Collaboration

The term �collaboration� means many things to many people, and there are a number of ways that people can �collaborate� to work and learn together, so it is important to decide what type of collaboration you want before you select a tool.

See my article: Collaborative working and learning for 12 different types of collaborative activity

However, what most people refer to as collaboration is working together on a common document, or presentation and having an equal ability to add, edit, or delete items in it. They also want to be able to keep track of everyone�s individual contributions. Working collaboratively in this context means only one version of the document is maintained - rather than multiple copies showing different edits.

There are a couple of different types of tools that can be used for collaborative authoring. The most well known type of collaborative tool is the wiki, which supports editable web pages. Another collaborative tool is the "online office suite" which combines productivity and collaboration functionality with collaborative content authoring features.

Wikis

Wikis are quite simply editable web pages. Take a look at this video from Commoncraft which explains Wikis in Plain English.

The most well-known example of a wiki is Wikipedia, which is an encyclopaedia that has been created by thousands of individuals. Every page in Wikipedia can be "edited", which means it is constantly evolving and growing and can be kept up to date.

"Editing" a wiki means adding, changing or deleting text or other content. It can also mean adding new pages or "articles" or even deleting pages. Editing is therefore a powerful activity.

Wikipedia, like most wikis, keeps track of the activity that takes place - and there are a number of ways that a user can keep up to date with edits on a wiki you are interested in, either by email or taking the RSS feed (see section 8).

Uses for wikis

There are now many different wiki tools that can be used to set up wikis - for all kinds of learning and working purposes, e.g. creating a project or strategy document, manual, or a conference programme.

Here are some ways and tips for using wikis for teaching and learning:

50 ways to use wikis for a more collaborative and interactive classroom, SmartTeaching.org, 4 August 2008
Tips for using wikis for teaching and learning

Wiki examples

E-Learning concepts and techniques (from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania)

epedagogy (from University of Plymouth)

Intel Technology Wiki - Add personal anecdotes about the effects convergent technologies have had on your life

WikiAnswers - a wiki-based Q&A project powered by contributors from all walks of life. Anyone can ask, answer or edit questions, building a global Q&A database, covering all topics.

Wikieducator - Free eLearning content that anyone can edit and use

Wikipedia - collaborative encyclopaedia

WikiHow - The how-to manual that anyone can write or edit

Wikiversity - A community for the creation and use of free learning materials and activities

Encouraging use of a wiki

Setting up a wiki is quite easy, as you will see, but what is more difficult is ensuring that it is used appropriately, so here are some tips to crate a successful wiki:

DON'T just set up a blank wiki page, and tell your people "Here's the wiki for the course" or "Here's our project wikis" - that's just not going to work". Collaborative working or content co-creation may not come naturally to them.

DO provide some guidance on how it is going to work, e.g.

Explain the reason or purpose of the wiki, and how important or necessary their contribution or participation is.
Create a framework for the wiki - the main pages, sections, sub-sections
Provide some clear guidance on how to create and edit pages, a separate document might be better than having them struggle with a number of open web pages trying to work out how to do it

See also 21 days of wiki adoption by Stuart Mader. Here's the first video: 21 Days of Wiki Adoption from Stewart Mader

Take a look at this list of 10 tips for a successful wiki [PDF] by James Everett.

There are many public wiki tools available: both commercial and free. Google Sites is becoming an increasing popular tool for creating an external group website.

With Google Sites - sites.google.com - you can:

Create a web site and provide the details about who you want to share it with, ie if it is to be a web site that everyone can view, select Everyone, if it is to be a private wiki or website, select Only people I specify
Edit the page by selecting the edit page button. You can enter and format text, tables, columns, and add images, hyperlinks et, embed other resources into your page or add a file as an Attachment to the page.
Edit the side bar, e.g. if you want navigation elements (e.g. to display the pages of your site) or whether you want site activity to be shown or not
You can create a number of different pages including a Dashboard and Announcement page
The File cabinet allows you to manage documents from your hard drive and organize them into folders.
List page allow you to easily track lists of information.
You can also subscribe to page changes and site changes
You can invite others to your site, as Owners, Collaborators or Viewers

Directory listing: Wiki tools
Reading List Wiki Reading List

Online office suites

Online office suites let you create documents, spreadsheets, presentations etc individually and collaboratively.

Take a look at the principles behind Google Docs in this video - GoogleDocs in Plain English (by CommonCraft).

With Google Docs - www.google.com/docs - you can

EITHER upload an existing MS Office piece of work (e.g. Word Document, PowerPoint presentation, Excel spreadsheet) or an OpenDoc (e.g. an OpenOffice file). Note: file sizes apply;
OR begin a new document, spreadsheet or presentation from scratch (in which case you might want to make use of the Google Docs Templates (for documents, spreadsheets, presentations and forms). If you are already familiar with MS Office tools, then the different parts of Google Docs look very similar, so you shouldn't have any trouble transferring your skills.

Once you have completed your work/document, you can either keep it private or you can share it. There are a number of ways to do this

You can publish it. This means it will have a web address (URL) that allows it to be viewed (but not edited) by anyone on the Web. Select Share, then Publish as web page.
You can also share your work more privately by inviting people to view it or collaborate on it (i.e. edit it). Select Share, then Share with others. You will then need to provide the email addresses of the people you want to share it with. Those who have been invited to view or collaborate on a document, will receive an email with details of where they can find the document.

You can also share a presentation and there are a number of ways to do this:

You can share your presentation in real-time with your colleagues or students. For example you could run a small online meeting or training session like this in conjunction with a Skype voice conference to run a browser-based slideshow.
You could embed your presentation in your blog, web page or wiki as this example below demonstrates. Here is an example of a Google presentation of 20 ways to use GoogleDocs in the Classroom

You can also use Google Docs to set up an online form and collect the input data in a spreadsheet.
You can view your Google docs on your mobile device at docs.google.com/m

Further reading:

Google Docs Reading List

Directory ListingS:

Document, spreadsheet & database tools

Mindmapping tools

Group, team and enterprise tools