11.5. Using the Course Wiki

Wikis provide a way for the course team and learners to access, share, and collaboratively edit information both about, and for, your course.

11.5.1. About the Course Wiki

Every course has a wiki that you can set up in a way appropriate for your course. If you have specific expectations for how the wiki should be used, communicate these expectations to your learners and staff. You can seed the wiki with specific content and provide a skeleton structure and some exemplars. At the beginning of the course, explain how you want the course wiki to be used, and provide clear instructions and guidelines for its use.

Common uses for the course wiki might include the following activities.

  • Sharing answers to course FAQs and collecting new FAQs.
  • Sharing editable course information, such as download and installation instructions for software required for the course
  • Providing shared access to learner-created resources, perhaps as part of a collaborative exercise.
  • Sharing errata for the course.
  • Collecting suggestions for future runs of the course.

As learners and course team members create and edit wiki articles, they contribute to a repository of information about your course that can be immediately useful to other learners, or useful for you and your course team as you develop other courses or future runs of the same course.

The wiki for each course is a “child” wiki of the edX-wide wiki. From within any course wiki, select the top level Wiki link in the breadcrumb trail at the top of the page to visit the edX-wide wiki.

11.5.2. Managing the Course Wiki

Keep these points in mind as you design the wiki for your course.

  • Be clear about the purpose for the wiki or for different parts of the wiki. For example, are some parts of the wiki only for disseminating information? If that is the case, then make sure that only your course team has write access for those articles.
  • Decide whether some parts of the wiki are intended for learner collaboration or learner input. Make sure that learners are able to create and edit wiki articles in those sections, and use text to clearly indicate to learners that these pages can be edited.
  • Think about the different tasks that will be performed by people in different roles. Typically you want your course team to have some privileges that learners do not have. For example, course team members can delete wiki articles, but learners cannot.

Members of the course team can perform these tasks to manage the wiki.

All users, including learners, can perform the following tasks, depending on the permissions that you set for an article.

11.5.3. Showing or Hiding the Wiki

When you create a course, a wiki is included by default, and a Wiki page is visible at the top of the course page. If you do not want to use the course wiki, you can hide the Wiki page at the top of the course.

To show or hide the wiki in the course tabs, follow these steps.

  1. Open your course in Studio.
  2. Select Content, then Pages.
  3. Select the eye icon in the Wiki row. The Wiki page is hidden when the eye icon has a slash through it. You can show the Wiki page again by selecting the eye icon.

When you hide the wiki in your course, any existing articles remain in the edX- wide wiki, but the Wiki page is removed from your course pages.

11.5.4. Controlling Access to the Wiki

You can control access to the wiki in various ways: by changing access to the wiki as a whole, by changing the read/write permissions settings of articles within the wiki, or by locking articles.

To change access to the course wiki, follow these steps.

  1. Open your course in Studio.
  2. Select Settings, then Advanced Settings.
  3. Scroll down to the Allow Public Access to Wiki field. This Boolean setting is set to False by default, meaning that only course team members and enrolled learners can see the course wiki. If you change the value of this field to True, then any registered edX user can access the course wiki, even if they are not enrolled in your course. However, public users would have to explicitly navigate to your wiki via the edX-wide wiki structure, or a link that has been provided to them.

To modify viewing or editing permissions for specific groups of users by article, see Setting Permissions for Wiki Articles.

To lock an article and prevent further editing, see Locking a Wiki Article.

11.5.5. Setting Permissions for Wiki Articles

To prevent certain groups of users from being able to add or edit articles, you need to modify the read/write permissions for articles. For example, as a member of the course team, you likely want to prevent learners from creating wiki articles at the top level, so you should remove write access to course- level wiki articles for most users. (Top-level wiki articles are children of the edX-wide wiki, and cannot be found within the course wiki).

To modify the permissions for wiki articles, follow these steps.

  1. View the live version of your course.
  2. Select Wiki.
  3. Navigate to the article whose permissions you are modifying, and then select Settings.
  4. In the Permissions section of the Settings page, select or clear the checkboxes for read or write access for Group or Other.
  5. At the bottom of the page, select the Save changes button for the Permissions section.

Note that there are two different Save changes buttons, one near the top of the page for the Notifications section, and one at the bottom of the page for the Permissions section. If you are modifying permissions, make sure you select the Save changes button at the bottom of the page for your changes to be saved.

11.5.5.1. Groups Used in Wiki Permissions

Each course has the following groups.

  • Beta Testers (by default there are no beta testers until you add them)
  • Admins (by default, the course author is always in this group)
  • Staff (these are course team members)

You add users to these groups in the LMS by selecting Instructor and then Membership.

The permissions for the Others group apply to users who are not in the three course groups, including learners.

11.5.6. Seeding the Wiki

To ensure that learners get the most out of your course wiki, design the wiki space before the course starts by seeding the course wiki with articles that give it the desired structure.

For example, you could create wiki articles to mirror the course outline. At the top level, you could provide a course outline, FAQs, and links to the main articles for each section. In the child articles for each section, you could provide information specific to the units and components in that section, and a page for learners to share their feedback and experiences.

This section describes how you can contribute to the course wiki.

