FACULTY OF COMPUTING, INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND

MATHEMATICS

BUILDING A COLLABORATIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT BASED IN WIKI

TROCHIDIS CH. PANAGIOTIS

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF

KINGSTON UNIVERSITY FOR THE DEGREE OF MSC IN E-COMMERCE

SEPTEMBER 2009
®FACULTY OF CISM
 Abstract
This project aims in developing a computer supported collaborative environment for the
needs of “Requirements Engineering” course of E – commerce – University of Kingston,
London – Postgraduate program. The final outcome is a website which supports students and
teachers in participating to the learning procedure. The environment is based in wiki
philosophy. For the selection of the appropriate wiki engine a part of this dissertation
dedicated in developing a guideline for the selection of the appropriate wiki engine. Many
wiki engines exist so a selection for the appropriate one has to be done. The engine chosen is
the “Mediawiki” engine. Students and teachers use the wiki web site in order to solve
problems using the collaborative learning method. Teachers and students or even other people
can have access to the wiki site making their contribution in problems solving, evaluating and
commenting in students approaches or even make argumentations.

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To my father
Christo

To my mother
Christina

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For the fulfillment of this dissertation, first of all, I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr.
Yanni Psaromiligko, to whom I am deeply grateful for his enlightening comments, his
detailed and prompt feedback and his patience during the long hours of supervision. Of
course, but not least, I am deeply obliged to my family, whose enthusiastic support and
understanding all the way through have been more than inspiring. Last, I would like to thank
God Who give me the competencies to end this master course.

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Table of Contents
Abstract .......................................................................................................................... 1
Table of Contents ........................................................................................................... 4
1 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 6
1.1 Problem Definition .......................................................................................... 6
1.2 Objectives ........................................................................................................ 6
1.3 Research Methodology and project layout ...................................................... 7
2 Collaborative Learning: Issues, Systems & Trends ............................................... 8
2.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................... 8
2.1.1 The importance of scale ......................................................................... 10
2.1.2 What is “Learning”? .............................................................................. 10
2.1.3 What is “Collaboration”? ...................................................................... 11
2.2 Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) ................................. 12
2.2.1 Technical characteristics and prerequisites ............................................ 12
2.2.2 CSCL (Roles and Scenarios) ................................................................. 12
2.3 Collaborative process and requirements for collaborative learning
environments ............................................................................................................ 13
2.4 Systems that support collaborative activities ................................................ 15
2.4.1 Messaging Systems ................................................................................ 16
2.4.2 Conference Systems ............................................................................... 17
2.4.1 (Collective) Writing and Argumentation Systems ................................. 18
2.5 Conclusions ................................................................................................... 19
3 Wiki Tools: Review and Functionality Analysis ................................................. 21
3.1 Definition ...................................................................................................... 21
3.2 History ........................................................................................................... 22
3.3 Features ......................................................................................................... 22
3.3.1 Pages and editing ................................................................................... 23
3.3.2 Searching................................................................................................ 24
3.3.3 Changes .................................................................................................. 24
3.3.4 Bad uses ................................................................................................. 24
3.4 Wikis and Features to study .......................................................................... 25
3.5 MediaWiki..................................................................................................... 25
3.5.1 Features .................................................................................................. 26
3.5.2 Pros and cons ......................................................................................... 27
3.6 DocuWiki ...................................................................................................... 27
3.6.1 Features .................................................................................................. 28
3.6.2 Pros and cons ......................................................................................... 29
3.7 TikiWiki ........................................................................................................ 30
3.7.1 Features .................................................................................................. 30
3.7.2 Pros and Cons ........................................................................................ 32
3.8 TWiki ............................................................................................................ 32
3.8.1 Features .................................................................................................. 33
3.8.2 Pros and Cons ........................................................................................ 34
3.9 Wiki comparison ........................................................................................... 35
3.9.1 General Features .................................................................................... 36
3.9.1 Page Features ......................................................................................... 36
3.9.2 Text formatting rules.............................................................................. 38
3.9.3 Link features .......................................................................................... 40
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 3.9.4 Standards and validation features .......................................................... 41
3.9.5 Management features ............................................................................. 42
3.9.6 Other Features ........................................................................................ 43
3.10 Conclusions ............................................................................................... 44
4 Developing a guideline for selecting a wiki tool: an overview ........................... 46
4.1 Introduction ................................................................................................... 46
4.2 Page features ................................................................................................. 49
4.2.1 Printer Friendly ...................................................................................... 49
4.2.2 Preview pane .......................................................................................... 50
4.2.3 Recent changes....................................................................................... 50
4.2.4 History Page ........................................................................................... 51
4.2.5 Search..................................................................................................... 51
4.2.6 Comments .............................................................................................. 52
4.3 Text Formatting Rules ................................................................................... 53
4.3.1 Text Editor ............................................................................................. 53
4.3.2 Edit Conflict Detection .......................................................................... 53
4.3.3 Section Editing ....................................................................................... 54
4.3.4 Syntax Tutorial....................................................................................... 54
4.4 Link Features ................................................................................................. 55
4.4.1 Trace Route ............................................................................................ 55
4.4.2 File Attachment ...................................................................................... 56
4.4.3 Inline Image ........................................................................................... 57
4.5 Management Features ................................................................................... 58
4.5.1 User Profile ............................................................................................ 58
4.5.2 Authentication ........................................................................................ 58
4.5.3 Statistics ................................................................................................. 59
4.5.4 Page – Change Notification ................................................................... 60
4.6 Extra Features ................................................................................................ 60
4.6.1 Forum ..................................................................................................... 61
4.6.2 Calendar ................................................................................................. 61
4.6.3 Editing Toolbar ...................................................................................... 62
4.6.4 FAQs ...................................................................................................... 62
4.6.5 Table of Contents ................................................................................... 63
5 Building a collaborative learning environment based in wiki ............................. 64
5.1 Abstract ......................................................................................................... 64
5.2 Overview ....................................................................................................... 64
5.3 Defining the Requirements............................................................................ 66
5.4 Design of the Portal ....................................................................................... 72
5.5 Implementation.............................................................................................. 79
5.5.1 Setting up the server............................................................................... 79
5.5.2 Setting up the wiki ................................................................................. 79
5.5.3 Creating Pages ....................................................................................... 82
5.5.4 Adding contents ..................................................................................... 83
5.6 Interwiki links ............................................................................................... 88
5.6.1 Creating tables ....................................................................................... 92
5.7 Testing ........................................................................................................... 92
6 Conclusions and Recommendations .................................................................... 99
6.1 Future research directions ........................................................................... 100
References and bibliography...................................................................................... 101
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 1 Introduction

