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This text has been written by Thieme Hennis and Jolien Ubacht (TU Delft). We hope we have provided some ideas about difficulties in process and technology of using a wiki in aneducational setting.
Using a wiki for your course; an evaluation
 This article is written after experiencing the use of a wiki for the course SPM9618 –(R)evolution in ICT Infrastructures. Hopefully it provides an overview of the positiveand negative issues we encountered and will lead to a better system for setting upand successfully implementing this technology. It will have the following structure:
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Explanation course and course objectives
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Reason and intentions for using a wiki
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What is a wiki?
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Choice of wiki platform and reasons
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Implementation issues - Technology
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People
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 Tips and useful plugins
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Implementation issues - Process
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Get it going
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Evaluation of TWiki use
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Recommendations
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Wiki environment recommendations
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Process recommendations
Explanation course and course objectives
SPM9618 is a Mastercourse for students in the Master Systems Engineering, PolicyAnalysis and Management, at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Thecourse is usually taken by students that have chose to specialize in the ICT-domain. They are fourth or fifth year students. The course is 6 ects, scheduled in the secondsemester of the study year. In the study year 2006-2007 module manager JolienUbacht and ICT-colleague Jos Vrancken taught the course for the third time. In thisedition, number of students taking part in the course has risen from about 15 inprevious years to 23.
 
Reason and intentions for using a wiki
Several aspects of the course led to the inspiration to use a wiki instead of Blackboard as the learning environment (Blackboard is the official digitallearning environment at TU Delft).
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First of all, it is a course where students have to work collaborativelytowards a final product: the design of an analytical framework for(R)evolutions in ICT infrastructures. There were no furtherspecifications about the final form; the product could range from anessay, a website or Wikipedia entry, a seminar, a video… anything. Thiswas done on purpose, because students were challenged to cope withunstructured problems.
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Another reason was that in previous years it turned out that theBlackboard environment was too static for the groups dynamics,information added by students could not be adequately linked and thatthe freedom for the students to create contents themselves waslimited.
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 The third source of inspiration to choose for a wiki was the fact thatwikis become common tools in professional life and we wanted the ICT-students to once experience its possibilities during their studies.
What is a wiki?
A wiki is
“a website that allows the visitors themselves to easily add, remove,and otherwise edit and change available content” 
(Wikipedia). It isincreasingly used in business and educational settings to enable people tocollaborate online (time and place independent). One of the majoradvantages of using a wiki rather than emailing different documents: there isone central place where individuals create and improve content.Besides online editing of texts and other content, there are other importantfunctionalities, including version management, the (hyper)linking of pages,and the possibility to use numerous plugins, such as a discussion forum andpolls.
Choice of wiki platform and reasons
 Two different wiki platforms were provided by the university; the MediaWiki, which isthe same platform on which Wikipedia is built, and TWiki, another open sourceplatform extensively used within companies such as Disney, Yahoo!, Motorola,British Telecom, SAP, and many more. Because of its success in business, itsflexibility, and the wide variety of extensions, plugins, andadd-ons, we have chosen for TWiki. Although the interface of MediaWiki is muchmore familiar (same interface as Wikipedia), this problem was assumed not crucial.
Implementation issues – Technology
 This section will deal with the setup of the wiki from a technological perspective. Itdiscusses the people that were approached and the specific plugins that haveproven useful on the website.
 
People
For setting up this wiki Thieme contacted the TU Delft section of E-Merge, an ICTconsortium of several universities and academies. Besides Thieme for the processsupport, another person was involved in the technical support and setup of the wiki.He helped, after the initial setup, in installing several plugins that provided thestudents with several tools, and enhanced the website’s interface and preferences.
Tips and useful plugins
 TWiki’s possibilities to enhance the functionalities and personalize the website areabundant. In this part a few of those possibilities are discussed, and some practicaltips are described as well. The functionalities that have proved most useful in the course SPM9618 are:
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NatSkin – a so-called skin, which changes the interface of the website.Much more attractive than the original interface.
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DiscussionForum – a rather difficult to implement discussion platform.
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Polls – a plugin enabling the students to make polls.
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EndNote – also called footnote. Puts text {{between brackets}} at theend of the page with a footnote.
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WYSIWYG-editor
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Variables: INCLUDE and HISTORY
Other crucial standard elements of the wiki are:
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Statistics and Changes
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Web Sidebar
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SectionalEdit
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Personal sidebar and personal preferences
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Functions on top of page: edit… etc.
As said, the ability to personalize the wiki to your preferences are almost endless. There are more than 200 plugins and add-ons available on http://twiki.org,addressing functionality, safety, tools, interface and many other subjects.Some of possibly relevant other possibilities are tagging of pages, especially usefulin large wiki-sites, the inclusion of the content of web-pages through RSS, makingspreadsheets, presentations, sectional edit (editing sections separately), and manymore.
Implementation issues – Process
During the first few weeks the results of use were quite disappointing. The studentsdid not embrace the wiki platform as much as we expected, and wanted. Thischapter will explain how we have introduced the wiki to the students, and whatwould have been a better approach. Some other issues that are specific incollaborative projects, such as the evaluation of individual efforts and the preventionof hitchhiker behavior are discussed as well.
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