Hey all. Since Schafer said at the beginning of the semester that this was the "rookie year" for the wiki, I thought it might be nice to give him some feed back on it in case he decides to use it again in future class.
He told us in class that we are not using the wiki "as much as we need to be." Here are a few reasons that I have thought of that might explain why:
1. The vocabulary page really is an unreliable resource. If there is nobody that is going through it to check the accuracy of the content in it, then it is a safer option to either read the book or Google the term in question.
2. When needing help on homework, the Wiki takes too long. By the time we have gotten to the point to where we are asking questions about how to do an assignment, the deadline is near enough that we do not have time to wait around for somebody to post a response on the Wiki. It is much faster to either use Google for help or go into Dr. Schafer's office.
3. Not everybody has used a Wiki before, and the setup process might have been awkward enough to turn people off of it. This hypothesis is entirely from personal experience. I remember trying to setup my account, and by the time I had gotten to a screen that appeared to be even vaguely like a profile screen, I wasn't even sure what I had done. Then "subscribing" to this particular Wiki somehow turned out to be unnecessarily difficult, and then I never even got a confirmation notification when I was added to the site.
4. Somehow, the Wiki feels more like an extra credit assignment than something that is vital to our learning. Again, this one is personal opinion, but unlike class participation, I don't feel like the Wiki has really helped me to gain a better understanding of the content from class. It is a great resource when it comes to studying/reviewing for a test, though.
So now that I have listed a few possible problems with the Wiki, it is my duty to offer a few ways to possibly improve upon it for future semesters (otherwise I would just be whining).
1. Have the student-uploaded content be checked regularly for correctness. It would be nice to know for sure that the content we are looking at as a study aid is correct.
2. Possibly tie some of the homework assignments into the Wiki. Part of the reason that I think it got largely ignored this year was because people just forgot about it. If they occasionally needed to log onto the Wiki for a homework assignment, that would be a great way to keep the idea in their heads.
3. It would have been nice to have a step-by-step walk-through on how to sign up for the class Wiki (kind of like Dr. O'Kane posted for 'how to install Cygwin').
4. Assign a problem where the entire class posts code to the Wiki to make one big program. This would probably be difficult and might not work in the long run, but I think it would be fun to try. So many of the programs that we wrote this year had multiple classes, and this might be a good experience as to how a program is written in real life. Dr. Schafer, this would also be an interesting way to introduce the concept of cohesion, coupling, and flexibility of code.
I really hope somebody else posts a few comments on how to improve the Wiki or maybe just some concerns/problems they had with it. Otherwise I'm going to feel like a bit of a jack@$$ ripping on it by myself …