1.1 Problem Definition

Today in years of rapid knowledge and technological revolution, education faces new
challenges. The use of World Wide Web and computers has given a boost in methods
and practices of learning and in adopting knowledge. Thus education should take the
chance and use those technologies in order to improve the outcomes. One of the
educational methods which could be benefit the most by the usage of the new
technologies is the Collaborative Learning.
Collaborative Learning needs common and shared space available for all
participants, no matter if there is a physical proximity between them or not. This
means the ability to have a space in which each member can have and share
documents, files, arguments (can write or edit text), opinions and so on. Also this
shared space should be available everywhere in every time and it should be easy to
use for every member.
Wiki technology can be proved beneficial for collaborative learning as it can
fulfill many of its requirements. It uses internet and WWW, it can provide a shared
space and it can be used for every member as long as one’s has access to web browser
and to internet connection. There are many wiki tools which can be used and many
approaches that can be followed. But which one is the most appropriate in the bounds
of an educational organization which wishes to use a wiki tool in order to provide a
collaboration space for the needs of a specific course?

1.2 Objectives
Having defined the problem about the usage of a wiki tool in order to build a collaborative
learning environment we can proceed to the citation of the problem’s objectives:
 It will conduct literature review to Computer Supported Collaborative Environment
 It will conduct literature review to wiki tools and wiki engines
 It will perform an evaluation study on some well-known wiki engines according to
functionality and usability criteria

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  It will make a guideline for selecting a wiki tool for collaboration learning
environments
 It will develop a small scale wiki project using an open source and freely
redistributable wiki engine
 It will evaluate the wiki
 It will make recommendations for future research directions

1.3 Research Methodology and project layout

This thesis evaluates some well known wiki engines in order to choose the one that best fits
the current case. The evaluation based on each wikis’ engine features. Moreover, this project
tried to develop a guideline for selecting a wiki tool according to five criteria (Page Features,
Text Formatting Rules, Link Features, Management Features and Extra Features). Also
this project tried to investigate the collaboration aspect wiki engines and the underlying tools
and finally we will develop a small scale wiki site project using an open source wiki engine
(mediawiki).

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 2 Collaborative Learning: Issues, Systems &
Trends

2.1 Introduction
One of the basic and crucial requirements for today’s education is to prepare students to
participate in a networked, information – based society in which information and the
successfully handle of them will be the most crucial resource for economical and social
development. Last years, researchers are working in a promising innovation, which called
Computer Supported Collaboration Learning (CSCL), to improve teaching and learning
methods, which is based in usage of modern information and communication technologies,
like computers – internet – local area networks and wide area networks. Collaborative
learning refers to pedagogical methods whereby learners are encouraged to work in groups. It
differentiates from traditional learning process in which the teacher is assumed to be the
distributor of knowledge and skills and students the receivers. A distinction between
collaboration and cooperation must be done in this point. The distinction it is based in the
different roles and participation of each member in the activity. In general, collaboration
means that each student is a part of coordinated effort which tries to solve the problem as one
part whereas in cooperation the labor is divided among the participants.

Much advancement has been made in last decades in development tools for
collaborative learning. Although, there are many tools that support communication among
people and groups, like e-mail, blogs, networks, screen sharing tools, instant messengers,
electronic bulletin boards and many others, none of them can support collaboration fully.

This chapter narrates the main elements of our thesis. Collaborative learning, Computer
supported collaborative learning and systems that support it, scenarios and requirements, a
literature review, issues, trends and systems.

Collaboration learning is a term that is been used widely and is essential to give some
definitions. Collaborative learning is an umbrella term for a variety of approaches in
education that involve joint intellectual effort by students or students and teachers.
Collaborative learning refers to methodologies and environments in which learners engage in
a common task in which each individual depends on and is accountable to each other. Groups
of students work together in searching for understanding, meanings or solutions or in creating

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an artifact of their learning such as a product. The approach is closely related to cooperative
learning. Collaborative learning activities can include collaborative writing, group projects
and other activities. To summarize we can tell that “collaborative learning is a situation in
which two or more people learn or attempt to learn something together” [1].

It is obvious that the previous determination raises some questions to be asked:

1. What will be the size of the group?

2. What will be the time span?

3. What we mean with the term “learning”?

4. What we mean with the term “collaboration”?

Also in this chapter we make an attempt to examine the basic parameters which take
part in the construction of a computer supported collaboration system and to define the way
that systems should function in terms of distance learning. Moreover, we mention the various
tools categories used for collaboration and explain how they can be deployed. But the basic
question in which this chapters is trying to give an answer is in which degree the existing
collaboration tools can support and enhance collaboration learning, as well as, which is the
direction for the development of such systems in the future.

