Namespace recommendations for using MW in university courses

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Christopher Fuhrman

25 Jan 2007 25 Jan '07

2:53 a.m.

Hello, I'm very pleased to learn that my university department has put in place a MediaWiki server for use in our courses, IT support, etc. However, I'm writing to ask for advice about a good "pattern" for name spaces in such an environment, as our technicians prefer to just let us "have at it." I have seen a few live wikis at universities, and there doesn't seem to be a set pattern, per se, on how to do this. As an instructor, I've already set up a few wiki pages for use in the context of one of my courses, using MediaWiki on a free web site. During this trial, I realized a few problems. First, certain terms have definitions that are relative to my course. For example, I teach an intro to software design (LOG120 is its course code), and I expect my students to learn the very basic concepts of "coupling" and "cohesion". If one looks up the global (wikipedia) definitions for these terms, they may or may not be useful in the context of my course (not to mention that software engineering is a "young" field and we don't all agree on terms). So, this means I have to prefix my pages with a context of my course (project). Second, I had to be very careful while rapidly creating my pages on this site not to "steal" the global definitions (which happens if I forget to prefix a link with my namespace and I accidentally create it.) So, the pages for Coupling and Cohesion I'd like to have for my course have a particular context, which implies I need to have a name space that's unique to my course, e.g., LOG120, so I'd have LOG120:Coupling and LOG120:Cohesion. Here are the problems I see with this approach, and I'd like to get some feedback from this list before we spend too much energy in the wrong direction: 1) From what I understand about MW software, there are only 16 name spaces allowed, and my department has more than 30 courses. Assuming every professor jumped on board with the wiki approach (which is unlikely), it seems we'll run out of name spaces with this strategy of one per course. If we don't use course-specific contexts, I can foresee disagreements about content on pages for different contexts. It could be interesting perhaps to have one context, but with course-specific information separated on that page. Professors aren't going to be agreeing on definitions, because of the principle of academic freedom. 2) On a given page, most of the links will have to be prefixed with the course's name space. This seems to be a lot of redundant prefixing, and runs the risk of an errant global page being created when done hastily. Is there a way in MediaWiki pages to define a "default" name space prefix? 3) What about the basic concepts of "Talk:", etc. for MW layout? It seems like if I use a name space convention as stated above, Talk:Cohesion would not be about my course's version of Cohesion, but rather the general meaning. This is ambiguous. An obvious alternative configuration would be a wiki server for each course, but that seems like overkill for the technicians to maintain. The opposite is to not have any course-specific namespaces, and use prefixes with a "." like LOG120.Coupling - again, this seems like less user-friendly from the standpoint of editing of the links. Looking forward to any feedback, advice or examples of well designed MW sites used in a teaching context. Regards, Cris Fuhrman -- Christopher Fuhrman Professeur Département de génie logiciel et des TI École de technologie supérieure (ETS) http://profs.logti.etsmtl.ca/cfuhrman/ +1 (514) 396 8638

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Morten Blaabjerg

25 Jan 25 Jan

5 a.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] Namespace recommendations for using MW in universitycourses

