Discussion Group A2: Supporting the Needs of the Institution"

Discussion group A2 has the theme "Supporting The Needs of the Institution"

Suggested topics for discussion:

• Who are the organisations, departments and instititions which have an interest in Wikis?
• How would the various organisations benefit from the provision of Wikis (as opposed to individual members of the organisation)?
• What requirements do the organisation have (as opposed to individual members of the organisation)?
• What conflicts may there be between the needs of users and organisations?
• What other key issues need to be addressed related to organisational needs?

Report

Who are the organisations, departments and instititions which have an interest in Wikis?

In institutions - IT departments, Libraries, Management, Community - student experiences on year abroad or placement, Pre-registration work with new students - in addition to the academic uses we heard about this morning.

What case studies?

- Use for collaboration between various management teams to build policy documents
- Use for annotation in project development
- Chaotic growth - authentication problems - people get to hear about them only via mailing lists - eg three in one department
- Knowledge-base for Library staff
- Document procedures - server settings - troubleshooting - ease of use over traditional issue tracking mechanisms.


How would the various organisations benefit from the provision of Wikis (as opposed to individual members of the organisation)?

- People feel happy that the Wiki is simpler and attracts naive users.
- Visibility during development
- Get round the "container" problem - services people talk about "documents" while academics talk about "lessons" hence no container constraint.
- Promotes quick change of errors - chaos prevented by audit and lock-down.
- System issues shared so documentation builds itself.
- Marketing tool to promote recruitment.

What requirements do the organisation have (as opposed to individual members of the organisation)?

- Control of the message at institutional level - but should be able to take criticism? Confidence of the institution.
- Who owns the copyright? What disclaimers? Trust the users and delete the material if there's a complaint.

What conflicts may there be between the needs of users and organisations?

- ditto above!
- Tends to attract a geeky audience - could be dominated by a certain element - certain students will feel challenged - Mature students - generational.

What other key issues need to be addressed related to organisational needs?

- Overall that institutions are still nervous about this technology.
- In use for filesharing - but is that a Wiki?
- Too many systems? Wiki / filesharing / EDM / Portal - which to use.
- Constraints - signed-off documents - print problems