According to [1]
“Collaborative technologies support the learning objective of the
change of the intellectual model and the change of the behavior, in relation to the education
that is focused at group learning. The collaborative technologies offer a rich, shared virtual
workspace where interactions do not only occur between person and technology but as
interpersonal communication of many-to-many people who share a common goal. These
interactions can be accommodated and regulated by a coordinator-teacher”.
The previous paragraph is a good point of reference since it includes the most essential
components that concern collaboration. The intellectual model of members, the change in the
behavior, the interpersonal communication, the shared workspaces and their agreement -
engagement towards a common objective are the most crucial of them.
At this point we should make a distinction among the two types of learning -
synchronous and asynchronous learning:

[1] Dillenbourg P., “Collaborative-learning: Cognitive and Computational Approaches”, Oxford, UK: Elsevier
Science, 1999
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 1. Synchronous learning takes place when two or more people are
communicating in real time even if they may be in different geographical
places. Sitting in a classroom, talking on the telephone, sharing data and
information via web, chatting via instant messaging and so on are examples
of synchronous communication. Synchronous communication demands that
both teachers and trainees are simultaneous and consistently connected.
2. Asynchronous learning is thought to be more flexible. The teaching takes
place at one time and is preserved for the learner to participate in whenever
the time is most convenient for him or her. Technology such as email, e -
courses, on - line forums, audio and video recordings can make this possible.

So in this chapter we make an introduction in collaborative learning in paragraph 2.2.

Paragraph 2.3 discusses the environments, the activities, the characteristics of a collaboration
activities, makes a distinction between collaboration and simple interaction in
communication. It sets the prerequisites and the requirements for a successful collaboration
system which can support teaching / learning, as well as, gives special attention in social,
physical and technological protocols necessary for interpersonal communication. In section
2.4 we attempt a classification of collaboration systems and how these systems satisfy the
requirements stated in paragraph 2.3. Finally, the paragraph 2.5 concludes the chapter.

2.1.1 The importance of scale

A crucial factor which affects collaboration process is - what so called - the scale. For
example, the number of people taking part in a group, as well as, the time period that
collaboration last, are crucial factors which have to be seriously considered before developing
a collaboration environment. Also, collaboration means things that we do together and
probably in same time, so we need synchronous communications contrariwise cooperation -
which means splitting the job in section – which is more associated with asynchronous
communications.

2.1.2 What is “Learning”?

Learning is [1]:

 “Any collaborative activity within an educational context, such as studying

course material or sharing course assignments”
 “Learning is expected to occur as a side-effect of problem solving”

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  “Learning refers to the lifelong acquisition of expertise within a professional
community”

The collaboration learning can be seen from two different aspects (Dillenbourg P, 1999):

1. Psychological aspect: meaning that collaboration can be viewed as a mechanism

that caused learning
2. Pedagogical aspect: meaning that learning will be more efficient if it happens
through collaboration

When people collaborate, thus interacting each other, some activities are been implied
(exchange of knowledge, explanation, disagreements etc). In order to make collaboration
systems more valuable we have to focus on (Dillenbourg P, 1999):

 Setting up initial conditions

 Specifying the interaction rules in the medium
 Using scenario based roles as a “collaboration contract” between
collaborators
 Monitoring and regulating the interactions

2.1.3 What is “Collaboration”?

According to Wikipedia [2]:

“Collaboration is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work

together towards an intersection of common goals by sharing knowledge, learning and
building consensus”.

Collaboration does not require leadership but requires structured methods in order to
encourage introspection of behavior and communication. These methods specifically aim to
increase the success of teams as they engage in collaborative problem solving. Thus, it is
necessary to know a priori the types of interactions in order to maximize the benefits that
collaborative tools can provide.

[2] Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative, accessed 10/08/2009

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 2.2 Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning
(CSCL)
CSCL is a method for supporting collaborative learning which inherits many techniques and
principles (computers, networks, group psychology, software) from Computer Supported
Cooperative Work, running through research in computer science, psychology and education
collaborators’ communication and interaction rather than in communication techniques in
which CSCW focuses in.
CSCL focuses in supporting the main roles of collaboration systems using the
appropriate tools: the teacher, the learner, the teaching – learning process, building
knowledge, distributing knowledge, etc. There are many learning theories but CSCL is based
on constructivist learning theory where the learner is viewed as active processor of the
information. As mentioned above, CSCL can be classified in synchronous and asynchronous
systems, depending on the type of communication, as well as, in local and remote systems,
depending on their geographical status.
2.2.1 Technical characteristics and prerequisites

Software, systems and tools used for supporting CSCL must satisfy a number of
characteristics
1. Groups awareness

2. Coordination between members of the group

3. Assisting and facilitating the interactions between members of group

4. Consistent and with no or small delays

5. Ability to share information, privacy etc…

As concerns the technical characteristics of these systems, we have the typical requirements
[3]
of distributed systems . The same stands with the architecture of those systems (Client-
server, 3-tier architecture, tightly coupled etc.).

2.2.2 CSCL (Roles and Scenarios)

CSCL systems encourage the exchange of knowledge and information between people
assigning roles to participants:

[3] Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_computing, accessed 10/08/2009)

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  Tutor (responsible for the supervision)

 Learner (responsible for his / her own learning)

 Developer (responsible of designing and implementing the collaborative activities)

 Evaluator ( responsible for monitoring the interactions)

2.3 Collaborative process and requirements for

collaborative learning environments
Collaboration is a special type of coordinated activity, in the duration of which all the
participants work together for the achievement of a common goal or for carrying out all
required actions towards a common objective. Communication provides the necessary means
for the work group in order to accomplish common objectives (Grosz, B., Kraus S, 1996).

