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Purpose – – The purpose of this paper is to examine the case for using subject (medical) wikis as a reference tool.Design/methodology/approach – The paper summarises content of ganfyd and WikiMD, comparing their ethos and approach to information. It describes some other medical and health wikis in brief.Findings – As their audience is somewhat more specialised, medical wikis, currently in their infancy, cover topics in more depth than Wikipedia but coverage remains patchy. They may be of particular use for those without access to expensive resources such as UpToDate requiring a short literature review or overview of a topic. Wikis at present are best used as a signpost to other resources with tighter editorial control.Research limitations/implications – The assessment of the subject wikis is brief and the analysis of wikis as a reference tool is largely drawn from general literature, not medical.Practical implications – This assessment provides exposure of subject wikis as a potential reference tool.Originality/value – The paper highlights the existence of subject wikis as a potential more in‐depth tool than Wikipedia.

The paper seeks to describe how tools like wikis can be used to improve collaboration and communication in project‐based teams and general work groups.

Over the last few years a number of wikis have been used by New Zealand libraries for cataloging related purposes – two as project management tools, one as a repository for project documentation, one as a national knowledge repository, and one as a local institution‐based knowledge repository. The paper examines both positive and negative aspects of using wiki technology in this environment.

Wikis prove to be very efficient project management and knowledge management systems. Information can be shared very quickly, efficiency of communication increases, and team productivity is higher. In all described cases a free and open source platform was chosen. Externally hosted solutions were preferred because they enable wikis to be immediately available for use. They are also easier to edit, and there is no need for local IT support. There remain concerns about disaster recovery and the long term preservation of documentation.

Experiences such as the ones presented in this paper can encourage other librarians to explore how new technologies can be used in their work environment.

The purpose of this paper is to aim to identify principles that make wikis an effective application when they are used within an organization. Those principles are supposed to make wikis a successful instrument for organizational learning.

The article makes a distinction between functional and psycho‐social principles and emphasizes their impact on organizational learning.

The functional principles (quick and easy editing; wikilinks; no hierarchical hypertext structure; revision and topicality; collaborative product; scalability and flexibility) may be regarded as the constitutive attributes of wikis. The psycho‐social principles (openness; self‐organization; autonomy; interest and personal relevance; diversity; serendipity effect) are not directly associated with wikis as a tool, but refer to the application context.

The article explains the functional and psycho‐social principles in detail. This will help organizations and knowledge‐management executives to employ wikis in an efficient way and avoid their disadvantages. Thus, the functional and psycho‐social principles can be a valuable starting point for applying wikis successfully in various organizational scenarios.

This chapter provides researchers and practitioners with guidelines for employing wikis to foster collaboration and active learning within and between student teams in higher educational settings. The core function of a wiki is to facilitate learner interaction with content. Such engagement is critical whether the course's instructional delivery environment is primarily face-to-face or web-based. Instructors encourage shared understanding through a spirit of investigation that embraces greater collaboration in the process. Collaboratively building knowledge about one content area by dialoguing with peers and negotiating importance in order to present the information in a meaningful way to the public is the strongest aspect of a wiki. To illustrate this, five case studies are detailed ranging from individual wikis to group consensus wikis in undergraduate and graduate-level courses, delivered in blended (i.e., hybrid combinations of face-to-face and online) and online asynchronous environments. As a whole, these studies support that wikis are not the single answer to all problems associated with collaboration and shared-knowledge in any learning situation, but they are a powerful lens for greater clarity in issues of student engagement and may lead to improved performance for diverse learners. Various experts add their views to those of the authors of this chapter; that to be effective, instructors must design purposeful engagement that embraces communication, cooperation and collaboration, active learning, feedback, and respect for differences. Likewise, students must be informed of the value of such engagement and have positive wiki models presented early in their online experiences.

This paper aims at contributing to the knowledge regarding the use of social software in corporate environments. It analyses, in an exploratory way, the perceptions of social software managers (specifically blogs and wikis) regarding the implementation processes and actual usage of this type of applications within their companies.

The paper follows a qualitative approach, with exploratory nature. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect social software manager's perceptions, and the resulting data were subjected to qualitative content analysis, from which several issues emerged and were analyzed.

According to managers' perceptions, social software applications are helping companies regarding, in particular, knowledge management, project management, and internal communication issues. On the other hand, it seems clear that companies (and managers) need to adopt participation incentives, establish usage rules, implement monitoring and evaluation instruments, and broaden the scope of usage beyond core business areas.

The analysis reflects the managers' perceptions expressed in semi-structured interviews made on a limited number of companies where most application users have technological academic formation or experience. Further research efforts should overcome these limitations by including a wide variety of companies (from other activity sectors), with a wider diversity of application user profiles. Also, input from application users should be taken into account in the analysis, as well as some quantitative indicators (regarding actual usage, for instance).

The paper contributes to the knowledge regarding the use of social software, namely blogs and wikis, in corporate environments, an area where further research is needed. The analysis and reported findings can be of value to managers responsible for social software implementation processes within corporations, helping them to reflect upon the issues that emerged.

