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Wikis - Creating a wiki in Blackboard

This tutorial explains what a Blackboard wiki is, and how to activate this feature in your course web site.

What is a Blackboard wiki?

A wiki within Blackboard is a page, or set of pages, that can be collaboratively edited by the instructor and by the students enrolled in the class. It is one of the few tools available which allows students to add content to a Blackboard course web site. Students can edit and add pages, images and links. A log of all changes is kept, so it is easy to keep track of a given page's editorial history, and of students' editing activity.

A current limitation of Blackboard wikis is that Safari on the Macintosh is not a supported browser for this functionality. We recommend that Macintosh users use the latest version of Firefox. Download Firefox

Creating a wiki

1. Decide where you want to place the new wiki. The content area "Assignments" is a good location - we'll use that for this tutorial.
2. In the left-hand navigation bar, click on Control Panel.
3. On the Control Panel page, in the Content Areas section, click on Assignments .
   
4. On the Assignments page, locate the pull-down menu on the right of the gray editing bar on top of the page. Click here and select Wiki. Then click Go.
   
5. On the Create Wiki page, give a name to the wiki.
6. In the "Select Members" section, create the group who will have editing access to the new wiki. Select a student name, and then click the right arrow to add the student to the group. Repeat until you group is complete. You can also select "All Students" to give editing access to the entire class. Instructors and TAs automatically have access to all wikis, so there is no need to add yourself to the list of members.
   
7. The "Options" section allows you to configure access to the wiki further. Here is what these options do:
   • Do you want to make the content visible? - unless you set this to "Yes", the wiki will be hidden to everyone
   • Do you want to allow students to purge wiki pages? - We recommend setting this to "No". Purging is a permanent deletion with no possibility of retrieval.
   • Who do you want to allow to comment on wiki pages? - Choosing a commenting option allows others to comment on each wiki page without altering the actual page. We recommend enabling this for the entire class.
   • Choose the dates and times for which group members will be allowed to edit the wiki - use this option if you want to enforce due dates on work done in the wiki. You do not have to set these dates.
   • Choose the dates and times for which non-group members will be allowed to view the wiki - use this option if you want to restrict the dates by which non-members can views their classmates' wikis. This allows you, for example, to create wiki sites for small group projects, and make the sites viewable to the entire class only after the student projects are completed.
8. Class participants access wiki sites by clicking on the content area where you have placed them in the left-hand navigation bar. If a student clicks on a wiki to which they do not have viewing access, s/he will see an authorization denied message.

Related tutorials

• Using wikis
• Assessing wikis
• Sample wiki assignments