Wikis to Increase Student

EngagementILTL 2009 Summer Conference

June 24, 2009

David ThomsonUniversity of Denver

http://snipurl.com/ILTL09

Outline

•Teaching before Technology

•What’s a Wiki?

•Admin Law Sucks

•Wikis in Admin Law

•Other uses for wikis in law teaching

•Roll your own

Teaching before Technology

•Substance in context

•Collaborative learning

•Engagement

•Teach Research

•The Hypertext mind

What’s a Wiki?

•Web-based collaborative writing tool

•Wikipedia

•It’s just software

•Many different flavors

•Blackboard add-on

Admin Law Sucks

•Can be a dry and abstract subject

•Substantive law adds extra complexity

•Students often hate it

•Lack of connection with practice

•Hard to get/prepare an outline

Admin Law Wiki #1•For Group Research Projects

•5 students on 10 Federal Agencies

•Given list of items to research

•Wiki created and presented every week

•20% of the grade

•Let’s take a look...

Admin Law Wiki #2

•For the outline for the course

•Final exam: Outline and Text only

•Nearly all students participated

•10% of the grade

•Let’s take a look...

Other Applications

•Knowledge Management

•Legal Writing and Analysis

•Group projects of any sort

•Others?

Small Group Discussion

•In groups of 3, discuss:

•other uses of wikis for your law teaching

•Report out:

•Type of course

•Educational goal

•How to use a wiki to achieve that goal

Roll your own

•PBWorks

•Wetpaint

•Clearwiki

•Wikispaces