I had a meeting with Joe Sendelbaugh the week before and we discussed the tools that UCS is offering that will best compliment the new Freshman Academy. We're currently offering three tools for collaborative/public works, the forums, blogs, and wiki. Since each student will need to be able to use these tools and have specific permissions so only them and/or group member can view/edit the work, we realized forums would not work, as each permission has to be done by the administrator with a gui interface. Considering that's 900 students with possible two or three groups, it would just not be feasible. Secondly, the blogs, while a wonderful public interface for individual's expression, will not fit, as they need the individual assignments to be private. That leaves the wiki server. It appears this will be the best, most flexible tool for both group assignments and individual assignments, as each student can do the permissions on their own and can set up as many groups as needed. This seemed to be the best solution for UCS and the Freshman Academy.
UCS is working diligently to train all staff and lab students on the use of the wiki server (along will all the other tools we offer) so all incoming freshman, and whomever else is interested in these tools, can go to anyone and be able to ask questions and receive clear directions. We are also in the process of collaboratively creating a howto document which should provide nearly all the information anyone needs to use the wiki server. Not surprising, it's being developed as a wiki!
This has been a fun and exciting project for all of us, and it hasn't even started yet! The first year of anything is always a little scary and exciting and we'll be able to see just how great this will be for all of campus.
