Help:Using the TRU Wiki for Course Work

The UBC Wiki is an excellent tool for managing, creating, and sharing course content. You can use it for a wide range of activities: from creating a central repository of course info to hosting online student discussions. The possibilities are endless and how you use the Wiki is really up to you.

Organizing your Course Content
One of the most important steps when using the Kumu Wiki is organizing your content within the Wiki. There are three basic levels of organization that all course pages should meet:

First, Put Your Course Pages into the Course Space
Make sure your course work is in proper space. The Kumu Wiki is organized into different spaces; course work fits best into the Course space.

Putting course pages into the Course space keeps the UBC Wiki organized and structured. For example, if you create a page entitled "Student Assignments" and it is in the main space on the wiki, users of the wiki will think that it is a general knowledge article on the topic of student assignments at UBC and not something that relates specifically to your course.

Please note: if you create course pages that are not located in the Course space, we may move your pages into the Course space for you.

Second, Use Your Course Number
Another good practice when creating course pages is to organize the pages by the course number. For example, if you create a page entitled "Course:Student Assignments", it is not clear to which course the student assignment page belongs. Instead Course:ABCD123/Student Assignments shows that the student assignment page belongs to course ABCD123.

Finally, Use Subpages to Keep Course Pages Together
We suggest that every course have a main page and that this main page be the course number. The main page for the example course ABCD123 would be Course:ABCD123. Additional content can then be added as subpages. To create a subpage for a course page, put a forward slash '/' after the course name and type in the name for that subpage. For example, a subpage for the course ABCD123, would follow this pattern: Course:ABD123/subpage. Subpages automatically create links to their parent pages.

Examples of Course Organization
Here are some ideas on how you could setup your course:

Please visit Course:ABCD123 to see how the above organizational examples work.

Using Categories
Categories can help you keep all pages related to your course together as well as make the course findable in larger contexts. For example, if you are teaching class ABCD123, you might want to create a category called ABC123 and add every course page to that category. You can do this by adding the following code to your pages:.

You can also add your course to broader categories. For example, if course ABCD123 were an economics class, adding the main page to the economics category will help create a broader picture of all physics topics at UBC as well as make your course easier to find.

If you categorize the top level page of your course with it's four letter subject code, it will be automatically added to the course space index. For example, the category has been added to the top level page for the  Math 110 course.

See Help: Categories for more information.

Using Dynamic Page Lists (DPL)
In its most basic form, the Dynamic Page Lists (DPL) function displays a list of pages in one or more categories or subpages. This could be useful to organizing course content if you want to display all the pages or subpages that relate to your course.

Listing subpages
Copy the following code and put it in the body of a page (such as your main course page) to list all the subpages of that specific subpage (please note that if the page on which the below code has been placed has no subpages, an error will be generated). See Help:Dynamic Page Lists for more information. titlematch=/% namespace= shownamespace=false

Listing categories
Copy the following code and put it in the body to list all the categories. category= categoryname

Categoryname is a placeholder for whatever category you wish to list.

See Help:Dynamic Page Lists for more information.

Copyrighted Material
Only upload materials that you own the copyright to or have permission to share.

Additional Resources

 * 50 Ways to Use Wikis for a More Collaborative and Interactive Classroom
 * Teaching and learning online with wikis
 * Wikis and Wikipedia as a Teaching Tool
 * Ruberic for Wiki Work

First draft of this page derived from: http://wiki.ubc.ca/Help:Using_the_UBC_Wiki_for_Course_Work