Introduction+to+Wikis



= Collaborative Wiki Project - Introduction to Wikis =

Throughout the semester you will work with a group of peers on a designated country's Ministry of Health project or as a Consultant in Healthcare Reform. We will be using a Wiki for each one of these collaborative group work exercises. Please note that Wikis are the equivalent of a Word Document, with the "track changes" feature, that is done in the Internet so you always can see the last version edited by you or a member of your team. They are not intended for discussions or chat rooms.

The word, Wiki, means "quick" in Hawaiian and that is just what a wiki is - a quick way to collaborate. The Wiki can be used as an interactive workspace and database. Since everyone can add to a Wiki, it is a perfect tool to use when working on a project or as a place to gather information. One of the most popular wikis is "[|Wikipedia]**"** - the free encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone.

I understand based on the course assessment of the use of Wikis and other interactive web tools that several of you have not use them and would like to learn more. You can go to the following links to learn more about wikis:


 * ** Wiki History - ** []
 * **W iki Design Principles ** - []
 * **Wikis in Plain English** (a video with a simplified vision of Wikis) []

The reasons why we use Wikis in this course are:
 * To **facilitate the collaboration of teams** while developing your assignments
 * To be able to **share your report** and findings with an **audience beyond your peers** in the class including other students and faculty in UCF and even international health practitioners, officials on health care organizations and users and public in general of other healthcare systems around the world
 * And finally it will be an opportunity to **use your creativity** as a communicator and discussion leader.

For many of you wikis are new instruments, but the experience of most of your peers in previous courses has been a positive one and in many cases they have adopted this tool for their professional work.

The Wiki provider that we will use is http://www.wikispaces.com. You can go to this URL and **sign in or create your own wiki for this class, but DO NOT create a Wiki for this class before you receive an e-mail invitation from your professor (on your "Knights" mail) to join your group’s wiki. The course Wikis will be created in a special section designated for the group Wikis as part of this HSA6112 course space**. Once you receive your invitation on week 4 or 5 (if you are a member of the MOH teams and on week 5 if you are a member of the Consultant teams) of the course please **join** your Wiki space as soon as possible following the wiki instructions. There is a **“help” section** on top of your new space in “Wikispaces” that contains additional instructions and tutorials.

Your first assignment in the Wiki will be to create a user ID for you to log into Wikispaces and for myself and your fellow students to identify who you are. It is **Very IMPORTANT** that when joining Wikispaces for this class, you must use our **course number, your first initial and your last name** (i.e. for John Doe, use: hsa6112_Jdoe) as your username to help identify you. If you have registered before for another of my courses, you can use that registered name as long as it identifies you name and last name. **NOTE**: **If you login as “guest” or with a different name, I will not know who you are and you may not receive credit for work posted.**

In this Wiki you will learn more about the details for all the wiki assignments for this course. Here you will find detailed instructions and format guidelines using the navigation section on the left. Once you receive the invitation and Join, you should use the designated "space" for your specific assignment: As a member of the Minister of Health (MOH) team of a given country you will be given editing rights to the wiki space “country-**moh**-fall13” (i.e.canada-moh-fall13) and you will use it for the following 2 assignments (before you start each one of these 2 assignments you need to agree on who will be the MOH and the Deputy MOH. The third person in the team can be the Director of Planning and could be responsible for the coordination of the workshop and presentation of the project during the Symposium):


 * 1) A_2 the Health Sector Report of your country (Responsibility of the MOH); and
 * 2) A_2.1 Terms of Reference to hire your consultant for your "Development Grant Project" (Responsibility of the Deputy MOH) (That you should start as you develop your country report but not later than the end of week 5 and will complete in the Wiki by the end of week 6).

Those that are not in any of the MOH teams, will be the consultants. You will receive an email from your professor at the end of week 5 (**Consultants con get their sign in name [go to** http://www.wikispaces.com ] ** so you can start visiting the MOH Wikis and become familiar with the wikis, but should not start working on their Consultant Wikis until Week 6 ** ) and will be given editing rights to the wiki space “country- ** consult ** -fall17” (i.e. mexico-consult-fall17) that will be used for the following assignment:
 * 1) A_3 Consultants Report (//**Starting on week 6**//).

Your team will be the only members of the class authorized to edit and create pages in your country or consultants spaces, but you will be able to read and make comments (using the discussion tab of the respective Wikis) in all the countries by going to that Wiki.

Links are provided in the "Home" page of the course under “//**Wikis Links - MOH (Ministry of Health)**//” for all the country reports and TORs, and under “**//Wikis Links - Consultant Reports//**” for all the countries consultants' reports. These sections of the Course will be available after week 5 of the course once everybody has their assigned countries in the case of the MOH Wikis, and for the consultant reports.