11.5.7. Adding a Wiki Article

When you add an article to the wiki, be aware of what level you are currently viewing, to make sure that you add your new article to the correct level in the course wiki.

To move down a level in the wiki, select See all children; to move up, select the appropriate level in the wiki breadcrumb trail links at the top of the page.

11.5.7.1. Add Articles at the Same Level

To add a wiki article at your current level, follow these steps. If you do not have permissions to add an article, when you select Add Article, a message indicates “Permission Denied” .

  1. In your course, select Wiki.
  2. Navigate to the level where you want to add a new article.
  3. Select the Add Article button near the top right of the page.
  4. On the new article page, add a title for the page, and optionally a few keywords to create a “slug” that provides a more specific location identifier for your article.
  5. Add contents to the article. You can enter plain text and use Markdown syntax to add formatting. For help with Markdown syntax, select the link to the cheat sheet at the upper right corner of the Contents field.
  6. When you have finished entering content for your wiki article, select Create Article.

11.5.7.2. Add Articles Below the Current Level

To add a child article to your current article, follow these steps. If you do not have permissions to add an article, when you select Add Article, a message indicates “Permission Denied” .

  1. In your course, select Wiki.
  2. Navigate to the level above where you want to add the new child article.
  3. Select See all children.
  4. Select the Add Article button under the wiki title.
  5. On the new article page, add a title for the page, and optionally a few keywords to create a “slug” that provides a more specific location identifier for your article.
  6. Add contents to the article. You can enter plain text and use Markdown syntax to add formatting. For help with Markdown syntax, select the link to the cheat sheet at the upper right corner of the Contents field.
  7. When you have finished entering content for your wiki article, select Create Article.

11.5.8. Editing a Wiki Article

If you have permissions to edit an article, you see an Edit button and icon to the right of the article content.

To make changes to a wiki article, follow these steps.

  1. In your course, select Wiki.
  2. Navigate to the article you want to edit.
  3. Select Edit.
  4. Make your changes. For help with Markdown syntax, select the link to the cheat sheet at the upper right corner of the Contents field.
  5. In the Summary field at the bottom left, below the Contents field, enter a short description of the changes you made. This description appears in the Changes list, and helps other users of the wiki understand what changes you made to the article.
  6. When you have finished making edits, select Save changes.

11.5.9. Searching for Wiki Articles

A Filter field is available only if any level of the wiki contains multiple articles.

Enter a text string in the Filter field to find a list of all articles with that text string in their titles.

11.5.10. Managing Versions of Wiki Articles

The wiki includes a change history for each article. You can view each past version of the article, roll back to a selected earlier version of the article, or merge the current version of the article with a selected earlier version.

11.5.10.1. View a List of Previous Versions of a Wiki Article

  1. In your course, select Wiki.
  2. Navigate to the wiki article for which you want to see the change history.
  3. Select Changes. Previously saved versions of the current article are listed, with the most recent at the top.

11.5.10.2. View a Previous Version of a Wiki Article

  1. On the Changes page for your wiki, select the revision of the article that you want to view.
  2. Select Preview this revision to see the article as it appeared after the revision was made.

11.5.10.3. See Line by Line Changes in a Previous Version

  1. On the Changes page for your wiki, select the revision of the article that you want to view.
  2. Select the linked date, time, and author information to see the line-by-line changes made in that revision. Text that is highlighted in red has been replaced by the text that is highlighted in green below it.

11.5.10.4. Replace a Current Version with a Previous Version

  1. On the Changes page for your wiki, select the revision of the article that you want to roll back to.
  2. Select Switch to selected version to replace the current version with the selected one.

11.5.10.5. Combine a Current Version with a Previous Version

  1. On the Changes page for your wiki, select the revision of the article that you want to merge with the current version.
  2. Select Merge selected with current to combine the current and the selected versions.

11.5.11. Locking a Wiki Article

Locking a wiki article prevents further changes from being made to it. To lock a wiki article either after you create it, or after you make specific edits, follow these steps.

  1. View the live version of your course.
  2. Select Wiki.
  3. Navigate to the article you want to lock, and then select Settings.
  4. In the Permissions section of the Settings page, select the Lock article checkbox.
  5. At the bottom of the page, select the Save changes button for the Permissions section.

11.5.12. Deleting a Wiki Article

Only course team members can delete articles. In addition, you can only delete an article if you have permissions to edit that article. If you have the required permissions, you see a Delete article button at the bottom of the Edit page.

To delete an article, follow these steps.

  1. View the live version of your course.
  2. Select Wiki.
  3. Navigate to the article you want to delete, and then select Edit.
  4. Select Delete article.
  5. On the deletion confirmation page, select Yes, I am sure.
  6. Optionally, also select the Purge checkbox. For details, see Purging a Wiki Article.
  7. Select Delete article to confirm the deletion.

11.5.12.1. Purging a Wiki Article

When you delete and purge an article, it is completely removed from the wiki, with no option to undo the deletion. Select this option only if you are sure you will not want to restore the content.

To purge an article as you delete it, select the Purge checkbox on the deletion confirmation page.

11.5.12.2. Restoring a Deleted Wiki Article

Articles that have been deleted but not purged can be restored. A link to the article remains visible at the level at which it was created.

To restore a deleted article, select the link to the article and select Restore.