Wiki Wiki What Now?

Welcome to the Wild World of Wikis!  Here is the one I have proudly put together pertaining to staff trainings that I have developed in my current position as an Academic Support Coordinator: http://sarctutoring.wikispaces.com/ 

Wikis are typically used for interactive and collaborative information sharing, however, I have approached this wiki from a slightly different angle and have been very pleased with the results.  In my position at the university where I work, I am one of a small fraternity of peer tutoring and academic outreach coordinators on campus.  Within that small fraternity, I am fortunate to be tied to the largest learning center on campus and am often asked for advice or direction from smaller centers.

In my current position I have a staff of around 40 peer tutors who provide approximately 300 hours per week of tutoring in various college courses at three campus facilities and online and I also coordinate large and small scale academic outreach programming each semester (we present approximately 30 in-person workshops or academic events per semester).  Through those services, we see an average of around 12,000 students each semester at tutoring and outreach events alone.  That's a lot of people!  Because we serve so many students, our tutors really need to know what they are doing and represent our department well.  It is part of my job to train our tutors in accordance with the College Reading and Learning Association's international guidelines for tutor training certification.  It is both a blessing and a curse that we are restricted to CRLA training topics.  When I came into this position there wasn't much organized for the trainings so I have spent much of my time systematically trying to gather my resources so as to not reinvent the wheel with trainings every year.  Thankfully though, CRLA gives me pretty explicit rules to follow as to what and how I should train my staff.

Creating a wiki to organize my training materials never would have crossed my mind in the past as I only thought of it as a collaborative tool.  While I may still use it that way in the future, it truly seems to be the perfect solution for general access and organization of training materials in the meantime.  Outlining the "curriculum" required within CRLA Certification guidelines has been helpful in providing me with strict parameters for how I want my wiki page to look and be used in the future.

According to CRLA guidelines, 6 hours of training must be completed in person and an additional 4 hours can be completed through other means.  My end-goal for this wiki is to include my newly made 50-page tutoring manual and required forms as well as a full battery of do-it-yourself training materials for all of the required CRLA training topics.  My lofty goal is such for a few reasons.  First, when I receive requests for training materials from colleagues, I would love to be able to direct other tutor coordinators to this wiki.  I would also love to have them share materials as well in order to foster a stronger collaborative environment for our group (and to avoid that whole re-inventing the wheel thing).  Secondly, with a staff of 40+, it is not always possible for every one of my student staff to attend in-person trainings.  Completion of this site will allow for a home-base for tutors who may need to play catch-up with trainings.  Third, it will allow for more flexibility as to HOW tutors complete those extra 4 training hours each semester.  Finally, when I came into this position, I had to make an entire training curriculum from scratch!  Should I ever leave this post, I would love to leave this wiki training guide as a legacy and a gift to the next Coordinator.

So how have I found making a wiki?  As with most things, it has been both yin and yang.  Making the site itself has been easier than expected, however, the over-achiever in me wants it to be completely finished with ALL of the curriculum included RIGHT NOW.  That would, of course, require me to transpose all of the PowerPoints, hand-outs and group training materials into self-contained "lessons" that can be completed without moi.  A time consuming but worthy task to say the least.  I have also been a bit frustrated with the static nature of the ever-growing page list and limited formatting ability that Wikispaces has allowed me.  Nevertheless, this sense of utilitarianism has truly kept me goal-focused and not allowed me to spend a bunch of time making things "look pretty."

After building the bones of the wiki by simply making a blank page for each of the required training topics, I decided to attack adding actual training content one topic at a time as each in-person training topic comes along this semester.  Last month our training covered Assertiveness, Working with Difficult Students and Diversity. This month we are focusing on Learning Styles and Brain Dominance Learning.

For each topic it is my aim to create a Learning Outcome, Content (through Prezi, Slideshare, Weblinks, Videos, etc.) and an Overview for an Independent Activity that will demonstrate comprehension of the Learning Outcome along with samples.  As I do not give out grades to my tutors, I am not necessarily including a Rubric in each topic, though, I am including "required elements" that equate more closely to a pass/fail system of assessment.  I really think my background in curriculum development is both serving me well here and making it difficult for me to do a mediocre job.  Wanting it all done right now mainly stems from wanting to have a usable resource and a fear that I will have a half-baked product to offer students and colleagues because moving the content from a live/verbal format to the "do-it-yourself" format will not come along as quickly as I like.

So that's where I currently am with my wiki.  It has been a fun process so far and has been motivating for me within my current position.  I especially like the evolving nature of the platform and the potential for collaboration down the line.  I would encourage anyone out there to try creating a wiki (if you haven't already) and would love to hear your thoughts on my journey so far.