My name is Kevin and I teach biology classes, mainly anatomy, physiology, and microbiology. Most of my classes are taught via distance education, with a live video connection between me and my class. My interest in wikis and education started when I was unhappy with the physiology textbook I was using. Partway into the term I decided that as a class we would make our own physiology wiki textbook at wikibooks.org (same group as wikipedia). This project was chaotic the first term as I had the class in 18 groups each working on different chapters at the same time (how do I choose what to lecture on each week?). The second term worked better, since the basic structure of the book was in place and we went through chapter by chapter as a class, improving it as we went. The book became a featured book on wikibooks and is respectable but could still use some improvement. The third term I had a very small class (only 7 students), and it did not work very well. There were too few people to divide into groups, and the students were so busy learning the material that they had little time for making new contributions or significant improvements.

I was frustrated, so this term I tried adopting a new textbook, started the wetpaint physiwiki page and am having the class work in groups to write lecture notes and review questions after each lecture. I'm happy with how this is working--I love the ease of working in WetPaint, enjoy the dynamics of fresh work being posted daily for the benefit of all, and am happy to see students working together.

An amazing and unexpectedbenefit to working on wikis is that I entered a contest on the Australia Travel Wiki and won a free trip to Sydney!