Education Commons^™

Open Wikis And The Protection Of Institutional Welfare, Andrew G. West, Insup Lee

Andrew G. West

Much has been written about wikis’ reliability and use in the classroom. This research bulletin addresses the negative impacts on institutional welfare that can arise from participating in and supporting wikis. The open nature of the platform, which is fundamental to wiki operation and success, enables these negative consequences. A finite user base that can be determined a priori (e.g., a course roster) minimizes the security implications, hence our discussion in this bulletin primarily concerns open or public wikis that accept contributions from a broad and unknown set of Internet users.