Informal Learning » Blog Archive » The Weirdness of Wiki
Wiki’s are full of potential for learning and communication, and yet for the most part they aren’t being used within corporations (that I can tell, anyway). Jay reports a big reason for that (emphasis added):
The moderator asked people to introduce themselves and say three words about wiki. The positives were terms like exciting, linked, and important. On the downside, people said confusing, disorienting, and weird. Everyone in the group had been on a wiki before, yet a majority still found wikis odd and difficult to navigate.
If the experts can’t use them effectively, what chance does the Average Joe have?
Actually, there are some successful uses of Wiki’s that I am aware of, the most well known being the Wikipedia – essentially an online, publically editable encyclopedia that includes entries you’d be hard-pressed to find in any conventionally published work (which is arguably why it’s so popular).
In fact, of the education-related wiki’s I’ve run across, those presented as an encyclopedia seem to be the most successful. Those that emphasize conversation seem to be the least successful.
I have seen one great example of a wiki used as a project management tool. A friend of mine joined a company that uses a wiki as their main project management and document editing tool, and it seems to be working great for them. It would be interesting to see if other companies are picking up on that idea.
But as a corporate learning tool, especially in a manufacturing company such as the one I work for, I can’t picture it working. Well, maybe that’s too harsh. I can’t picture getting the buy-in and support from management, certainly, and without that the whole thing is doomed to failure. I can think of ways I’d use it, but even within just my team I’m not sure I could get it to catch on. (Though I just had an epiphany about a way to use one for project management….)
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I’ve been using wikis extensively
in my classroom and believe that they are a great tool to collaborate on
certain things in the classroom.
My background, however, is as a market analyst in the telecommunications business and general manager in cellular. I see many documents that would work well for wikis. For project management, Microsoft Project type tools are great — however, for collaborative documents such as business plans, customer letters, etc. I think wikis are perfect or other online collaborative tools like writely.com that give a little more privacy.
I think that it is important for folks to remember not to fear new things. In 30 minutes, I could have them as excited as my students — just a few tips and some useful documents and users would see the ease of use.
Sometimes you don’t know what you can do just because you’ve never experienced it! That’s the way life is!
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