Race, Gender & Sexuality Studies
Can your students come out to play
Appropriate Technologies: What works best for which purpose with what limitations?
Note on learning curve issues: I can create some online videos for technical help. Tell me what you need: hoskins.debo@uwlax.edu. They will be posted on the WGSS TechHelp page.
Course software (http://www.nwsa2.org/moodle/): Good for most collaborations, except collaborative writing. Strengths: private; discussions can be grouped and time-delimited; can link documents, weblinks, and other resources to discussions. Limitations: access, learning curve. Using NWSA's software provides a common site all of us can access; Moodle is pretty straightforward.
Blogs: Good for promoting a particular project and soliciting comment about it. Strengths: usually permit posting of images and weblinks as well as text. Limitations: blogs tend to be one-sided.
Forums: Good for discussion. Best developed within course software or some other password-protected site, unless you want anyone on the internet to participate. They will - spammers and misogynists find these fast. Strengths: can thread discussions and provide prompts; in course software, can also group students for discussion so that everyone can participate and everyone can read every other posting;
Wikis: Good for collaborative writing. Strengths: many are free at some level; some will reveal individual contributions (might be needed for grading); most free sites can be set so that they cannot be edited by just anyone, some free sites can also be set so that a login is necessary even to see the site. Best option would be a wiki feature in course software. Strengths: very collaborative. Limitations: learning curve; finding the "right" wiki.
Editing functions in Word: Good for collaborative writing. Strengths: can identify individual contributions, although this might be more cumbersome than on a wiki; can use a wide range of formatting. Limitations: learning curve.
Email: Good for collaborative writing, not for discussion. Use sparingly, for sending documents as above. Strengths: accessibility. Limitations: faculty get too much email; students don't use email as their primary means of online communication.