Screenshots of Wiki Writing

Presenter:Rebecca S. Richards
School Affiliation: St. Olaf College
Email:Rebecca S. Richards

Overview of Screenshots

This wiki page contains screenshots for the entry on Wiki Writing as Cyberfeminist Pedagogical Practice. Students signed release forms declaring that they understood that their wiki writing could be read by the public and that I might use screenshots of their writing for conference presentations and publications. Students were encouraged to develop usernames and profile identities that fit their level of comfort with linking their online identities to real life (RL) identities. Some students still chose to create user profiles that linked directly to their RL identities.

Homepage Comparison

Both courses (Cybercultures and Gender and Literature) began with four or five major pages that I created for the class. I built a home page that encouraged strong wiki organization by creating a bulleted list of major pages on the homepage. As you can see below, the final result was that the home pages changed drastically over the course of the term. Also note that the formatting of the wiki home page was imperfect, which is a byproduct of encouraging students to play with the technology instead of giving step-by-step directions on what was expected.

 
Image 1: Screenshot of Cybercultures Wiki Home Page (Transcript of Image 1)

 
Image 2: Screenshot of Gender and Literature Wiki Home Page (Transcript of Image 2)

Note that Image 1, the home page for Cybercultures, reports 177 pages on the wiki, while Image 2, the home page for Gender and Literature, reports 116 pages. The Cybercultures wiki was much more extensive and maintained by only 20 students, while the Gender and Literature wiki was maintained by 40—double the number of students.

Vocabulary Entries

Below are screenshots from the Cybercultures class and how they managed the vocabulary section of the wiki. Image 3 is the vocabulary main page, which the students constructed themselves. Image 4 is a sample vocabulary entry.

 
Image 3: Screenshot of Cybercultures Wiki Vocabulary (Transcript of Image 3)

 
Image 4: Screenshot of Cybercultures Wiki Cyberliteracy Vocabulary Entry (Transcript of Image 4)

Image 5 is a screenshot from a sample vocabulary entry from the Gender and Literature course. Notice that this entry is much more extensive and takes advantage of indexing to structure the entry:

 
Image 5: Screenshot of Gender and Literature Vocabulary Entry (Transcript of Image 5)

Brainstorm Central
Students in the Cybercultures class were frustrated by the open-access editing process of the wiki. They, therefore, came up with this solution: Brainstorm Central. Students used Brainstorm Central to debate formatting, content, and structural components of the wiki. This page also allowed them to keep track of items that had been completed.

 
Image 6: Screenshot of Brainstorm Central (Transcript of Image 6)

Strong Linking

While the Gender and Literature class did not engage in the same level of play with the wiki, they did ensure that there were strong links between the pages that they created. For example, they relied heavily on their wiki vocabulary entries to define their terms for their literary analyses:

 
Image 7: Screenshot of Textual Analysis (Transcript of Image 7)

 
Image 8: Screenshot of Textual Analysis Sexual Politics (Transcript of Image 8)

In these two examples, the wiki community built links between previous writing in the vocabulary entries and the more sophisticated analyses that came later in the term.

Playful Engagements

Both classes made spaces for adding additional resources. These resource pages tended to organize ephemera and popular sources about the content of the class.

The Cybercultures class added links to resources (Image 9) that would help them with their work and outlets for stress-relief, e.g Pandora link to listen to the radio while they work on their exams. Furthermore, they created a separate space (Image 10) for building class notes so that they would be easy to find on the day of the exam.

 
Image 9: Screenshot of Additional Resources (Transcript of Image 9)

 
Image 10: Screenshot of Class Notes (Transcript of Image 10)

The Gender and Literature class added links to news article and a few class notes (Image 11):

 
Image 11: Screenshot of Interesting Tidbits (Transcript of Image 11)

 

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