Thanks for the feedback on the article mini-review.

Andrew–I told the other members of our collective about your post, which kicked off a good round of discussion. Actually, as I was laying in bed last night, I started thinking about how you would implement this stuff in the classroom. Kent State students are great at many things including writing, but generally speaking, they aren’t computer savvy. Of course, I’m working from a small sample, but based on the things some of the other folks in our discussion group said, wikis can present a technological hurdle for many students. And, I agree with you that Lundin is saying that wikis could do some really great things, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will do those things. Pam Takayoshi also took issue with this kind of technological determinism.

Matthew–It’s cool that you’ve tried wikis in the classroom, too. Your suggestion to use them wikis with small groups rather than individually was also brought up during our discussion. Derek Van Ittersum proposed a similar idea, because the collective will to edit–to overcome hesitancy–may be greater than that of the individual. I can see this individual hesitancy or merely the overwhelming feeling of not knowing where to begin with a wiki could be a scary thing to students.

The idea was thrown around about having students contribute to Wikipedia–any thoughts? I think that this isn’t a good idea, because it could be demoralizing to students when their additions are rolled back, and Wikipedia, despite all its faults, shouldn’t become the comp class sandbox.

I have also tried using wikis in the comp classroom. For the most part, I agree with what Andrew said above, but I believe they can be used in specific situations.

For example, rather than having a whole class contribute to a wiki, it is much more useful if you set up wiki-project groups based on a reading, which can take the place of a group presentation. This way, each member of the small group can contribute and delineate responsibility appropriately.

Specifically, as to wiki’s, I find Rebeca’s argument to be more “this could happen” than “this will happen.” I eventually ditched wikis from my comp classes because it was just too much of a distraction training the students to use them. I found the “I can’t figure out how to use the wiki” questions ended up getting in the way of the actual composition teaching (or, at least, the more important topics). More importantly, I find that students don’t have the time or interest to read each other’s work. I want to suggest with this that rhet/comp as a field treats computer training as transparent, when it isn’t. The discourse often theorizes our students as being hyper computer literate, when, frankly, I find the opposite to be true.