Class Knowledge Bank

Wiki technology has made it possible for everyone to participate in building a knowledge bank on the Web. It has produced the world famous ‘wikipedia’.

While completing the first assignment for EDPROFST 714, I came up with an interesting idea. If I could make a Q&A webpage for a class using wiki technology, students could ask questions they may come up with and the classmates (or other student doing the same subject in the same school) could answer the question. This way, both students will benefit from asking and answering questions and other students would also benefit as they may had the same question or by checking the answers given, they would broaden their knowledge on the given topic.

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This idea of online Q&A forum had been established a long time ago. It was first launched in 2002 by Korean Search Engine ‘Naver’ as ‘Knowledge Search’, aka ‘Knowledge iN’ or ‘지식iN’ in Korean. Anyone who is registered at the site can post questions and answer them. As of January 2008, there were more than 80 million user-generated information. (Wikipedia – Knowledge Search) Three years later, this idea was adopted by Yahoo and created Yahoo! Answers. In 2009, Answers.com has also revamped their site as a user-generated wiki-style information bank.

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Creating a class knowledge bank would only be possible with high contribution of the students. Teachers may take part in helping students answer a question, but it must not be driven by teachers but by students. In order to achieve this, the site needs to be carefully designed.
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For example, if a wiki site was to be designed for an IGCSE Biology class (which I was in charge of for the last couple of years), there may be 10 folders for each topic. Students can post their question under the topic folder provided. There should be space for more than one answer as the primary answer may be incorrect or partly incorrect. It must be progressive and corporative work rather than complete.

The site should be accessible by the school students only. If it was accessible to anybody, some students may feel embarrassed to ask questions and also answer them. The students would feel more comfortable in posting articles. More able students would benefit from answering questions and reflecting on their knowledge as less able students would benefit from having their questions answered.

At first, the students may need to be bribed in order to get the site started. Rewarding students with good questions and good answers would encourage the students to start with, but they will have to find questioning and answering on the Web rewarding and motivating in order to keep the site going.

Now then, the question is which wiki provider would fulfil the needs of a class Q&A knowledge bank. I have not used any wiki providers, but starting from wikispace, I will have to explore few of those providers to find the perfect one for me and my class. It may take some time and effort to set this up but it would be worth exploring…