This chapter provides a comprehensive review of research and developments relating to the use of Web 2.0 technologies in education. As opposed to early educational uses of the Internet involving publication of static information on web pages, Web 2.0 tools offer a host of opportunities for educators to provide more interactive, collaborative, and creative online learning experiences for students. The chapter starts by defining Web 2.0 tools in terms of their ability to facilitate online creation, editing, and sharing of web content. A typology of Web 2.0 technologies is presented to illustrate the wide variety of tools at teachers’ disposal. Educational uses of Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis, blogs, and microblogging are explored, in order to showcase the variety of designs that can be utilized. Based on a review of the research literature the educational benefits of using Web 2.0 technologies are outlined, including their ability to facilitate communication, collaborative knowledge building, student-centered activity, and vicarious learning. Similarly, issues surrounding the use of Web 2.0 tools are distilled from the literature and discussed, such as the possibility of technical problems, collaboration difficulties, and plagiarism. Two case studies involving the use Web 2.0 tools to support personalized learning and small group collaboration are detailed to exemplify design possibilities in greater detail. Finally, design recommendations for learning and teaching using Web 2.0 are presented, again based on findings from the research literature.

Purpose – This chapter will discuss empirical results on how attitudes toward group work and the prospect of publishing in wikis influence students’ work in collaborative knowledge construction. It will also explore how writing for an audience can be used in information literacy education.

Methodology – Data were collected by pre- and post-questionnaires and group interviews from two 8-week courses in an upper secondary school. In total, 58 students were involved. The quantitative data was analyzed by frequency and correlation analysis. Content analysis was applied to transcribed interviews.

Findings – Group work experiences carried over from one context to another. Ways to undertake group work influenced the learning experience. Cooperation – sharing tasks to be undertaken individually – tended to be a negative experience while working closely together enhanced learning. Wikis were mainly used as platforms for combining texts written individually by the students. The prospect of publishing on public Wikipedia had a considerably stronger influence on students’ motivation than publishing a text for fellow classmates on the school wiki.

Practical implications – Wiki-publishing enables an emphasis on information use as part of information literacy instruction, where students learn to adapt their texts toward their audiences. Careful instruction is, however, needed for the use of social media tools and collaborative processes, in order for them to serve their purpose.

Originality – The study showed how group work attitude in general influence future group work experiences. It also demonstrated the influence of publishing texts on wikis or Wikipedia on students’ motivation.

This paper intends to present and discuss the findings of a case study analysis of the adoption and use of a wiki system by a small enterprise that is intended as a tool for managing the knowledge needed to successfully perform its business activities. The study aims at contributing to the still insufficient research on the factors influencing the use of new Web 2.0 technologies in small organisations to support internal knowledge management.

The study combines a qualitative and quantitative approach. The main unit of analysis is the wiki system of a small company, particularly its implementation and usage by the company’s employees. Relevant information about the wiki was collected through six interviews to different company members, and by means of an online survey submitted to almost all employees. Interviews involved the CEO of the company, the system developers and two typical users. The survey was made through a questionnaire of 19 questions online administered by means of a popular free-access online poll website (freeonlinesurveys.com).

Through the reconstruction of the history of the system, the study allowed to understand how the wiki has been introduced and is effectively used inside the case company. The findings of the study highlight that the wiki technology, being light and user-friendly, can be particularly suited for small companies. At the same time, they reveal that the successful implementation of such a system is not a spontaneous and automatic result, but requires a resolute support by top management, a good motivation of participating employees and a clear definition of purposes and ways of use.

The findings of the study contribute both to the academic research, by making available to scholars further empirical evidence about the use of Web 2.0 technologies in small organisations, and to the practice, by providing some guidelines to managers of small companies who are attempting to adopt and use wikis to effectively manage their knowledge assets.

The paper contributes to the limited research about the adoption and use of wikis as knowledge management system, both in general and in the particular case of a SME. Furthermore, by investigating the behaviours and opinions of individual knowledge workers, it takes into account a perspective that the literature has so far neglected.

The purpose of this paper is to identify whether a wiki can be used as an alternative to a popular learning content management system (LCMS) in an e‐learning environment. The research attempts to identify what value each of these e‐learning components added to the students learning experience.

A quantitative approach in the form of a survey was used. The survey was conducted amongst a group of undergraduate students who were using both a LCMS and a wiki in their academic course, along with the attendance of lectures.

From the response of the students, the wiki used could be considered as a useful alternative to a LCMS. The LCMS was favoured over the wiki on a number of aspects but features of the wiki made it ideal to enhance collaboration amongst learners. This makes it an ideal tool to support minimal invasive education (MIE), where learners get an opportunity to learn from their peers.

The comparison used between the wiki and the LCMS was not ideal in all aspects as the wiki was used for a particular role in the course and did not have the same features and functionalities of the LCMS.

This paper focuses on a valuable alternative to a conventional LCMS in the form of a wiki, in an attempt to improve the learning experience of students.

This paper aims to examine some of the strengths and weaknesses of the use of online tools such as wikis and blogs for assessment purposes, with the aim of proposing future developments and improvements.

The paper utilises a case study approach by examining the outcomes of a new first‐year course for all engineering students at the Institution Name that was introduced in 2008. The course, Sustainable Engineering Practice (SEP), gives students an insight into the disciplines of engineering and emphasises the skills required for working in multi‐disciplinary teams. It introduces students to the profession of engineering and how it is practised within a sustainable context.

The major assessment task for the course is the Engineers Without Borders (EWB) challenge and, for the first time in the engineering program at the university, wikis and blogs were used as assessment tools to evaluate student progress in meeting the course objectives.

The evidence of student reflections in their course blogs, and the discussions of the staff teaching team in course meetings, have been utilised to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the pedagogy adopted. These sources indicated that the use of these tools for assessment was effective, but that some modifications were required to improve outcomes for both staff and students.