Wiki Discussion

I want to follow up on how my Wiki discussions have been going in my College Literature 184 class.

First of all, I made a dumb error from which my students were unfazed and continued to post comments regardless. For example, I have a Home page and then separate pages for each novel that has been assigned in the course. When a person clicks on the novel, then clicks on the “Discussion” tab, that’s where they should post comments on the novel.

However, for The Joy Luck Club, I accidentally created my discussion subjects in my Home page Discussion tab, not The Joy Luck Club Discussion tab. Well, my academic (get-a-good-grade-motivated) students just created their own subjects in The Joy Luck Club Discussion page. Not one student said a word to me for two weeks about why I hadn’t created any subjects for them. I don’t know if it’s because it hadn’t occurred to anyone, or they are too polite to say something, or too scared of me to say something!! Probably a combination!

Anyway, they are due today at 11:59 pm, so I started reading them today. It has been fun. It’s interesting reading a lot of them in one sitting, because I get a definite sense of pattern from individuals’ posts. For example, it becomes quickly evident which students question and get a strand of conversation going. Likewise, it becomes obvious who is agreeing with all of the other comments by merely rewording what everyone else has already said.

I have a very basic system for evaluation thus far, and would love suggestions on how to better “grade” comments. So far, I put a tally mark on the gradesheet for every comment a student makes. I vary the height of the tally based on complexity of the comment: a very short tally for basic plot regurgitation; a longer tally for depth and complexity of thought. At the end I’ll give points based on averaging the size and numbers of tallies. Any other suggestions?