The term “common objective” is very important and plays crucial role in collaboration
activity. In order to make it more comprehensive, we must clarify the differences amongst
interaction and collaboration. “Interaction is when someone does an action on something or
someone with no expectation of acceptance or knowledge of the final outcome from all the
other members. On the other hand, collaboration implies the mutual effort of all members
towards a common goal” [4]
. The phrase “mutual effort of all members towards a common
goal” is the key which differentiates collaboration from interaction. For example, students
collaborate trying to find the solution in a specific mathematical problem, as well as, teachers
collaborate for the preparation of mathematical problems. Finally students collaborate with
teachers in order to learn specific educational concepts by solving the problem.

As concern the participants’ roles, the relation between teacher – student in

collaboration model different much from the traditional learning model “master – slave”
(figure 2.1) in which there is no collaboration between students and teachers. In traditional
learning model, teacher is “feeding” the students with information, observes their reactions
and continues the “feeding”. No collaboration at all. But if we want to pass to the
collaboration model we have to investigate the participants’ intentions. Does the teacher
shares with students the information about learning objectives and learning processes? Do
they have (the teachers) the intention to encourage students to participate in learning
procedures? Have the students the intention to assist teachers in the achievement of common

[4] Grosz, B., Kraus, S., Collaborative Plans for Complex Group Action. Artificial Intelligence, 86(2), Oct. 1996.

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goals (learning objective)? Of course, collaboration involves participants with different
perception, abilities, level of contribution etc. but it is assumed that all of them are engaged
towards to common goals.
The major concept in collaboration is the contribution to the mutual action and to the
common goal. For example, we have two students trying to write a computer program
(common goal) using a programming language. They have split the programming task in two
sections. Each of the students does not only intend to write his/her section but also to assist
his/her colleague when it is required (joint action).

Figure 2.1Traditional Learning

Systems that intend to support collaboration should provide in a clearly way the
responsibilities of each participant, as well as, to provide assistance for the coordination of
their action towards the achievement of common goals. To summarize, we can tell that
collaboration technologies should support participants by clearly specifying their behavior in
relation to their abilities, their perceptions and their responsibilities. Also they should support
members in the planning and consistent advancements towards common goals.

In order to develop collaboration systems we have to set up requirements based on the

understanding of the practices that are followed by the teams, as well as, the natural and
organizational scope that these activities taking place. Further down we are discussing the
principles and the assumptions for designing collaborative environments.

Some special issues are the restrictions and the constraints in time and spaces that
affect collaboration activities. Physical places that collaboration process occur are becoming
less traditional (in airplanes, in hotel rooms, in houses, in rail stations, etc.), since computers
can be transferred and connect to the internet wherever a provision of internet access is
available. Another issue is the technological infrastructure such as computer platform, speed
of internet connection, quality of service, network infrastructure and in general, technological
tools and methods that play important role and have to be appropriate selected in order to
support collaboration.
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 Beyond the issues mentioned above and in regard to the interaction and communication
between collaborators, there are some social protocols which influence the will of members to
communicate, to participate and to real contribute in common effort. These are the ability to
communicate - sometimes in an arbitrary, unconventional and without plan way with other
members, the ability to disclose each member identity and the degree of each participant
involvement to the whole procedure. Also, depending on the type of the task, sometimes the
anonymity is desirable. These issues may seem that are against the collaborative activity and
processes but in some cases they might be proved beneficial. For example, the unconventional
communication could be proved beneficial in building confidence and partnership between
collaborators. As regard anonymity, it can be also proved useful in cases where is asked from
students to sincerely express their opinion about (for example) the educational process, the
tutors or even the other students. In general, anonymity reduces the stress that students or
collaborators feel in a collaborative environment.

No we can summarize the issues that are relating with the designing and development
of a collaborative environment:

 Support collaboration as regards the physical bounds and capabilities for

flexible adjustments according to physical bounds

 Support collaboration as regards organizational bounds and capabilities for

flexible adjustments according to organizational bounds

 Support for arbitrary, informal and unplanned communication

 Support for anonymity

 Support for notification of the participants and for their state.

2.4 Systems that support collaborative activities

Systems which support collaboration activities can be categorized in two vertical categories:

1. Systems which support synchronous or asynchronous collaboration

2. Systems which support collaboration between collaborators that are naturally

approachable or not

Asynchronous collaboration provided by systems of message exchanging, certain

conferencing systems and systems of collective writing and argumentation. In the other hand,
synchronous collaboration is provided by systems that support real time conference. With the

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exception of systems of collective writing and argumentation, which are mainly used from
individuals with physical proximity, all categories of systems mainly aim to collaborators
without physical proximity.

2.4.1 Messaging Systems

Messaging systems give the ability to individuals to collaborate by exchanging messages,
for example using electronic mail. Some systems are based on formal forms of imprinting
messages and on techniques for the classification and recognition of messages, indexing and
retrieving information and on recommendation systems which provide recommended
information. But usually messaging systems do not impose any structure to be used in
messages.

