USC Confluence: A Campus-Wide Academic Wiki

Tommi Rantanen published some sobering thoughts on the topic of Finland: not the promised land of technology on his Endless lesson blog (nice title, by the way). What caught my eye was the reference to a PDF from USC on their use of Confluence campus-wide. The PDF is a case study published by Educause.
Some great nuggets of information on how a wiki is being used on campus.

How is it used?

• Student journaling
• Personal portfolios
• Collaborative knowledge base
• Research coordination and collaboration

Why a wiki?

• Expand critical thinking, self-reflection, faculty mentorship, and service learning beyond the boundaries of a specific course, a particular discipline, and a single semester.
• Team-based learning
• Social potential of online social networks
• Greater opportunities for collaboration

What’s noteworthy?

• Supports a wide range of pedagogical uses
• The entire process of selecting collaborative technology was itself a collaborative process between faculty, students, and research groups
• It’s created some replicable practices on campus

What I found to be equally intriguing was the way faculty tied wiki participation to students’ final grades. I think that’ll be the next pattern and use case on Wikipatterns!
You can read the entire PDF case study here.