Design Alternatives for a MediaWiki to Support Collaborative Writing in Higher Education Classes

Constructivist learning mechanisms such as collaborative writing have emerged as a result of the development of Web 2.0 technologies. We define the term mandatory collaborative writing to describe a writing activity where the group has a firm deadline. Our study focuses on how a wiki can fully support mandatory group writing. The motivation of this design science research study emerges from a graduate Knowledge Management class assignment to write a wiki book. The project outcome shows that the wiki instance used for the project, MediaWiki, could better facilitate the process with a set of extensions that support discussion, evaluation, and project management. We outline designs for these mechanisms: 1) a discussion mechanism that changes the way users discuss content on a wiki page and increases group awareness; 2) an evaluation mechanism that provides a tool for the instructor to monitor and assess students’ performance; and 3) a project management tool that increases awareness of the status of each component of the writing project and provides an overall summary of the project. A demonstration of the principles to a focus group provided a basic proof of the validity of these mechanisms.