Messaging systems contain traditional systems of electronic post, sessions of

messaging and structured discussions and tables of announcements / discussions. These
systems provide many functions which can support in essence collaborative environments.
For example, messaging systems, beyond the functionality of sending and receiving
messages, can be used for sending documents and media files such presentations, video clips,
sound media etc. They can provide a space to each individual in order to receive, send, storing
and editing messages. This space can be shared or private for each individual. The users of
these systems can join groups of discussion, exchange personal messages or share messages,
intervene in sequences of messages. The system can detect and measure each individual’s
entanglement. This can be done by the number of messages that a person read and sends,
[5]
providing useful information to the tutors. Examples of such systems are the TeamRoom
[6]
and BSCW . All modern systems which support educational material can provide this kind
of functionality.

Messaging systems can be evaluated according to the required characteristics and

functionality they provide. More specifically:

 Messaging systems must be accessible at any time, from anywhere, no matter

which hardware or operating system is in use. Also, it should be no demand for
big requirements in calculating platform or in the bandwidth of the network.

[5] Teamroom is a Lotus Notes application designed to support processes that help people work together
[6] BSCW is a web based collaboration / groupware environment

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  Messaging systems should be flexible enough to allow their use in existing
organizational frames, allowing users to use them according to their main
practices in the context of their work.
 Messaging systems should provide inter-personality, cohesion and the
perception of a consequence in collaborative activities.

 Messaging systems should support unplanned, arbitrary and informal

communication.

 Messaging systems should have a mechanism to notify users and depicting

their status.
 Messaging systems should allow users to participate anonymously.

2.4.2 Conference Systems

Conference systems allow communication and interaction (synchronous or asynchronous)
between users in a common space. The common space in the asynchronous interaction is the
same as in messaging systems. In the synchronous systems, we have a common interpersonal
space. The existing technologies (e.g. systems like video – conferencing, videophone etc.)
offer visual contact between users. Such technologies constitute the “media – spaces” [7]
as
well as, tele – videoconference tools such as “NetMeeting” , “classpoint”
[8] [9]
and “Cu –
SeeMe” [10]
.

Conference systems have some demands as regards required infrastructure. Forceful

hardware and adequate network bandwidth, software such as video and sound coders –
decoders, services carefully planned in order to support quality of service and giving abilities
to users to select for example only the transfer of audio or video, in a low or high quality. In
general, video conference software systems are great tools to use in open and distant
education. Conference systems provide support for notifying users and give information about
their status. Also, as messaging system, conference systems support anonymity and
information about persons’ participation and effort as regard the common task.

[7] Media – spaces are "electronic settings in which groups of people can work together, even when they are not
present in the same place and time
[8] A VoIP and multi-point videoconferencing client included in many versions of Microsoft Windows (from
Windows 95 OSR2 to Windows XP
[9] ClassPoint is a free online community for planning, discussing, and reviewing your course
[10] CU-SeeMe is an Internet video-conferencing client

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 2.4.1 (Collective) Writing and Argumentation Systems
Collaborative writers also produce big volumes of documents. This exactly is the objective of
collective writing systems, to support the collaborative action required for the production of a
document. These systems were initially designed in order to support asynchronous
collaboration but recent changes in technology and in collaborators’ needs forced them to
involve in order to support synchronous collaboration.
Asynchronous model of writing prescribes comments and reviews to be added in a
part of document by using hypermedia or hypertext technology. This allows users to add new
comments (hyperlinks) in a way that is independent from other users. In order to avoid
inconsistency when two or more users intervene in a document, the system should support:

1. The organization of relative groups of hypermedia links, nodes and contacts

2. The simultaneous intervention in the same document with security and the
ability to merge those changes in specific time intervals

3. The maintenance of different versions of the same document

4. The distribution of the hypertext to, as long as possible, bigger number of

writers.

On the other hand, synchronous systems allow collaborators to work simultaneously. This
category of tools is called group editors. Group editors aim at the synchronous briefing of
collaborative parts about the alterations that occur in a document. In fact, group editors
provide a shared working place in which collaborators can organize and write down ideas.
These systems should support the following operations (Prakash, A., 1999):

1. Provision of information about the number and the state of participants that
remain in a group session

2. Good times in responding and tolerance against errors

3. Assurance for the data even if parallel activities are taking place

4. Support for richly text structure

5. Usage as a personal text writer

Argumentation systems are based in the same principles as systems of collective writing. The
aim of these systems is to support interaction for the participants by presenting their
arguments. This is done by allowing users to set their discussion points in the form of
18
hyperlinks. Participants set their position in favor or against the subject under discussion and
the argumentation system correlates the arguments automatically, following some predefined
rules. Some well knows argumentation systems are the SEPIA (Streitz N., Haake, J.,
Hannemann, J., Lemke, A., Schuler, W., Schuett, H., Thuering, M., 1992), IBIS – gIBIS
Conklin J., 1987) and HERMES (Karacapilidis, N., Papadias, D. Hermes, 1998).

Systems of collective writing and argumentation do not require constant and reliable
communication between collaborative parts, so they can be utilized in various physical
[11]
contexts. Moreover, the standard T120 in which those systems are based on, supports
various types of networking technologies such as ISDN, PSTN, TCP / IP, IPX and it is
independent of the operating system in use. Also those systems can be integrated in everyday
workflow in agreement with working practices. Argumentation systems support negotiation
among collaborators, negotiation, presentation of their strategies that will follow and the
decision making environment required for the achievement of their objectives. These systems
not only support the joint development of a document but they can also be used for the
planning of documents. Examples of such systems are the Cooltalk and the Dolphin (Mark,
G., Haake J.M., Streitz, 1995). Systems of argumentation and collective writing do not aim in
informal and unplanned communication but in the contrary they support the formal
communication by facilitate the whole process. Moreover these systems provide information
about the remaining members as well as, their profiles, their status and their involvement in
the whole collaborative action. We have to mention that these systems do not support
anonymous participation.