Cris, Why strive for no ambiguity? If you don't want ambiguity, you could set up a straightforward HTML page or content management system with precisely the structure you need. I find in wikis, the structure emerges, as users go along and, as content grows and discussion takes place, find ways to organize and make the structure. Without this "knowledge as process", wikis are nothing, IMHO. Albeit this often happens with a lot of guidance, with one or several users "taking charge" of doing things and setting examples, a wiki is first and most of everything a process. I personally find namespaces and subpages (which could also be an option in your case) to be awkward in typing links and remembering correctly (as you imply). On our own wiki (which is not quite an educational wiki) I prefer links that are easy and straightforward to "think and type", and I use a lot of redirects instead of deciding on structure beforehand. That's what I've learned along the way, anyway - every time I thought out some better "structure", something came along unexpected in the process, content wise, which wrecked it. So I stick with making things simple now, the simpler the better. This means resolving things as they come along, experiment, see what works. Best wishes, Morten :-) -- Morten Blaabjerg / Crews Cut Production Danmarksgade 97 DK-5000 Odense C Tlf. 65 90 60 88 / 51 80 91 55 http://morten.crewscut.com morten(a)crewscut.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Christopher Fuhrman" <christopher.fuhrman(a)etsmtl.ca> To: <mediawiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007 1:53 AM Subject: [Mediawiki-l] Namespace recommendations for using MW in universitycourses Hello, I'm very pleased to learn that my university department has put in place a MediaWiki server for use in our courses, IT support, etc. However, I'm writing to ask for advice about a good "pattern" for name spaces in such an environment, as our technicians prefer to just let us "have at it." I have seen a few live wikis at universities, and there doesn't seem to be a set pattern, per se, on how to do this. As an instructor, I've already set up a few wiki pages for use in the context of one of my courses, using MediaWiki on a free web site. During this trial, I realized a few problems. First, certain terms have definitions that are relative to my course. For example, I teach an intro to software design (LOG120 is its course code), and I expect my students to learn the very basic concepts of "coupling" and "cohesion". If one looks up the global (wikipedia) definitions for these terms, they may or may not be useful in the context of my course (not to mention that software engineering is a "young" field and we don't all agree on terms). So, this means I have to prefix my pages with a context of my course (project). Second, I had to be very careful while rapidly creating my pages on this site not to "steal" the global definitions (which happens if I forget to prefix a link with my namespace and I accidentally create it.) So, the pages for Coupling and Cohesion I'd like to have for my course have a particular context, which implies I need to have a name space that's unique to my course, e.g., LOG120, so I'd have LOG120:Coupling and LOG120:Cohesion. Here are the problems I see with this approach, and I'd like to get some feedback from this list before we spend too much energy in the wrong direction: 1) From what I understand about MW software, there are only 16 name spaces allowed, and my department has more than 30 courses. Assuming every professor jumped on board with the wiki approach (which is unlikely), it seems we'll run out of name spaces with this strategy of one per course. If we don't use course-specific contexts, I can foresee disagreements about content on pages for different contexts. It could be interesting perhaps to have one context, but with course-specific information separated on that page. Professors aren't going to be agreeing on definitions, because of the principle of academic freedom. 2) On a given page, most of the links will have to be prefixed with the course's name space. This seems to be a lot of redundant prefixing, and runs the risk of an errant global page being created when done hastily. Is there a way in MediaWiki pages to define a "default" name space prefix? 3) What about the basic concepts of "Talk:", etc. for MW layout? It seems like if I use a name space convention as stated above, Talk:Cohesion would not be about my course's version of Cohesion, but rather the general meaning. This is ambiguous. An obvious alternative configuration would be a wiki server for each course, but that seems like overkill for the technicians to maintain. The opposite is to not have any course-specific namespaces, and use prefixes with a "." like LOG120.Coupling - again, this seems like less user-friendly from the standpoint of editing of the links. Looking forward to any feedback, advice or examples of well designed MW sites used in a teaching context. Regards, Cris Fuhrman -- Christopher Fuhrman Professeur Département de génie logiciel et des TI École de technologie supérieure (ETS) http://profs.logti.etsmtl.ca/cfuhrman/ +1 (514) 396 8638 _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

Christopher Fuhrman

27 Jan 27 Jan

10:40 p.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] Namespace recommendations for using MW in universitycourses

Hi Morten, and thanks for your feedback. I appreciate the point of view of how Wikis were designed. I think the Wiki philosophy is not entirely consistent with academic environments, and I'll try to elaborate below. On 1/24/07, Morten Blaabjerg < morten(a)crewscut.com> wrote:

...

Cris, Why strive for no ambiguity? If you don't want ambiguity, you could set up a straightforward HTML page or content management system with precisely the structure you need.

