Originally Posted by brymz
Re-posted by colindonihue for ease of discussion. Content entirely unchanged.
I would like to apologize for being one of those people that waited until the last week to be involved with the wiki. We were warned against problems that could arise with this collective action, but from the start it seemed an inevitable outcome of the assignment. I surmise that this post is quite different from other last minute additions to this community website. It will serve to provide a forum for general feedback of the feasibility and functionality of this class tool and explore the reason that this activity was pushed off until this point of the semester.
I tend to be a relatively busy soul, and enjoy having activities to fill my day. Throughout my undergraduate career, I devised a system of priorities to ensure satisfaction with my progress. Accomplishing the task that I considered most important first, gives me a sense of motivation and urgency that often makes me work more efficiently. Since I have not yet gotten to the wiki post by employing this thought process, I might claim that it is then not a priority. But this, of course, would lessen the importance of what this new course tool has to offer. There is no doubt that with full participation from the class we could build a coherent and provocative study tool for future classes. So then, why has the wiki fallen so far on my list of priorities? Is it just that most of us have not had experience with website design and are flustered by the possible frustration of unknown technology? Or is there something deeper going on here?
First off, I am sure a number of people had doubts about interacting with a wiki. Having had some limited web design experience, this is one of the easiest platforms to use and allows for a free form end result. This is as the professors originally intended. So, from my perspective, it would seem that the wiki is an ideal place for that open forum for class discussion. So then, is class discussion taking place?
I think there are a number of study groups and impromptu lunch tables that discuss at depth a number of concepts we have touched on in class. Students in SNRE readily share resources and ideas with their peers and increase the community’s capacity for knowledge and learning tremendously. Why is this not reflected on the wiki?
With the extremely fast pace of my life it is difficult to get anything accomplished that is not immediately relevant. The wiki posts has a due date that was, until now, extremely far away and the impact it has on my grade is not determined based on the timeliness with which I complete the assignment. And in relation to other factors of my grade, the wiki does not have a large enough impact to get it done early. Exams, papers, grant writing, and personal research all took priority when considering my workload for the week. Often I had great ideas to contribute, but couldn’t find the time to get them on a post. I appreciated a mention for the Metabolic Theory of Ecology by Prof. Currie one day in class as I wrote a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship application on this relatively young concept of community assemblage and wish to get more of my peers thinking about ecology in this way. Unfortunately, while focusing on writing that very grant, the post had to wait until the last minute as I go slightly crazy preparing for exams and finishing up late semester class assignments. At the announcement of this assignment, it was difficult to imagine a wiki that would have enough traffic to ensure accurate information sharing and even more difficult to see it spurring virtual academic debate.
Bravo, to all of you who have consistently followed updates on the wiki and to those who have taken extra time to make the site look more professional and function more efficiently. I am interested to hear your feedback as to what motivated you to take charge of this pilot project.
Also, for those of you like me, chime in and identify what it was that had you behind the eightball. As this is a working website, we have not lost our opportunity to create a well-collaborated course tool for future classes. Perhaps this job is best served at the end or just following the semester when the information is most forward in our minds following exams and we can better identify what concepts are most important and how they are related throughout the course material.