texts we read. There was no option but to embrace it. Most did. Those who didn't like the sound of the class left early. More people were confused by the keywords approach rather than the technology. They wanted to construct historicist narratives about the rise of "science" or "race," etc. Each group presented twice during the quarter: one presentation per word. I modeled my expectations with frequent, early in-class projects. The formal presentations also provided forums for discussing issues with the site and the keywords-approach.

jentery: Meanwhile, my class mobilized the wiki as an end-product, even if it was a vehicle for in-class workshops. We used our course blog for "pre-writing" which, admittedly sounds peculiar for a wiki. The wiki was always on the horizon for my class. We talked about it from the start, but we didn't post until we were satisfied with what was being published. We talked about the verb, "service," once or twice a week. and they were in groups--each beginning with a different OED definition

glennhendler: And Jentery: did they then do a lot of revising on the wiki, after they posted?

jentery: No. It was only posted once.

dkimmey: So, it sounds as though all of us might have benefited from being explicit about how the process of using the wiki should be followed. Is that fair? One thing I noticed Jentery is that your process (blog to wiki) meant that your course material wasn't public until it was polished.

jentery: Yes. Correct, Deborah. I'm reluctant to make student writing public (at the undergraduate level). As is the Expository Writing Program at the UW. Students had to sign a release form and I also didn't use names.

dkimmey: What are your reservations about having students write for the public from the start?

jentery: I was particularly concerned about the complexity of the topics we discussed and asking them to write for a public before they had a chance to revise.

tobiasucla: Jentery, was your class service-learning oriented? How did the site get students to think about the service learning projects? Service learning is always triangulation: course-service-reading materials.

jentery: It helped a lot, actually. It was a way of both historicizing and theorizing a word they took for granted. Some of the best class conversations were about differences across the OED definitions. I never thought students would be that interested in definitions. But, admittedly, the keyword project was not the core of their final portfolio. 

tobiasucla: Since you used only one word, did they ever kind of "hit the wall" with it? How did you keep the definition moving?

jentery: We never hit a wall, actually. Probably because I asked them about their service-learning at the beginning of every class. Working with just one word was fantastic. Just based on practice on-site, they could pose tensions between the way the word alone was contextualized. e.g., how gender was mapped onto their service-practices, as well as service in the sense of labor and citizen obligation.

tobiasucla: It seems like keywords projects are empirical in the sense that you have to compare specific uses of the same word, right? Where were you're students finding working examples: assigned texts? casual uses? in the media?

jentery: All of them.

dkimmey: Jentery, one thing I liked about your approach to using the keywords and the blog/wiki was that students were looking for multiple meanings behind "service" in its usage by contemporary critics, not historically across texts. I'm curious about what sort of claims your students were prepared to make by the end of the course. Steve, Glenn, and I used a historic sampling of materials ... which sets up students to make historic claims about the transformation in keywords based on changing social conditions.

glennhendler: Yeah; my class spanned 200+ years and was allegedly surveying American cultural history, so we didn't stand still much.

tobiasucla: Deborah’s right. My classes were rooted in the 18th C and began with specific textual problems. Johnson: dictionary. Franklin: autobiography.

jentery: One thing I tried to do was "hand down" the wiki on "service" and that failed miserably

glennhendler: What do you mean "hand down"?

jentery: Pass it on to another quarter, class, and instructor to develop it, complicate it, etc. Understand the project as going beyond the quarter -- really actualizing the collaboratory

glennhendler: Ah...meaning an already populated wiki, so to speak? Interesting.

jentery:  Yes, like an actual wiki. That way, the framing of the word is a claim for an audience that is future-oriented (or doesn't quite exist, in a sense).

tobiasucla: A public.

jentery: Indeed, a public.

dkimmey: That approach models your comments on HASTAC about collaboration in pedagogy: that professors/instructors might be better positioned for collaboratory learning if they/we thought about course generation as collaborative (i.e., team teaching, etc)

glennhendler: What in particular failed so miserably?

jentery: Honestly? It failed because some colleagues dropped it.

tobiasucla: People like ownership in academics. The need it for promotion/recognition.

dkimmey: Well, in many ways this conversation is about thinking collaboratively about course design.

tobiasucla: I'd like to see several syllabuses in wiki format. That is the grand illusion.

glennhendler: Nice idea, Steve, though as I realized rather abruptly in our discussion when I was in Seattle, to do that would mean that anyone--including the students--could revise the syllabus. A frightening thought.

tobiasucla: Fine by me. I've been informally bringing up the idea of a shared bank of amlit syllabuses with folks I know. Almost everyone has resisted the idea.

glennhendler: I think there is a shared bank of amlit syllabi at the Crossroads site.

dkimmey: There are a handful on Crossroads, but certainly the meta-discussion that happens in wikis and blogs would be much more valuable than the sample syllabi themselves. So then it's not about what texts are taught but about what approaches are used.

jentery: I agree, Deborah, but I would really press emergent approaches to course design. Letting the course material emerge during the quarter. As instructors, we do have to consider the power dynamic, right? Even if I post a syllabus for revision, students are highly unlikely to change it.

tobiasucla: I felt like the site starts out with the instructor having all the power and the students feeling overwhelmed. As the course progressed, they slowly took over. Students don't feel confident until they've built their site and have something to work from.

glennhendler: Actually, I think Jentery's right there. I taught a grad course last year where students each week had the option of replacing one critical reading I'd chosen with one they found (as they were constructing annotated bibliographies). Not one student took advantage of it.

jentery: If you want to try your "expertise," then allow for co-construction of a syllabus. Expertise becomes collaborative in that sense. A verb, even.

tobiasucla: Love to try!

glennhendler: I have a new topic, a banal one: grading. I felt very anxious all semester about how I was going to evaluate the students' individual or collaborative work on the keyword essays. Anxiety that got worse when I realized that only some groups had been doing writing and revision in the wiki--which I'd told them would be half the grade on the assignment--while others just posted the thing, so I couldn't tell who had done what work. That had to do with the fact that I tried to balance individual and collaborative grades. Half the grade was for the final product and everyone in the group got the same grade; half was for process, and I did that individually. Mostly because the most common complaint I get about group and collaborative work is that there's a student in nearly every group who takes a free ride on the others' work.

jentery: The wiki was only a part of student participation in my class. namely because I had to work through the 100-level portfolio process

dkimmey: One thing that I found nice about the wiki was that I could offer students the chance to decide when they were ready to be graded. On the flip side, that meant a lot of papers at the end. But it was nice that the wiki allows you to see who does what online. Glenn, did you assess the "process" through the "history" tab?

glennhendler: Yep.

tobiasucla: Me, too.

glennhendler: Which only worked if they did the work on the wiki.

tobiasucla: I think I did things differently than the rest of you. Group presentations drew shared grades. Students then wrote follow-up paper for which they got individual grades. I also required two post/site/week.

dkimmey: Requiring posts is key, I think.

jentery: I agree. I do the same with blogs which are really easy to track.

glennhendler: I was swamped in the second half of the semester, and didn't check till shortly before the due date, and that was when I discovered that a couple of the groups were doing the writing off-line.