I see your point, and we do have this currently. The problem is, HTML pages are tough for the staff to maintain. They have to use clunky HTML editors, transfer with FTP, and backups are poorly managed. I have overwritten changes done by my Teaching Assistants because of the lack of configuration management. The look and feel is bad because nobody is imposing anything (not really possible in an academic environment). There are other solutions to all of these problems, but MediaWiki seems like a great one. Content management software is expensive, and so far none of the open-source products I've seen come with templates or structures for Academia. So, a CMS needs someone to set up the structure correctly to be effective (this is kind of the question I was asking about namespace choices). So far, none of the CMS solutions have appealed to me in my courses. Moodle and Claroline offer little support for transition between semesters on their sites. It seems they favor support for the students and pedagogy more than the maintenance of web content. They have individual strengths for setting up online courses, quizzes, electronic submission of work, etc. As for MediaWiki, I was thinking that I could put up my course syllabus in its own namespace (for the course), and maybe give students assignments to create the concept pages within the namespace, based on the book and course notes, as well as their own interpretations. So often, a syllabus is read the first week and forgotten after that (except maybe to see how much the final exam is worth!). I want students to be able to contribute on certain pages, for instance the examples that they liked or their own examples or explanations of concepts, etc. One of the toughest things about teaching is that an instructor's personal way of learning is possibly shared by only 10% of the students. That means there need to be other viewpoints on how to present material, and I think that is where the "free form" and contribution strengths of a wiki come in to play. I believe that ambiguity is bad when you want to do objective evaluations of what the students have learned in a course, especially when it's in a bachelor's program that has been accredited by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board. I'm very sure the CEAB would not appreciate total ambiguity in an engineering curriculum. ;-) Ambiguity in exam questions, course content, etc., means less happy students. Our courses do have a syllabus and we're expected to follow it. So I think this has to be dictated within the Wiki structure, just as some courses are mandatory. I find in wikis, the structure emerges, as users go

...

along and, as content grows and discussion takes place, find ways to organize and make the structure. Without this "knowledge as process", wikis are nothing, IMHO. Albeit this often happens with a lot of guidance, with one or several users "taking charge" of doing things and setting examples, a wiki is first and most of everything a process.

I think this is clearly a good thing, but not for the university use that I am thinking of for MediaWiki. Thanks again for your thoughts, and to the others who have suggested strategies for the namespace question I posed. For now, we're going to do one namespace per course. I think if concepts are shared among courses, we can simply reuse/link to pages. Cheers, Cris <morten(a)crewscut.com>

...

----- Original Message ----- From: "Christopher Fuhrman" < christopher.fuhrman(a)etsmtl.ca > To: <mediawiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007 1:53 AM Subject: [Mediawiki-l] Namespace recommendations for using MW in universitycourses Hello, I'm very pleased to learn that my university department has put in place a MediaWiki server for use in our courses, IT support, etc. However, I'm writing to ask for advice about a good "pattern" for name spaces in such an environment, as our technicians prefer to just let us "have at it." I have seen a few live wikis at universities, and there doesn't seem to be a set pattern, per se, on how to do this. As an instructor, I've already set up a few wiki pages for use in the context of one of my courses, using MediaWiki on a free web site. During this trial, I realized a few problems. First, certain terms have definitions that are relative to my course. For example, I teach an intro to software design (LOG120 is its course code), and I expect my students to learn the very basic concepts of "coupling" and "cohesion". If one looks up the global (wikipedia) definitions for these terms, they may or may not be useful in the context of my course (not to mention that software engineering is a "young" field and we don't all agree on terms). So, this means I have to prefix my pages with a context of my course (project). Second, I had to be very careful while rapidly creating my pages on this site not to "steal" the global definitions (which happens if I forget to prefix a link with my namespace and I accidentally create it.) So, the pages for Coupling and Cohesion I'd like to have for my course have a particular context, which implies I need to have a name space that's unique to my course, e.g., LOG120, so I'd have LOG120:Coupling and LOG120:Cohesion. Here are the problems I see with this approach, and I'd like to get some feedback from this list before we spend too much energy in the wrong direction: 1) From what I understand about MW software, there are only 16 name spaces allowed, and my department has more than 30 courses. Assuming every professor jumped on board with the wiki approach (which is unlikely), it seems we'll run out of name spaces with this strategy of one per course. If we don't use course-specific contexts, I can foresee disagreements about content on pages for different contexts. It could be interesting perhaps to have one context, but with course-specific information separated on that page. Professors aren't going to be agreeing on definitions, because of the principle of academic freedom. 2) On a given page, most of the links will have to be prefixed with the course's name space. This seems to be a lot of redundant prefixing, and runs the risk of an errant global page being created when done hastily. Is there a way in MediaWiki pages to define a "default" name space prefix? 3) What about the basic concepts of "Talk:", etc. for MW layout? It seems like if I use a name space convention as stated above, Talk:Cohesion would not be about my course's version of Cohesion, but rather the general meaning. This is ambiguous. An obvious alternative configuration would be a wiki server for each course, but that seems like overkill for the technicians to maintain. The opposite is to not have any course-specific namespaces, and use prefixes with a "." like LOG120.Coupling - again, this seems like less user-friendly from the standpoint of editing of the links. Looking forward to any feedback, advice or examples of well designed MW sites used in a teaching context. Regards, Cris Fuhrman -- Christopher Fuhrman Professeur Département de génie logiciel et des TI École de technologie supérieure (ETS) http://profs.logti.etsmtl.ca/cfuhrman/ +1 (514) 396 8638 _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