2.5 Conclusions
In this chapter we make a distinction between collaboration and cooperation. In collaboration,
a group of people work together towards a common goal whereas in cooperation the work is
been split among persons that constitute the group. Crucial terms such as “learning” and
“collaboration” have been discussed, as well as, terms that we must consider seriously when
a learning activity taking place such as the groups size, the number of groups, the profile of
the participants, etc. Computer Supported Collaboration Learning and tools supporting these
environments, prerequisites and technical characteristics has been discussed also. It has been
stated that collaborative technologies should assist collaborative parts in their effort for better
performance and collaboration in connection with their abilities, perception and their
engagement towards to a common goal.

[11] http://www.packetizer.com/ipmc/t120/primer/

19
These technologies should offer shared virtual spaces, rich in functionalities where
communication between many – to – many persons can happen.One of the main questions
this chapter tried to answer is in which degree the existing collaboration tools are adequate to
support collaborative learning and in which direction future research on collaborative tools
should be headed.

20
 3 Wiki Tools: Review and Functionality Analysis
There are many CSCL systems, some are synchronous and some other asynchronous.
Examples of such systems are wikis, blogs, mailing systems, learning object repositories,
learning management systems, online whiteboards, knowledge bases and other. In this chapter
we will study the wiki systems.

Wiki systems are, above all, web applications, web sites we can tell. The basic
characteristic that differentiates wikis from other web applications and web sites is that allow
users to add and edit its content freely, in a simple human – based way even if the users are
not familiar with HTML or other web language. Below we will study and present the most
representative wiki tools (engines), giving attention in their main features and comparing
them using comparative tables.

3.1 Definition

A wiki is a web application, working a web site or forum allowing anyone to add and edit its
content freely using a markup language. Cunningham (Leuf, B., Cunningham, W.,2001)
defines wiki as “The simplest online database that could possibly work”. Wiki is a piece of
server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web
browser. Wiki supports hyperlinks and has simple text syntax for creating new pages and
crosslinks between internal pages on the fly. Wiki is unusual among group communication
mechanisms in that it allows the organization of contributions to be edited in addition to the
content itself.”

Wiki belongs to groupware collaborative software category (Rodden, T., 2005). The
main elements of wiki software are a web server (such as apache, IIS etc) and a wiki engine
which applies the wiki functionality. Examples of wiki engines are the mediawiki, twiki,
docuwiki, moinmoin etc. Some developers choose to supply both web server, PHP machine
and wiki engine in one packet from more convenience since the installation can be easier and
problems that have to do with the components’ functionality can be avoided.

The philosophy of wiki engines is that of freely developing and distributing the source
[12]
code to anyone. Thus, most of them are published under GNU general project public
license. In fact, some well known wiki engines, such as mediawiki and twiki are the result of a

[12] http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

21
collaborative effort from thousands contributors all over the world. Wikis are based in
modular architecture allowing their development to be based in APIs making easier for
developers to add new functionalities using existing code. Cunningham (Leuf, B.,
Cunningham W., 2001) summarizes the unbeatable advantages of wikis:

“Like many simple concepts, open editing has some profound and subtle effects on Wiki
usage. Allowing everyday users to create and edit any page in a Web site is exciting in that it
encourages democratic use of the Web and promotes content composition by nontechnical
users.”

3.2 History
The roots of wiki software lead us to the design pattern community (Gamma E., Helm R.,
Johnson R., and Vlissides J., 1995) where three people, Cristopher Alexander (an architect),
Kent Beck and Ward Cunningham (computers scientists) developed a software implementing
the idea of pattern design. The first program they produced was the “Portland Pattern
Repository” (Leuf, B., Cunningham W., 2001), (Aigrain, Philippe, 2003) which implemented
on March 25, 1995 and in fact was the first wiki. Wiki took their name from a Hawaiian term,
the “wikiwiki” which means “quick” and “informal” and someone can see them in shuttle
buses that service the terminal stations at Honolulu’s international airport. Cunningham chose
the term wikiwiki as he want to avoid the usage of “quick – web” as a description for his new
software. The potential of wiki software was recognized in the late of 90s.

One of the most well known and important project which is based in wiki software is
the Wikipedia [13]. Wikipedia uses the free and open source mediawiki [14] engine and started to
operate in January of 2001. Wikipedia has become popular cause of his vast amount of
articles, the various languages that supports and of the collaborative nature of the written
content. Anyone can freely view, edit and add content in Wikipedia. Currently Wikipedia is
on the top ten list in most visited websites worldwide (Bruns, A., Humphreys, S., 2005).

3.3 Features
Everyone can have access to a wiki site; the only demands are an internet connection and a
web browser in order to add / edit wiki pages. Wiki pages are interconnected via hyperlinks
and in most cases are easy to edit. Also there are numerous wiki sites in the web which do not
require registration in order to have access and to edit pages.

[13] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
[14] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki

22
 3.3.1 Pages and editing
A wiki page has three views or representations:

i. The source view in which the user uses his / her web browser in order to edit
pages

ii. The template view which determines the elements of the pages and how they
appear

iii. The HTML – view which in this view is presented the rendered output of the
HTML code.

In table 3.1 we give an example of the above:

Table 3.1 Representations of a Page in a Wiki Engine

Wiki syntax (MediaWiki) HTML Rendered output

"''Pano''? No other word? A <p> "Pano? No other word? A stupid?

