Wide Open demo

Baby steps

• Helping students ramp up to posting with four practical exercises
• Practicing on user pages

The basic idea

• Resolution and Independence

Asserting order

• Class conventions: no deletions, source attribution
• User pages with snips-by-user (see kduglin)
• Recent changes macro
• snipsnap-portlet-1
• Author Pages, where all related material collected

Assignments

• Weekly posting assignment, directing students to build entries off of specific texts
• Longer essays: E1 index and E2 index. Essays were commented upon by the instructor for all to see (grades, however, were private). Students were also asked to add comments, as part of the weekly posting assignment. See comments at the bottom of "Veiled Clarity"
• Creative work, posted by students on the project index. This includes artwork scanned into RAP, artwork photographed and uploaded into RAP, and even two movies

Evidence of student engagement

• Extra effort in what were supposed to be 100-200 word snips, such as this discussion of the opening of Byron's "Don Juan"
• Careful anchoring of references - see, for example, links in this discussion of Blake's "Little Boy Lost"
• Posting above the required amount, often linking to work in other classes (for example, see As idle as a painted ship)
• Tracked commenting, such as this debate about Felicia Hemans's lack of skill
• Author Pages: as the semester went on, students took these pages over unbidden. Examples: Mary Robinson, John Keats, John Clare.

RAP's afterlife

• Most Viewed entries (listed to the right).
  
• Google searches pointing to RAP
• Meet RAP's baby sister: RAP2

Other pedagogical wikis…

• Repository/reference - Social Justice Wiki
• Gateway - SaratogaCensus
• Simulation/role playing - Holocaust Wiki
• Illuminated/mark-up - The two Romantic Audience Projects