Experience with Software Support for Managing Student-Authored Wiki Textbooks

Traditionally, students study from textbooks written by "experts" in the field. But there are important pedagogical advantages to having them write part or all of their textbook. Until Web 2.0, however, student-authored textbooks were infeasible because of the overhead in reviewing contributions and making them available to the rest of the class. A wiki meets both of these needs very nicely. But substantial administrative overhead remains. Our Expertiza system has features for managing this overhead. We have used the system for two semesters. This paper reports on our experience. Student reaction has been quite positive, especially with regard to how much insight students gained from their writing. We also learned that certain aspects of the experience (such as double-blind review) were more difficult, and other aspects (such as sequencing between chapters) were easier than expected. These experiences are guiding further development of the software, which is available to any instructor who wants to use it to manage development of a wiki textbook.