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Introduction The popularity of wikis has increased in the last few years, particularly in education. By allowing collaboration and information sharing, wikis can be used as a tool for lifelong learning. Health Informatics, as a field in permanent transformation, offers particular challenges that can be better tackled if access to centralized information and support to collaboration is possible. By adding semantics' strengths to wikis' features, such thing is possible. Aim This paper aims to present the development of a Semantic Media Wiki on Health Informatics - aprendI S: a place for information and knowledge sharing, and virtual collaboration of the Portuguese speaking community. Methods A survey has been conducted on students and teachers in health informatics in Portugal and Brazil to evaluate the need for a wiki in health informatics and to assess the most important subjects to address in such a platform, and a first structure of the Semantic Media Wiki was developed, based on the opinion of the respondents. Results Results show that more than half of 11% of respondents are interested in contributing with content and in using the wiki, and that there is a consensus in what the respondents expect to find in the wiki: the most voted subject was Health Information Systems. Conclusion According to the survey conducted, students and teachers of Health Informatics are definitely interested in a Semantic Media Wiki such as aprendI S. Our proposal builds such a tool according to the needs and wants of those students and teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The very nature of wiki-based collaborative writing around a topic-related content is the interaction of wiki functionality, content, and collaborative learning, and how the functionality is used to create the content collaboratively. This way of looking at wikis provides a theoretical model that helps researchers and educators to identify a number of category actions that can be carried out on wikis when students perform collaborative writing activities. This work aims at using the proposed model to evaluate the impacts of MediaWiki on collaborative writing among students in teacher education. Pedagogical implications are drawn from the results and future research actions are envisaged to enhance the quality of wiki-based collaborative writing in teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wiki technology provides new opportunities to foster collaborative learning in various educational settings. To empirically examine the impact of wikis on learning, this article explores students' collaborative writing activities performed on MediaWiki. The activities were analyzed using a taxonomy with ten categories (clarify content, add content, delete content, add link, delete link, fix link, grammar, spelling, style/typography, and formatting). The work also analyses students' comments posted on the discussion page of the wiki. The results show important differences in the types of contributions across the categories investigated. The results also reveal that the level of collaboration and discussion was relatively low compared with other activities performed on the wiki. Finally, the article suggests a number of factors influencing wiki-based collaborative writing in teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technology is changing and at a very rapid pace. New tools are being developed and coming to the forefront on almost a daily basis. Instructor -- led workshops that train faculty and students in the use of new tools can be expensive propositions for educational institutions. Scalability and ensuring uniformity in delivery of content become challenges. To address the problem of making the training cost-effective and to facilitate self-paced, independent learning in large groups, EnhanceEdu employed three different training approaches to provide hands-on workshops in the use of the open source tool, MediaWiki, to an audience of students and teachers from various colleges in India. This paper describes the three approaches employed in conducting the hands-on workshops. It also determines the factors that contribute toparticipants' engagement in learning and the likelihood that they will continue to use the new tool. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Wikis are widely considered as collaborative writing tools that foster collaborative writing. Most studies that report on wiki capabilities to support collaborative writing are based on students' subjective perceptions, which are not reliable enough to measure the degree and level of contribution to the wiki. A more reliable method is the data log generated by wikis, which tracks all actions and activities performed by each student and stores all previous versions of the wiki. This data log is of considerable interest and inherently more reliable to collect and analyze collaborative writing activities than students' subjective perceptions. Using MediaWiki as a platform, this work reports on the evaluation of the data logs created by wikis as students perform collaborative writing projects. The results are critically discussed and some pedagogical implications are drawn for collaborative writing in teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wiki is a one of the most effective collaborative authoring tool which comes with Web 2.0. They bring about new vision to group work and help to take place in online learning environments rapidly. Although there is a great potential for learning environments, assessment process is time consuming and difficult if conventional methods are used. In this study, the purpose is to develop a tool to measure the author contribution in collaborative work within a wiki environment. By means of the developed tool it is possible to lessen time and energy to assess these contributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

E-learning is not only a tool for knowledge management and the efficient development of cognitive qualities but also promotes interactivity and community building. Wiki software in particular is useful in the process of education for building independent learning spaces to which students contribute, and it supports the social aspects of the teaching/learning process. The communicative features of wiki are the subject of the research regarding the added value of e-learning compared to traditional goals stated in educational theories. The article begins by briefly reviewing this Web 2.0 tool in terms of its educational potential. It presents a case study of HE e-learning courses where the technical properties of different environments in Web 2.0 are linked to the specific need for an interdisciplinary approach to education for sustainable development. The educational objectives of the course are closely linked to the specific character of sustainable development (which is considered to be a social process based on multi-stakeholder communication rather than the sum of diverse political activities) and critical social theory, particularly the theory of communicative action which has emancipatory consequences for those involved. In the educational sphere, these goals are supported by the selection of "group oriented software" which promotes creativity in the context of academic writing on diverse themes. This supports action competence development and provides diverse communication opportunities which foster students' relationship building. The complex aim of the learning project presented in the article is the building of an extensive educational wiki electronic encyclopedia by students' contributions, through their collaboration on diverse environmental subjects. This learning space provides a knowledge base of easily accessible information for students' different assignments and practical work and is designed to support individual expression; by their contribution to this learning environment students feel part of the knowledge generation community. Contributions are evaluated according to their quality and pages are allocated varying statuses expressed by the level of copyright -some can be continuously upgraded by specialists or by new generations of students. The communicative aspect of learning is easy to trace in the wiki "discussion" option and can be mapped in the history of the page; thus qualitative evaluation is possible. Aspects such as flexibility in selecting the learning strategy and a creative approach present a real challenge for assessment, widely discussed in the literature. A peer review process conducted by students themselves and the quality of their discussion combined with the teacher's assessment is proposed as a contribution to this discussion. Students' interest in active work in the interactive electronic environment was investigated and positive results received. High quality results in terms of students' portfolios (essays and review discussions) provide evidence of usability of the presented pedagogical tool at university level. The article concludes with a review of our experiences with MediaWiki, useful for those interested in utilizing it as an educational tool. The use of electronic media and its potential link to the theory of communicative action in the educational context is briefly reflected upon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a Semantic MediaWiki, a MediaWiki extended to include the ideas of Semantic Web. The proposed Semantic MediaWiki works as an integrated system for content management and metadata management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A significant issue for educators is managing the avalanche of content, and with this content volume the educator's role is changing from one of knowledge collection and dissemination, to one of curation and dissemination, in particular with digital objects. This paper builds on previous research into developing a personal integrated framework to manage an individual educator's content that allows enhancement by others, and considers whether wiki technology can be used to manage the changing emphasis from collection and dissemination to digital curation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]