This blogpost outlines the solutions that the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit are working on for Wiki activities. Once these solutions have been tried and tested, we will work on providing guidance for colleagues.

Background

Wikis are a collaborative tool used for a number of assessed and unassessed activities at Aberystwyth University.

The tool is not currently available in Blackboard Ultra (despite our enhancement requests) and is not on Blackboard’s roadmap of development.

The unavailability of the Wiki tool has been included in all parts of the decision-making process to highlight it as a risk in the move to Blackboard Ultra.

In their very nature wikis are collaborative giving students the opportunity to contribute as part of a group. Students can produce media rich resources linking to external content, videos, and images. The content can be arranged over a number of pages, with a structure pre-given by the tutor.

This blogpost outlines a number of options for Wiki equivalences. The options are listed in order of LTEU preference.

Option 1: Office 365 integration with Blackboard

LTEU are currently in the process of enabling the integration with OneDrive documents in Blackboard Ultra.

Once this workflow is up and running, the process would be:

1. Instructors can create a new collaborative document for all students in a course to collaborate on. These can be Word, PowerPoint or Excel files. Instructors can also choose to search for an existing document in their OneDrive or from across their shared Courses via the OneDrive file explorer. The document could have a template that would mimic the Wiki’s previous sections.
2. Adaptive release is applied to the document so that it is limited to the group
3. Students contribute to the file making use of Word’s editing features
4. There’s a due date and a Blackboard Group assignment point that a member of the group submits to.
5. The lecturer marks – as a group assignment the marks are automatically added to each group member with the option to amend the mark for the individual.

Option 2: Office 365 document is set up in personal OneDrive and a link is posted

This option is up and running already but does require some further investigation by LTEU regarding backups if lecturer who set it up is not available.

1. The lecturer creates a document in their OneDrive and amends the edit permissions to anyone with the link. A different document is created for each group.
2. The link to the document is posted on the Blackboard site. Adaptive release is used to limit group access to that specific group.
3. Students contribute to the file making use of Word’s editing features
4. There’s a due date and a Blackboard Group assignment point that a member of the group submits to.
5. The lecturer marks – as a group assignment the marks are automatically added to each group member with the option to amend the mark for the individual.

Option 3: a Wiki is set up in Teams and linked to

LTEU is currently investigating the viability of integrating Blackboard with Teams classes. Teams has a Wiki function.

1. A Teams site needs to be created for the group (if classes is enabled then this could be automated)
2. The Wiki tab is enabled (see https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/add-and-use-a-wiki-tab-in-teams-35ec762d-72ec-4d7f-b858-2949f6cb6014 for further information)
3. A link to the MS Teams Wiki page is posted in Blackboard and adaptive release applied to limit the Wiki to the individual group.
4. The Wiki is exported (LTEU to test) and submitted to a Blackboard Group assignment
5. The lecturer marks – as a group assignment the marks are automatically added to each group member with the option to amend the mark for the individual.