"How to" Guideline series is coordinated by Helen Mongan-Rallis of the Education Department at the University of Minnesota Duluth. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions to improve these guidelines please me at e-mail hrallis@d.umn.edu.

Setting up Wikis in Moodle

[Last updated: March 5, 2009 ]

1. Under Activities select "wiki"
2. Under name Enter the name for your wiki
3. Under "summary" enter directions for what you want users to do with the wiki
4. Choose groups under wiki types: When you create a wiki in Moodle, it is very important to set the type of wiki to be group, and not student (even though it seems logical to have it be set to student if you want students to enter their ideas. Once you have set up the wiki, you no longer have the option to change the setting from student to group. The difference between the two types:
   • Student wiki creates one wiki for every student in the class. When you click to view the wiki, what you will see an option at the top of the page that says "Other wikis" with a drop down menu nest to it. If you click on the drop down menu, you will see list of all the wikis, and can view each separately. There are certainly times when students may want to have or create their own wiki, such as if they want to work on a shared group project and wish to use a wiki to collaborate on their findings. However:
   • Group Wiki: when you want students all to contribute to the same wiki so that there is only one wiki that everyone sees, then you should create a group wiki.
     As you continue to set up the wiki, the last section, common module settings, leave at "no groups." This is confusing, since under wiki type in the first section, you said groups! However, trust me on this one:).

• Disable "Camel Case": Note: this may be a temporary flaw in Moodle, but it is important that you disable CamelCase on the settings when you create a wiki.
  • If you don't do this, what can happen is when students post to the wiki, their entry doesn't show up when others view the wiki. However, if visitors to the wiki click on the "edit" tab, if there don't appear to be any entries on the wiki, they will show up in the edit box. You can then click on the "save" button even without making any changes to the wiki, and all the previous wiki entries will miraculously appear! Note that even though these entries show up following the edit -- save step, next time you visit the wiki, they will have disappeared, and you have to click edit--save once again. Clearly, this is not what is supposed to happen! Disabling CamelCase takes case of this problem.
  
  

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