Final teaching director candidate promotes Wikis

Sometimes a change in the way professors teach and assign work is what is really needed to improve student learning.

That was the viewpoint of Elaine Collins-Brown, the third and final candidate for the Faculty Center for Innovative Teaching director position.

“A lot of people have heard of Wikis,” Collins-Brown said. “Professors are often skeptical of them because they can be easily edited, but they have a lot of potential.”

Wikis are a collection of web pages designed to allow multiple users access to edit content. Collins-Brown explained a variety of advantages that both professors and students will gain from using Wikis for things such as papers and projects.

Wikis would allow for students to work simultaneously on a project or paper, but while in completely different places. Professors also could constantly monitor and evaluate the content and ensure student learning.

It would also aid students with the dreaded peer-review research papers, she said.

“Peer-review can be scary for students,” Collins-Brown said. “But Wikis allow students to put up part of their work or proposals for others to review.”

The worries about having a paper or project lost would also be mitigated by using Wikis.

“Instead of having students turn in a paper, have them work on a collaborative paper on Wiki,” Collins-Brown said.

The FaCIT board moved onto a series of questions for Collins-Brown after the first half of the interview.

Kathy Koch, associate dean of the College of Education and Human Services, was one of the board members present at the forum.

“What do you feel you can contribute to our FaCIT center here?” Koch asked.

When there is a problem, it needs to be addressed and taken care of right away, she said. Issues have to be fixed, or hopefully avoided all together, by constant evaluation.

Steve Wagner, associate professor of psychology and head of the FaCIT director search committee, asked Colins-Brown if Central Michigan University’s size would present a problem for her.

“How will you transition from a smaller school, like the Methodist College of Nursing, to Central Michigan University?” he asked.

Collins-Brown explained that, while not recently, she has worked at schools equal in size to CMU and is well prepared.

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