A Wiki, What's the Point?

Chris has asked that the CurriculumCommittee revise the entire departmental curriculum. A substantial portion of the faculty has changed since the last time anyone has bothered to think systematically about curriculum matters. In any department, there are a few courses taught that have little or nothing to do with the official course description, and there are a few subareas with too many courses or not enough, but at this point we have more than a few such problems.

I see no way to undertake a revision without consulting every member of the department both individually and in disciplinary groups. Individuals could be consulted by e-mail, but the groups would seem to require extensive meetings, probably at least two involving each member of the department. The Wiki represents my attempt to avoid that. That is, the alternative to using the Wiki is having extensive meetings about the curriculum. I hope you will view the Wiki as the lesser of evils, and participate.

How can a Wiki help?

The Wiki can serve as a repository of public comments indexed by topic. Basically, the same thing could be accomplished using a lot of small mailing lists for subsets of the Department, but we all get too much e-mail anyway, and the Wiki permits everyone to look at any aspect they wish.

User's Guide

This guide is intended primarily for faculty and also graduate students using the Curriculum Web. Of course, some of what I say will apply to other parts of the Wiki too.

The Wiki is an ordinary web site. I would appreciate it if you would go to the Curriculum home page, WebHome, and click each of the main links, so you see what is there. The significant difference from most web sites is that each page has an Edit button at the top, so you can add your own comments.

Adding comments is just typing, easier than e-mail since you don't have to deal with addresses (some of us are old enough to remember a time when using e-mail seemed intimidating). In order to Edit you must register. Your registration name will be your name, normal capitalization, no spaces, like this: ShaughanLavine. Please click on the link and register now, then come back here, using the back button on your browser, and click on the Edit button at the top of this page—you don't have to actually change anything, just click the Cancel button at the bottom of the edit page after you have taken a look—of course, if you do make changes, click Save instead of Cancel. Like e-mail, arbitrarily complicated effects are possible—background music, color, animation—but, like e-mail, there is absolutely no need to bother with them. The web site has color, headings, tables of contents, and so forth, because I'm a geek. That doesn't mean you have to be.

At some point, go to the pages of courses you teach (see PresentCourses) and the areas you teach in (see AreasofPhilosophy).

If you know the name of a web page, you can go directly to that page by typing its name into the Jump: box that is at the top of every page, instead of clicking to it. The pages for courses are named with the full name of the course, for those of us who can't remember course numbers. See, for example, FromHegelNietzsche19thCenturyPhilosophy. Since that is a royal pain to type, you can also Jump by course number, in the following format: PhiL263 (note the capital L).

One Final Request

There is one clerical task I would like everyone to do at some point: Please go the FacultyTeaching page, click on Edit, add your login name (that is, your name, normal capitalization, no spaces) on its own line with spaces above and below, preferably in alphabetical order, then Save. Your name will have a question mark after it. Click on the question mark, which will take you to an edit page, then add, where it says to, the official Wiki names of all the courses you teach, one on each line. You can use my page as a model, if you wish. The easiest way to add the course names is as follows:

• Open a second browser window, go to the ShaughanLavine - 09 May 2007 - 13:57 - 1.2 " class="twikiCurrentWebHomeLink twikiLink">Curriculum home page, and enter each course number in the Jump window (in the form PhiLxxx or IndVxxx or TraDxxx). Hit enter to go to the course page.
• Using your mouse, highlight the course's wiki name on the course web page (you'll find the name at the top of the page, on the same line as the edit button, in gray), right click, and select copy.
• Go to your edit page, on a new line, right click, and select paste.
• Repeat for each course you teach.
• When you tire of this, hit save. You can always do the rest later. Remember, you don't teach that many courses, and so this is a 30 minute task at most.

Why the final request?

These pages will automatically cause who teaches each course to be listed with that course, which will enable us to determine which courses are taught by too many people, so we can add more courses in the relevant area of philosophy, and which courses we should consider removing from the curriculum because we can no longer cover them. I don't know of an easier way to put this data together. I'm open to suggestions.

Don't Worry, Be Happy

No matter what you do, you can't break the Wiki.

All versions of everything are saved automatically. If you screw something up, let me know, and I can revert it to its former state in about 10 seconds.

If you find a mistake, or something you don't like, fix it.

Feel free to bug me with questions.

-- ShaughanLavine - 20 Apr 2005