For people (of a certain age?) who are accustomed to the old publishing paradigm in which information is written, published, and maintained in a controlled process, the usefulness of wikis may be difficult to understand.

As consumers, we wonder why anyone would trust information that is editable by the masses and has no single person in charge of vetting it for accuracy, style, and other editorial standards on which we've come to rely (the Wikipedia controversy proves our point). As writers, we are uncomfortable with joint authorship, hesitating to give up control of what we've written.

But, let's face it, we're not the targeted audience for wikis or most "social computing" technologies. Students are another story, and, fortunately for them, some of our faculty peers have the vision to turn the perceived weakness of wikis into pedagogical strengths. These innovative instructors are exploiting the ease of use and openness of wikis to facilitate collaborations and to turn students into knowledge creators instead of passive information consumers.

Probably the best known example of an academic wiki is the Romantic Audience Project created by students and a professor at Bowdoin to collaboratively study poetry. A more local (UC San Diego) academic wiki that is making a splash is "How Stuff Is Made," which was inspired by the "How Stuff Works" web site that, you guessed it, explains how an array of products work. HSIM ( www.howstuffismade.org ), in comparison, goes behind the scenes to document the "manufacturing processes, labor conditions and environmental impacts involved in the production of contemporary products."

Natalie Jeremijenko, a Visual Art faculty member at UC San Diego, began the HSIM project for multiple pedagogical reasons. She wanted to encourage her engineering and design students to think more critically about the manufacturing process behind consumer goods. She also thought the use of wiki-based assignments would deter plagiarism as well as encourage students to use higher standards when evaluating evidence.

For the HSIM site, Jeremijenko has her students visit factories --from fortune cookie bakeries to a Toyota Prius plants-- and observe how products are made. They then post photo essays about the manufacturing process to the HSIM site. Many of the students then contact the manufacturers and invite them to read -- and even edit -- these essays.

Jeremijenko finds educational value in wikis because they can be used to get students involved in actively creating knowledge while holding them accountable for the information that they publish. Wikis also allow for reflection on the writing process itself, providing a window into the revision process.

But Jeremijenko will be the first to admit that, as with using any new technology, there are some growing pains. One issue with wikis is security. Hackers like to exploit the weakness in such tools. Jeremijenko says that on several occasions the campus servers hosting her wiki project were taken offline by network administrators concerned with security issues.

But security should become less of a concern soon, as wikis are now being bundled with (or being made available as plug-ins to) course management systems, such as Sakai, Blackboard, and WebCT. This integration with common instructional tools might encourage other faculty to throw caution to the wind and enter the topsy-turvy world of wikis.