''stupid''? And you never put you
mind in your head?"
"Why, certainly," replied Panos.
"We're all stupid more or less.
After all, we're not so much a
world as dust in the wind."
And you never put you mind in
"<i>Pano</i>? No other word? your head?"
A <i> stupid </i>? And you
never put you mind in your "Why, certainly," replied Panos.
head?" "We're all stupid more or less.
</p> After all, we're not so much a
<p> world as dust in the wind."
"Why, certainly," replied
Panos. "We're all stupid more
or less. After all, we're not so
much a world as dust in the
wind."
</p>

In general wikis promote the usage of a simplified markup language for editing pages. This
format is more human readable and requires a very small effort from users to learn how to use
it. For example the “ * ” character implies a bulletin list. Still there are some wiki
implementations which use HTML tags or even HTML code and some others which allow
users to edit pages using CSS, Javascript, ActiveX and same technologies, focusing on look
and feel, as well as, in the safety of wiki pages. But today it’s a common concern that a usage
of a unified or standard syntax should be adopted.

23
 3.3.2 Searching
Most of wiki engines provide facilities for searching through pages. This feature includes a
title search and in many cases a full text search facility. The use of a database or an index can
maximize the speed and the scalability of the search engine.

3.3.3 Changes
In general, wikis allow easy implementations of changes. In cases of large amount of changes,
wikis provide some extra tools for managing changes. The majority of them provide a
“Recent changes” page which gives information about recent edits in a specific page or lists
of all edits that took place within a specific period of time. Other functionalities that can be
found in most wiki engines are the “Revision History” and the “Diff Features”. The first
function can provide previous versions of an article while the second can show changes in a
page in order to check for unacceptable one. Other wikis can provide an “online” monitoring
of changes for a specific page and then asking from users to verify the changes.

3.3.4 Bad uses

Because of the open philosophy wikis are prone to bad uses. If this is taking place in a large
scale can became a major problem and in some cases to cannibalize the content of the wiki. In
order to overcome these situations, wikis adopt functions which can easily undo the damages.

Some wikis (mediawiki, tikiwiki, twiki) use other approaches, using the IP address of
the users in order to identify them or asking them to register in order to gain write and edit
access. The identification based on IP address could be insufficient as ISPs change their
users’ IP address often. Registration, in the other hand, is a simple procedure but some wikis
have policies that do not allow recently registered users with the privilege to write or edit the
pages.

In general, the more restricted is a wiki the more slowly grow as regards the number of
the participants and consequently the number of the articles. But there is no standard policy in
order to avoid bad uses. The best policy depends on the scale of the wiki and in the number of
defacements in a specific period of time. Emergency functions, such as switching wiki’s
database in a read only state or allowing editing only to the registered users are being adopted
by some wiki engines. Also the good tracking and an easy undo of the changes can cause bad
uses to be easily reverted.

24
 3.4 Wikis and Features to study
In order to study the main features of wikis we had to choose some of them from about
thirteen which are available at this moment. We choose to study four wiki engines, the more
important and representative ones [15]. These are:

I. MediaWiki: The most popular and interesting engine. It stands behind the popular
Wikipedia site

II. DocuWiki: One of the simplest wiki engines out there. It is the most used one and the
most documented

III. TikiWiki: Probably the most famous one and probably the most complete one. It
includes many functions such as discussion forums, blogs, articles sections and other.
Also it has a very good documentation

IV. TWiki: This wiki engine has a very interesting feature. Unlike other wikis, twiki is
build using perl language instead of PHP.

In order to evaluate those wikis, we had to install them using an appropriate web server,
as well as, software such PHP and Perl. Also an SQL database server installation is
required, in the present case MySQL package, which freely available.

In the following section we are going to analyze and compare the wiki tools. We will define
the parameters in which the evaluation of wikis will be done. Then, we will pay attention in
each wiki’s features (an example of these, Recent changes, Section editing, Revision etc),
analyzing the pros and the cons of each one.

3.5 MediaWiki
Mediawiki is an open source software and it’s being published under GPL (General Public
[16] [17]
License) license. The development is based in sourceforge and bugzilla . The latest
version until today is 1.15.0 (22-07-2009).

[15] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TopTenWikiEngines.
[16] http://sourceforge.net/
[17] http://www.bugzilla.org/

25
 3.5.1 Features
The main features of MediaWiki are [18]:

 Support links with shortcuts

 Support for User Styles, where CSS can be used to change the look of the site

 Provides several skins where someone can change the look and the feel of the site in
one “click”

 Support for printable version of the articles

 Support for Stub threshold which is a feature which allow users to see links in
articles below a certain size rendered in a different color

 Support generation of table of contents

 Support for auto – numbered headings

 Support XHTML – compatible output

 Support of automatic translation of ISBN numbers into links to actual booksellers

 Support for File uploading of files and media

Figure 3.2 Mediawiki interface

[18] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:MediaWiki_feature_list

26
  Support of insertion of mathematical formulas

 Support for Egyptian hieroglyphs using WikiHiero

 Support for automatic resizing of images

3.5.2 Pros and cons

The pros of MediaWiki are briefly the below:

 Wikipedia has been developed by using MediaWiki. Wikipedia is the most popular
site in the web

 Automatically creation of content menus when a page has three or more sections

 Support for Mail notifications for users who have subscribed to articles

 Support for user profiles where a user can use his / her personal settings

 Provision of Conflict detection mechanism when a conflict is detected in articles.

