AC 2007-2074: THE WIKI APPROACH TO TEACHING: USING STUDENT COLLABORATION TO CREATE AN UP-TO-DATE OPEN-SOURCE TEXTBOOK

We present an approach to teaching whereby students and faculty collaborate to explore subject matter through the creation of articles for an open-source textbook viewable using the wiki format. In this approach teams of students wrote sections of a new textbook for a senior level Chemical Engineering Process Controls course. The resulting text is available online at www.controls.engin.umich.edu/wiki. Each team of students presented their articles in a poster session during class, answered questions from other class members, and acted as personal tutors for the practice problems the group developed. The writing and presenting of articles provides opportunities for students to learn by teaching. Each article was also formally reviewed by other students in the class to provide suggestions and correct errors. The wiki authors then offered specific rebuttals where appropriate to the reviewer comments. Finally the original set of reviewers graded the wiki article in light of the suggested changes and rebuttals. Throughout this process, the instructors acted as advisors, gave the general topic outlines, provided reference material and made connections between the various student topics through short lectures. In addition to the wiki activity, the students were also given two exams, one group project and one individual project as assessment tools for the instructors. We present evidence in the form of standard course evaluations and grade distributions for the students’ response to this approach.