Blackboard Wikis. Teaching and Learning Academy. This guide aims to introduce you to the Blackboard wiki tool. The topics covered are as follows:

Transcription

1 Teaching and Learning Academy Blackboard Wikis This guide aims to introduce you to the Blackboard wiki tool. The topics covered are as follows: Blackboard Wikis... 1 What s a Wiki?... 2 How do I add a Wiki to My Course?... 2 How do I access/view the Wiki?... 4 The Wiki Panel... 4 Adding pages to the Wiki... 4 Deleting Entries... 5 Using Wikis for Assessment... 5 In the main section of the page you will find the number of words contributed 6 Viewing Student Contributions... 6 Adding Feedback and Marks... 8 Text Box Editor Marks and Feedback... 8 Basic Marks and Feedback... 8 Adding Comments to a Wiki... 9 Deleting Comments How do I edit the wiki settings once the wiki has been set up? 11

2 What s a Wiki? Wiki s are webpage construction tools, which are simple, easy-to-use, collaborative, and available online. They are web page construction tools, because the resulting product from using a wiki is usually a set of interlinking (hyperlinked) pages that are created and exist online. They are simple and easy-to-use because they are built to construct content very quickly and therefore use very basic, cut down approach to webpage construction. Other construction tools such as Frontpage or Dreamweaver are far more sophisticated and require expertise in design and software use that wikis simply don t require. They are collaborative because a piece of content created can be read, edited and/or deleted by anyone within the writing team. This obviously can cause problems, but the benefits of aggregating knowledge from different individuals into a single source can be very beneficial. They are online, because all the tools needed to create a wiki are available through your internet browser, rather than via an application that has to be installed and only available on specific machines. It is important to note here that wiki have a history tool which allows you to explore how and who has contibuted to each specific page. By using this lecturers can explore and assess individual students work during the construction of the wiki site. The fundamental principles of what a wiki should do and how it should be built differs between studies. What does become apparent is the flexible nature of this tool allows lecturers to be very creative in the ways it can be used and the design of the activities (Guzdial et al, 2001) How do I add a Wiki to My Course? 1. To add a wiki to your course, select a content area where you would like to add the wiki. Ensure that edit mode is ON. Help & Information available on the Blackboard Help tab Page 2 of 12

3 2. Using the toolbar at the top of the page, click on the tool menu button and select Wiki from the list 3. Click on the Create New Wiki button 4. At the top of the page, insert a name for your Wiki, and insert a description of the wiki into the text box. 5. Ensure the option Yes is selected for the Wiki Availability in step 2, you can also apply any date restrictions here. 6. In step 3, you need to specify whether the wiki is open or closed for editing. If you select open to editing then the wiki is open for editing to all students. If however you select closed to editing then only persons with tutor privileges can add pages and modify content. You can also specify whether students can add comment to pages. 7. In step 4 you can state whether the wiki is going to be used for assessment. Select the Mark: Points Possible option if the wiki is to be used for assessment and insert the number of marks into the box. Alternatively select the no marking option. 8. Once you have finalised the various options, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the Submit button. You have successfully created a wiki. We just need to finalise the process by adding the newly created wiki to a content area. Select the wiki you created from the list and ensure the link to a wiki option is selected then click Next. 9. Add any additional information that you want your students to see in the description box, select any relevant options in step 2, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Submit. Help & Information available on the Blackboard Help tab Page 3 of 12

4 How do I access/view the Wiki? To view your wiki, simply click on the wiki name from within your Blackboard course: The Wiki Panel After accessing the wiki, you will find information about the wiki in the top of right hand side of the page. The first item is about this wiki. Here you will find information about the number of pages added to the wiki, the number of comments and the creation date of the wiki. In the second section you will see the various pages which have been added to the wiki. The titles viewed here are the names of the pages that the students created. Click on the underlined page titles to view the pages. The option which isn t underlined is the page you are currently viewing. Clicking on the arrows next to the pages will load a contextual menu, providing the following options: open, edit, delete and history. Adding pages to the Wiki 1. To add a page to a wiki, click on the Create Wiki Page button found in the top left hand corner: Help & Information available on the Blackboard Help tab Page 4 of 12

5 2. Insert a subject for your page in the name section and then add your content into the text box editor 3. Once you have finished adding content, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Submit Deleting Entries 1. To delete a page from the wiki, click on the arrows next to the page name in the wiki panel. 2. Select Delete from the list of options. 3. A popup will appear asking whether you want to delete this page. To confirm click OK. Using Wikis for Assessment If you enabled the Grade: Points Possible option when setting up your wiki, you can provide feedback and marks to individuals using the wiki. This information will also be added to the grade center. 1. To start marking student work, click the participation summary button in the top right hand corner. Help & Information available on the Blackboard Help tab Page 5 of 12

