Create a Wiki Activity in Moodle

This page tells you how to create a collaborative authoring activity within your Moodle course, using the OU Wiki tool (an Open University contributed code module), and how to edit and add new wiki pages.

When to use

Wikis are collections of collaboratively authored web pages, beginning with a home page that students can edit, and to which they can link more pages. You can create wikis at course, group and individual level.

  • A course wiki might be useful for knowledge building around threshold concepts.
  • Wikis could be used for a group project where evidence of planning, knowledge construction and team work are integral to the final mark.
  • Individual wikis can be useful when students are to evidence planning and show drafts of an assignment.

To help you decide whether to use a blog, a wiki or a discussion forum, visit the page Blog, wiki or forum—which should you use?

Benefits

Wikis are particularly useful as part of a group work activity. They are places where students can present the fruits of their research, or the drafts of their group reports, for comment and input from the other members of the group. The reporting features enable instructors to more fairly assess the individual input of team members, and to view the project within the course site.

You can separately specify dates when students can view the wiki content, and dates when they can edit it.

All the changes made to each page within a wiki are visible using the page history function, and you can view earlier versions of the pages in the Wiki changes list.

Create an OU wiki

Create an OU wiki

To create an OU wiki in Moodle:

  1. On the course home page, click Turn editing on. 
  2. In the appropriate page section, click Add an activity or resource.
  3. In the pop-up menu, select OU wiki.                                                                                                                                                                              
  4. On the Adding a new OU wiki page, click Expand all to open the page sections, then, in the General section, enter a Name for the wiki and a Description."
  5. In the Wiki settings section:
    • At Sub-wikis, select whether you want this wiki to be viewable by everyone on the course (Single wiki for course); whether you are setting up a group activity with One wiki per group (Note that you will have to select a grouping under Common module settings; or whether you'll be creating a Separate wiki for every user.
    • Select whether you want to have an Annotation system associated with this wiki, so that inline annotations (e.g., by teachers, about students' work) can be made.
    • Select whether you want to limit the Time allowed for editing wiki pages. Read the extensive help (click ) for this field for full details.
    • Enable the date fields and set dates for the wiki's editing period.
    • Drag and drop a wiki Template into the box, if you are using one to predefine content pages for your students. The field help tells you how to create a template.
    • Select whether you want to Show word counts at the bottom of the main content on wiki pages.                                                                                             "
  6. In the Grade section, select whether you want to grade this wiki, and which score or scale you will use, and select the Grade category in which you want the wiki to display in the Gradebook.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                "
  7. Complete the other page sections as needed, and click Save and display at the bottom of the page.                                                                                                         "
  8. The View page will display with an invitation to create the Start page for the wiki. Click Create page.                                                                                                           "
If embedding content from theBox within the text fields via the Moodle HTML editor, please be advised it does not support more than 1 item. Should you embed more than 1 multimedia item form theBox, they will not be displayed appropriately to students. 

Create a Start page for a new wiki

  1. On the View page, click Create page.
  2. On the Edit page, enter Content and add any relevant Attachments. If you have set up a timeout on this page, a timer at the upper right will count down the time you have left.
                                                                                                                                                                  
  3. Click Preview at the bottom of the page.
  4. On the preview page, check your work, make any corrections and click Save changes.
  5. On the View page, you can Add new section or Create new page by entering the section/page name and clicking Add/Create. When you save the new section or page, it will display below the Start page content already entered.

A new page created this way will display as a link below the main text. In the text editor box it will display as the page name enclosed in double square brackets, e.g. )—you can create links to other pages in the wiki by typing the target page name this way.

Edit an OU wiki page

You cannot change an OU wiki page's name. If you want a page to have a different name, create a new page with that name, copy and paste the contents from the old page to the new, and delete/unlink the old page.

To edit an OU wiki:

  1. On the course home page, click the OU wiki's link.
  2. On the OU wiki's start page, navigate to the page you want to edit.
  3. Click the Edit tab.
  4. On the Edit page, make the necessary changes and click Preview.
  5. Check your changes in the preview screen and click Save.

View OU wiki index, changes and usage

At the upper right of all the pages within an OU wiki activity, these 3 buttons make it possible for you to view the wiki's index, details of all changes made to the wiki, and each person in the course's participation in the wiki.

 

Wiki index

The Wiki index lists all pages and their current wordcount, and who made the last change and when. It also allows you to view all pages of the wiki at once, or download them as a wiki template file for use in other wikis.

You can view the wiki pages alphabetically or by structure - select the appropriate tab at the top of the page.


If you select Structure, you'll see how pages are linked to each other.

  • If you've created a link to a page, but have not yet created the page itself, the link will be listed in the Missing pages section of the index.
  • If you've created a page but deleted the link to it, it will be listed in the Unlinked pages section. To link it, follow the instructions in the Link an unlinked OU wiki page section of these instructions.

 

Wiki changes

The Wiki changes page lists all changes to any pages in the wiki, with links to all page versions.

You can choose to view all changes to all pages, or just which new pages have been created and when they were created - select the appropriate tab at the top of the page.

You can view just the changes that have been made to a page, or look at each page version in its entirety.

To be notified when new pages are added or existing ones changed, subscribe to the feed.

 

Participation by user

The Participation by user page contains a downloadable table listing all enrolled course users and the number of Pages created, Page edits, Words added or Words deleted that they are responsible for.

Link an unlinked OU wiki page

To avoid confusion, it's a good idea to place links to all the wiki's pages on the Start page of the wiki.

  1. Within the OU wiki, at the upper right of the page click Wiki index.
  2. On the Wiki index page, in the Unlinked pages list, highlight the page's title and copy it.
  3. Navigate to the page where you want to add a link.
  4. Click Edit page.
  5. Place your cursor where you want to insert the link, type two opening square brackets, paste the page title and type two closing square brackets. (e.g. ).
  6. Click Save changes. The new page link will display on the wiki page.

Delete an OU wiki page

  1. On the OU wiki page you want to delete, click the History tab.
  2. On the History page, in the version table, for the version of the page you want to remove, click Delete.
  3. If you delete the wrong page, click Undelete for that version.
  4. To delete a page completely:
    • Click Delete for all versions of that page.
    • Delete all links to that page from other pages.
Once you have deleted all the page versions, you will not be able to undelete the page. You may or may not be able to navigate back to the page using the browser's back button. For this reason, we advise that before you delete the page, you make a copy of the content and store it in a separate location.

Moodle wiki

A Moodle Wiki activity is also currently available in UNSW Moodle. However, we encourage you to use the OU Wiki tool, as it is more flexible than the core Moodle Wiki in the following ways:

  • The OU wiki can be marked and the marks sent to the Moodle Gradebook.
  • You can set time limits on users editing wiki pages, so that they don't lock out other users indefinitely.
  • You can create reusable wiki templates, predefining content pages to make it easier for students to contribute.
  • An annotation system allows you to use comment bubbles to provide feedback on students'  contributions.
  • The OU blog has better comparison of page versions than does the core Moodle Wiki.
  • It also has an extended page history management tool (per page and activity-wide).