At the Edelman Digital Bootcamp, I presented a number of social media assignments and teaching tools that I have worked into my traditional PR classes. This assignment is one of those assignments.
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Wikis are Web sites where users can all collaborate on a document. Some wikis are password protected and some are public (like the wiki of all wiks: Wikipedia). Google has similar technology in their Google Doc and a more power place, in Google Groups, where users can also upload files & thread discussion reactions to pages (which are, essentially, wikis).
While most talk in the PR practice about wikis deals with an organization’s Wikipedia entry and the ethics of editing Wikipedia, there is a great internal use for wikis and similar technology like Google Doc/Groups. Collaboration! Think of how frustrating it is to be working on a document (press release, research paper, etc.) only to find that someone else on your team already updated it and you are now working off an older version? Wiki and the Google equivalent (a Google Doc that can be shared among users or made public) is a great solution!
In the classroom, encourage students who are working in teams with one another to write their papers using wikis or make a Google Group. My students use Google Groups (they are the ones who told me about it in the first place) and said that it was one of the best things they could do to not only keep track of all the documents associated with the project in one place, but all work together on the final writing of the project without making time-costing mistakes of double-editing.
For your own research, consider making different Google Groups or wikis for the various team research projects you work on. I am working with colleagues from New York, to Tennessee to Hawaii and I use either a wiki or Google Group with all and it has really streamlined collaborative research writing.