-- Christopher Fuhrman Professeur Département de génie logiciel et des TI École de technologie supérieure (ETS) http://profs.logti.etsmtl.ca/cfuhrman/ +1 (514) 396 8638

Fernando Correia

29 Jan 29 Jan

12:30 p.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] Namespace recommendations for using MW in universitycourses

A free, mature and powerful CMS is Typo3. It won't come personalized to your needs, but it can be used to build any structure and can be extended in PHP. 2007/1/27, Christopher Fuhrman <christopher.fuhrman(a)etsmtl.ca>ca>:

...

... Content management software is expensive, and so far none of the open-source products I've seen come with templates or structures for Academia.

Serých Jakub

25 Jan 25 Jan

10:23 a.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] Namespace recommendations for using MW in universitycourses

Hi, I use MW on our highschool for course materials. MW is used just for theorethical learning materials (something like interactive textbook). For other type of courseware (projects, tests, discussions, homeworks etc.) we use Moodle system. The problem of such server is, that it has very small number of articles compared to for example wikipedia. So the search tool, which works perfectly in wikipedia doesn't work good in such environment. My solution are categories. On the main portal I have links to all courses taught on our school, and these are just simple categories. When I write new article, I just add the right course categories, so it is registered in the apropriate courses. It seems to me much easier and better organised than the idea of namespaces. If you would like to look at the pages, it is http://panwiki.panska.cz and http://panmood.panska.cz, but it is just in Czech language. (It was installed autumn 2006, so it is not very filled with the materials yet.) Jakub Serych

...

-----Original Message----- From: mediawiki-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org]On Behalf Of Christopher Fuhrman Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007 1:53 AM To: mediawiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Mediawiki-l] Namespace recommendations for using MW in universitycourses Hello, I'm very pleased to learn that my university department has put in place a MediaWiki server for use in our courses, IT support, etc. However, I'm writing to ask for advice about a good "pattern" for name spaces in such an environment, as our technicians prefer to just let us "have at it." I have seen a few live wikis at universities, and there doesn't seem to be a set pattern, per se, on how to do this. As an instructor, I've already set up a few wiki pages for use in the context of one of my courses, using MediaWiki on a free web site. During this trial, I realized a few problems. First, certain terms have definitions that are relative to my course. For example, I teach an intro to software design (LOG120 is its course code), and I expect my students to learn the very basic concepts of "coupling" and "cohesion". If one looks up the global (wikipedia) definitions for these terms, they may or may not be useful in the context of my course (not to mention that software engineering is a "young" field and we don't all agree on terms). So, this means I have to prefix my pages with a context of my course (project). Second, I had to be very careful while rapidly creating my pages on this site not to "steal" the global definitions (which happens if I forget to prefix a link with my namespace and I accidentally create it.)

Rob Church

10:27 a.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] Namespace recommendations for using MW in university courses

On 25/01/07, Christopher Fuhrman <christopher.fuhrman(a)etsmtl.ca> wrote:I

...

1) From what I understand about MW software, there are only 16 name spaces allowed, and my department has more than 30 courses. Assuming every professor jumped on board with the wiki approach (which is unlikely), it seems we'll run out of name spaces with this strategy of one per course. If we don't use course-specific contexts, I can foresee disagreements about content on pages for different contexts. It could be interesting perhaps to have one context, but with course-specific information separated on that page. Professors aren't going to be agreeing on definitions, because of the principle of academic freedom.

