Week 3 prompt

What uses might a collaborative wiki or blog have in your chosen (current or desired) work environment? How would they support learning and/or performance? What would be the design and implementation challenges if management tried to do this? What would be the design and implementation challenges of a user-initiated effort?

I have been using wikis for a while. Wikis are a great tool for collaborative learning, and I use it to share information with my teams when doing group assignments. It is a easy-to-use tool as a word processer, and also allows each team member to add and edit the content any time if needed. Normally, my group members meet face-to-face at least once and then split up the assignment into different parts. Each one works on each part individually, but we all can see others' inputs on the same wiki page. Once we find any related reference and resources, we can upload the documents or add a hyperlink to the wiki page, and everyone can access them and refer to them as necessary thereafter. Sometimes we use the discussion board embedded in the Wikis system to leave messages to others or to comment a particular topic, and we use it as an alternative way to communicate with our team.

In a work environment, if management tries to use a wiki, then they firstly need to get everyone familiar with the wiki. Although wikis are easy to use, you cannot assume that everyone knows how to use a wiki without any training when implementing this design. Besides the technique issue, employees need to know the purpose of this wiki task. Management must make everyone feel comfortable and therefore willing to contribute to this task. In addition, the security issue may need to be considered when using wikis in a work environment.

Ideally, in my opinion, wikis can be used a great tool for project management and knowledge management. Employees can share their experience and resources with others. However, some information is not appropriate to be seen by anyone outside of the company or outside of the team. I’m not sure if there is a private wiki that only specific members can see and edit and is also hidden from public.