Supporting Active Wiki-based Collaboration

Prior research has established that active participation and collaboration by students results in multiple benefits during wiki-based CSCL activities. However, achieving such behavior can be a challenge without external motivation. To increase active participation and collaboration by users, we developed an enhanced wiki called the Written Agora. Using popular Web 2.0 features, our wiki provides additional means of participation and aims to encourage direct communication and collaboration between users. Additionally, using intelligent features, we enable the wiki system itself to also participate during collaboration. In this paper, we analyze the results of a study using the Written Agora in a classroom for two semesters. We discover that simply including such features is not necessarily enough to cause their use or improve collaboration. However, encouraging the use of these features resulted in not only greater than expected use, but more diverse and higher quality collaboration by users.