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Using_custom_namespaces

...

2) On a given page, most of the links will have to be prefixed with the course's name space. This seems to be a lot of redundant prefixing, and runs the risk of an errant global page being created when done hastily. Is there a way in MediaWiki pages to define a "default" name space prefix?

I don't think so, but this was something that was promised for the namespace manager.

...

3) What about the basic concepts of "Talk:", etc. for MW layout? It seems like if I use a name space convention as stated above, Talk:Cohesion would not be about my course's version of Cohesion, but rather the general meaning. This is ambiguous.

Most namespaces have an associated talk namespace, so the talk page for LOG120:Cohesion would be Talk_LOG120:Cohesion. Rob Church

Joshua Yeidel

30 Jan 30 Jan

12:04 a.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] Namespace recommendations for using MW in university courses

Cris, It depends a lot on what you are trying to accomplish. If you want a space which only you can edit, a wiki is probably not the right tool. If you want a space which only your students can edit, MediaWiki is probably not the right tool (unless you run your own instance). At Washington state University, we use MediaWiki to support what we call "WSUWiki": http://wiki.wsu.edu/wsuwiki This is a general encyclopedia-style wiki for use by the whole university community. We see a benefit in cross-course discussion of topics, so specifically did NOT want to create course spaces. Obviously, this concept is not well understood by everyone, so there's some "wiki gardening" and general education to accomplish, but we think the principle is sound and the work is progressing. You could create course-specific topic pages by using subpages, e.g.: LOG120 LOG120/Cohesion LOG120/Coupling Each page and subpage has its own "Talk" page. If the "subpage" feature is enabled, then each subpage will have an automatically-generated link to the "superpage" -- in the example, LOG120/Cohesion would have an auto link to LOG120. If you have subsubpages, the links form a breadcrumb all the way back to the root (LOG120) page. If the "subpage" feature is disabled, the auto links don't appear. Other than that, you can use a "/" to denote a subpage whether or not the feature is enabled. However, be aware that the superpage does not have a list of its subpages; you can maintain a list of links manually, or use one or another MW extension to provide it. Of course, a search for "LOG120" will turn up the page and all its subpages. HTH, -- Joshua On 1/24/07 4:53 PM, "Christopher Fuhrman" <christopher.fuhrman(a)etsmtl.ca> wrote:

...

Joshua Yeidel

12:56 a.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] Namespace recommendations for using MW in university courses

Clarification below... On 1/29/07 2:04 PM, "Joshua Yeidel" <yeidel(a)wsu.edu> wrote:

...

I should have said, "If you want a space which only you and the students in your course can edit..." -- Joshua

...

At Washington state University, we use MediaWiki to support what we call "WSUWiki": http://wiki.wsu.edu/wsuwiki This is a general encyclopedia-style wiki for use by the whole university community. We see a benefit in cross-course discussion of topics, so specifically did NOT want to create course spaces. Obviously, this concept is not well understood by everyone, so there's some "wiki gardening" and general education to accomplish, but we think the principle is sound and the work is progressing. You could create course-specific topic pages by using subpages, e.g.: LOG120 LOG120/Cohesion LOG120/Coupling Each page and subpage has its own "Talk" page. If the "subpage" feature is enabled, then each subpage will have an automatically-generated link to the "superpage" -- in the example, LOG120/Cohesion would have an auto link to LOG120. If you have subsubpages, the links form a breadcrumb all the way back to the root (LOG120) page. If the "subpage" feature is disabled, the auto links don't appear. Other than that, you can use a "/" to denote a subpage whether or not the feature is enabled. However, be aware that the superpage does not have a list of its subpages; you can maintain a list of links manually, or use one or another MW extension to provide it. Of course, a search for "LOG120" will turn up the page and all its subpages. HTH, -- Joshua On 1/24/07 4:53 PM, "Christopher Fuhrman" <christopher.fuhrman(a)etsmtl.ca> wrote:

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participants (6)

Christopher Fuhrman
Fernando Correia
Joshua Yeidel
Morten Blaabjerg
Rob Church
Serých Jakub