6 2. On the page that loads, on the left hand side of the page, you will find a list of students who have contributed to the wiki. Students who have not contributed will not be displayed in this section; however these students can be accessed using the wiki panel. In the right hand panel, in the view contributions by section you have the option to view all students, regardless of whether they have contributed, OR only view students with contributions. This is particularly useful if you want to quickly identify which students have not contributed. Toggle the button to change your settings. In the main section of the page you will find the number of words contributed by each student, the percentage of contribution compared to other students and the number of page saves. Viewing Student Contributions Before you start marking student work, you will need to review each student s contribution. You can do this by either clicking on their name in the main section of the page, or by clicking on their name in the view contributions by section of the wiki panel. We will use the link in the main section of the page for the purpose of this guide. 1. Click on the students name in the main section of the page: Help & Information available on the Blackboard Help tab Page 6 of 12

7 2. Once you have clicked on the student name the participants contributions page will appear: Most importantly, the table shows the page title, including version () and, the number of words modified by this particular student. In the second column, there s a link called compared to version #, clicking on this link will show the modifications made between the two page versions. In the example on the right; between versions 8 and 9, the student added in text, denoted by the green highlighted text and removed some text, denoted by red highlighted strikethrough text. The legend tab indicates the different types of modifications; please see the next page for a closer look at the legend. Help & Information available on the Blackboard Help tab Page 7 of 12

8 3. Click OK once you have finished reviewing the modifications. 4. You will need to look at each of the modifications to see the students contributions. When you are ready to add feedback and marks, proceed to the next section of this help document. Other ways of marking are to look at the wiki as a whole, and mark this accordingly. You could ask your students to report on contributions to the wiki, and then divide the marks accordingly. There are numerous ways to allocate marks to groups of students. It is important to devise and then explain your method to your students before starting assessment. Adding Feedback and Marks 1. Following on from the previous step, having accessed the participants contributions page, click on the edit grade button in the wiki panel to add feedback. If you cannot see the edit grade button, click on one of the student names in the view contributions by section of the wiki panel. 2. Grade and Feedback boxes will appear in the right hand panel, this can be expanded to include the text box editor by clicking on the text editor button at the bottom. Basic Marks and Feedback Text Box Editor Marks and Feedback Help & Information available on the Blackboard Help tab Page 8 of 12

9 3. You should add your feedback to the feedback or feedback to user box. Feedback entered into the grading notes section, is solely for the tutor, students do not see feedback entered here. Once you have finished adding feedback, click on save grade or submit. The mark and feedback will also be added to the grade center and will instantly be available to the students. You can quickly identify which students haven t added content by clicking on their name in the view contributions by section. When the page loads, and there arent any items in the participants contributions window, you will know that this student hasn t contributed. Adding Comments to a Wiki 1. You can add comments to a wiki page by clicking on the comment button at the end of the page. Help & Information available on the Blackboard Help tab Page 9 of 12

10 The window will expand to include a textbox: 2. Enter your comment into the box. Once you have finished adding your comment, click on the add button. 3. Once the comment has been added, the number of comments will appear underneath the wiki page: 4. Click on the comments: link to view the comments. Please note: comments added directly to wiki pages are not linked to the grade centre. Students will need to view each comment in the wiki if you intend to deliver feedback this way. You may want to consider providing assessment feedback via the route outlined in the Using Wikis for AssessmentError! Reference source not found. section on page 5. Feedback added via this route is available in the grade center and in the students My Grades view. Deleting Comments 1. You can quickly delete comments by clicking on the comments: link at the bottom of the page. 2. At the top of the comments section you should see: name said...; name being the person who added the comment. To the right of the name you should see the delete icon. Click on this icon to delete the comment. Help & Information available on the Blackboard Help tab Page 10 of 12

11 3. A popup will appear asking whether you want to delete this comment. 4. To confirm click OK. How do I edit the wiki settings once the wiki has been set up? Once your wiki has been created, you can access the wiki settings via the Course Tools section in the control panel. 1. Click on course tools in the control panel 2. Click on Wikis Help & Information available on the Blackboard Help tab Page 11 of 12

12 3. The wikis page will load. In this area you will find all the wikis created within this Blackboard module. Here you can add new wikis and modify the settings of any existing wikis. 4. Click on the arrow to the right of wiki and select edit from the menu, the settings outlined in the first section of this guide will load. For more information about these settings, re-visit the section outlined: How do I add a Wiki to My Course? on page 2. Help & Information available on the Blackboard Help tab Page 12 of 12