Educational Wikis: Features & Selection Criteria

Authors:
Linda Schwartz, Sharon Clark, Mary Cossarin, & Jim Rudolph

Study Purpose:
Evaluating wikis is very different from evaluating vendor supplied or proprietary programs which have a fixed set of features. All wikis can potentially adopt all of the features found in other wikis, simply by accessing and customizing the source code. This report describes the basic characteristics and features of wikis and attempts to provide an easy approach to selecting wiki features.
There is a comparison between WikiWiki Web (the first wiki) and Seed Wiki (a WYSIWYG wiki). Feature categories included: source code, wiki management, page formatting, access control, communications, support, and advanced features.

Features of Wikis:
• Editable by major browsers (IE, Netscape);
• WYSIWYG editing;
• HTML support;
• text editing (italics, font size, color);
• image insertion;
• hyperlink insertion;
• tables;
• lists (numbered, bulleted, hierarchical);
• media insertion (streaming audio/video);
• search;
• spell-check;
• emoticons;
• blogging;
• polling;
• calendar;
• RSS;
• link checking;
• drawing tools;
• equation editor; and
• Synchronous text messaging.

Further Educational Considerations:
Features rarely incorporated in wikis are: equation editor, synchronous text messaging, link checking, and drawing whiteboard (some do have drawing tools). If coursework requires these capabilities s, an integrated collaborative software program may be a better choice.

Reference:
http://cde.athabascau.ca/softeval/reports/R270311.pdf