Walls

The Learning Technologies Center at the U of Manitoba has an interesting post on the use of wikis at their institution and it deals with a topic that I just navigated this morning.

It does seem that instructors want control of material – as much to protect positions of privilege, but perhaps to avoid having to be outed in some manner for what or how they do things in class. Teaching as many instructors will tell you is the loneliest thing that you can do with more than one person in the room. These two elements likely combine to create some feels within many new users to these collaborative technologies that they can be replaced… that people will think they are slacking as students take over and do all the wrong things.

Well, not to say that this is what happened this morning, but it did a few months ago and the advice that I gave then still applies. We can’t drop in a new tool and expect there to be a perfect fit with old methods. If we want to use a tool like a wiki, we have to find out what the instructor is comfortable with and then determine how it is to be supported and integrated.  After that, we just have to tell the students that it is there and it will as likely as not take off. If it doens’t work, students will often let you know why and offer suggestions. But all this does mean a little bit of work for already over taxed and under appreciated/compensated instructors.

That last point in the end may be why instructors are reluctant… they don’t want to put in that little extra work and make it look to the uneducated (admins?) that they are doing less.