MyGLife wiki critique

For my next assignment, I have been tasked to review some of the existing work that students have submitted to the wiki. So, I think it's fitting that I first start off with a critique of the MyGLife wiki community as a whole.

I think the whole idea of a virtual learning environment is fascinating and has great potential. It allows people to interact and share ideas to continually build and improve the learning experience for future participants.

However, this type of environment is a relatively new concept and while it will continually improve, I think there is room to mention some immediate change needs. Personally, I think people will learn more efficiently if there is more conformity in the community. By this, I mean that not everyone in the community is operating in the same manner. I understand this is a complex environment with plenty of room for variation, but some stricter ground rules should be set to help people figure out the system and how it works.

If all the wikis pages are set up the same, community members will be able to explore neighbor wikis more easily. As it stands, when I'm given an assignment that requires I comment on work (or begin discussions while making use of the work of others), I have a hard time finding the work specific to any one person. I can access general files, but I cannot offer credit or critique in many cases, because there is no info to indicate where the work comes from.

Marshall's MCTC wiki page appears to be the only one which lists the specific user names (lefthand side near bottom of page) with "project pages" (see example) that chronicle the specific work of individuals. Why? This seems like a fundamental need in the wiki community. Is this because of privacy issues? If so, it's easy to set up a contact that uses an alias. Point being, we need to be able to communicate with others easily.

Finally, I'd like to point out that finding information in the community is sometimes a daunting task. I know everything can't be everywhere all at once, but I think we can do a better job putting info out there in it's proper location and improving the categorizing and sort-ability of all the information from one centralized point. That may be something down the road to look at, but it's definitely worth mentioning.

Now that I'm finished criticizing MyGLife, let me offer some words of praise. I am excited to be a part of the democratic society that is MyGLife. It is very beneficial to have positive feedback from the community, while gaining access to a host of online resources that may otherwise go unnoticed. It is also exciting that while MyGLife is already an effective tool for learning, it will undoubtedly continue to grow, help its participants learn and share ideas along the way.