Let's Talk After Class: The Way of The Wiki

Perhaps Columbia's greatest draw is the Core Curriculum. The 11-16 classes that students in the College take over four years foster a sense of community and collegiality that makes this University one of the world's premier institutions. These classes offer students the chance to debate great works and ideas with smart and interested people in the classroom.

But Columbia students don't become less inquisitive (though lazier, perhaps) once they leave Hamilton. Why should the communal commons end once the doors close?

The University made one step towards correcting this by Courseworks discussion boards, but the static html responses fail to capture the vitality that is present in class. Online, students primarily respond to questions posed by teachers instead of responses from their classmates. Though they may reference a section of the book, it is rare to see a posting that includes a link to the text.

Three years ago, Mark Phillipson, CC '88 and an English professor at Bowdoin College, wanted to make the Romantic poetry he taught alive to his students. He wanted a Web site where he could present the information in a way that would inspire students to go beyond the text, to do close analysis, and most importantly, to get conversations going outside of class.

In short, he wanted a wiki.

Though there are many variations, at its core, a wiki is a Web site that is updatable by visitors.

Depending on the wiki, users can add, change, or remove any content from the site. They can also create links to outside sites, upload multimedia files, and even have discussions.

Many students are already familiar with one wiki: the online encyclopedia cleverly named Wikipedia.

The service relies entirely on user submissions for content, and is regulated primarily by visitors to the site. In just six years, it has exploded into a scholastic phenomenon. There are now Wikipedias in 10 languages, with the largest­­-English-containing nearly 800,000 entries ranging from topics including great works of literature to Teenie Beanie Babies, from war histories to Columbia University, and even an entry on the Philolexian Society. As my floormate said, it is "democracy on steroids."

In a lecture last week before the Columbia Center for New Media Technology, Phillipson spoke to various faculty and administrators on how he implemented a wiki in his class. Each week, he would post poems of Byron, Keats, and Shelley to the site.

Students would then add their own comments on the work, similar to what one might do in a posting for Lit Hum. Additionally, they would link their comments to specific lines in the text and would comment on their classmates' comments.

Students were only asked to make two comments linked to the text and one comment on a classmate's thoughts each week; however, engaged by the new technology, many went beyond the requirements. On Sunday nights before class, the wiki came alive as they went back and forth, linking to outside sources to illustrate their points. Students were cross-referencing multiple poems in a single entry, linking to specific lines in each. Some even uploaded pictures depicting the poems' imagery.

Here at Columbia, adding wikis as part of the University Writing curriculum could revolutionize the program. Students might create multi-media essays instead of papers, citing not only text, but audio and graphics. When referencing primary sources, endnotes could link to bibliographies which could in turn link directly to the source.

Workshopping could go to a new level. Currently, students often their essays at the beginning of class, thus beginning debate. In a wikified world, however, students could read the essay and make comments before class begins. That way, the debate would have already started, and teachers could hit the ground running.

Certainly, there are logistical questions about implementing wikis on a University-wide level, but the basic idea is sound. Wikis have the potential to provide a democratic forum for lively debate beyond the classroom.

The CNMTL states its mission as "building ... a suite of integrated applications that extends the capacity of students and faculty to capture, analyze, and integrate data in new ways." By bringing in speakers, like Phillipson, they are introducing new ideas and creating debate on campus.