Also provide ability of merging non conflicting changes

 Provision of various Statistics such as “Most popular” and “Least popular”

 Supports Mathematical formulas

 Support Multiple languages and support UTF-8 standard

The cons of Mediawiki are:

 Does not allow the editing of a part of a page, instead it just allow the editing of
whole page

 Mediawiki does not support Footnotes text syntax

 Does not provide quick access to CSS compliant

3.6 DocuWiki
DocuWiki it is targeted at developer teams, small companies and workgroups. It uses simple
but powerful syntax which make the creation of pages a simple procedure. All data are stored
in plain text files with no need of database. According to its site DocuWiki “is a standard
compliant, simple to use wiki, mainly aimed at creating documentation of any kind”.

27
 Figure 3.1. DokuWiki User Interface

3.6.1 Features
The main features of Docuwiki are:

 It uses plain text files

 It uses a simple syntax, quick buttons and access keys

 Allow users to edit part of pages by providing Section editing or partial page
editing

 Automatic generation of table of contents

 It support read only pages denying the editing

 Supports RSS feeds

 Provides a history of changes

 It provides side by side differences between pages by using colors

 Support for image uploading, embedding, caching and resizing

 Support for more than 25 Languages

 Supports page caching

28
  It provides an Edit conflict detection, which is a system that locks the page which is
been editing in order to prevent another user to edit the same page.

 Support from UTF-8

3.6.2 Pros and cons

The pros of docuwiki engine are:

 Creation of content menus, which are automatically created when tree or more
sections exist in the same page

 Provision of “back to the top” button

 Prevention of data loss

 Provide different colors for different kind of links (green color for local links, red
color for broken links and blue color for an external link)

 Compliant with XHTML standard and CSS levels

 Conflict detection on editing

 It categorizes and classifying the documents by using namespaces

 It uses raw text files for storing the documents

 It depends in one configuration file making more easy the configuration process

 Easy creation of themes and customizations

 It highlights the source code

 It allows to edit a part or a section of page instead of edit all the page

 It provides Backlinks, which make possible to trace all documents linking to a

specific page

 Provide abbreviations on how to make an editing more easy and quick

 Empty pages can be deleted by a simple procedure

The cons arguments are:

 It is not possible to align, center etc the text in a paragraph

29
  Docuwiki does not support an easy way to assign and manage permissions of users
making difficult the implementation of access control levels

 It faces problems when images are inserted in a document. For example, if the text
that encloses the image is smaller from the image, then the image it appears altered

 Do not offer by default a good level of security

3.7 TikiWiki
[16]
Also, also free and open source software, distributed under GNU license. TikiWiki
provides rich functionality both in area of groupware and in content management and it is
written in PHP language. Has one of the most active communities with more than 200 active
members.

Tikiwiki offers a number of modules and component that can be used to create and
customize web sites and portals. It can be used for the creation of simple web sites, as well as,
for big and complex sites supporting collaboration, groupware, chat rooms, forums and so on.

3.7.1 Features
The main features of tikiwiki are [19]:

 Provision of a history of pages or page revision

 Simple syntax and easy editing, with quick buttons and access keys

 Support for RSS feed

 InterWiki links

 Side by side differences between pages

 Easy navigation

 Image uploading, caching, resizing and embedding

 Multilanguage support with more than 23 languages supported

[19] http://info.tikiwiki.org/tiki-index.php

30
 Figure 3.2 Tikiwiki user interface

 Image galleries

 Comments in various of places across pages

 File galleries, supporting statistics and ranking mechanisms

 Blogs, private blogs, RSS output, XMLRPC interface etc

 Forums, supporting all features of a common forum such as, topics, threads, posting
messages etc

 FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions), supporting grouping the FAQs by type,

association with categories, searching facilities and suggestions by users

 Support for polls, in an easy way, polls can be created in a numerous of pages
allowing users with the appropriate privileges to vote and see the results

 Categorization system, which allows the browsing in the pages based in

classification of variety elements of the wiki, such as blogs, images, articles and so on

 Quizzes, which allow users to built questionnaires and surveys

31
  Maps

 Search facilities with advanced options and features

 Mobile tiki and voice tiki allowing wiki sites to be displayed in mobile phones and
mobile devices. For example, WAP, PDA or i-mode versions

3.7.2 Pros and Cons

The pros arguments are:

 It confronts to the XHTML and CSS standards

 It uses different colors for different kind of links

 Support conflict detection on editing

 Page change notifications, which help on tracking pages changes

 “Backlinks” buttons, which alludes the pages that they link with the current

 Provision of quick access buttons, such as “lock page”, “attach file”, “permission
of page” when a user edits a page

 A complete tool bar with all different text format to give in a editing text

 Support for discussion forums, weblogs, article section, calendar, FAQs etc

 Colored text

 Allow to use HTML code

 Support for Tags of the Wiki state. A very useful feature which can restore wiki to a
previous state in cases that the wiki has become or turns to become unstable

The cons arguments are:

 Does not support editing a part of a page, it just allows the editing o the whole page

 It is not easy to place an image correctly into pages

3.8 TWiki
Defined by its own developers as “a flexible, powerful, and easy to use enterprise wiki,
enterprise collaboration platform and knowledge management system“. Twiki makes the
32
creation of pages an easy task and supports both novice and experienced users, allowing the
firsts to create web pages in a minute, whereas allowing the seconds to add extra functionality
to their sites with use of plug-ins.

[20]
As Eric Baldeschwieler cites "We use TWiki internally to manage documentation
and project planning for our products. Our development team includes hundreds of people in
various locations all over the world, so web collaboration is VERY important to us. TWiki has
changed the way we run meetings, plan releases, document our product and generally
communicate with each other." Many organizations use Twiki as a tool for organizing
documents. Examples of them are Motorola and SAP.

3.8.1 Features
The main features of TWiki are:

 Anyone can edit pages via web browser. Most of wiki tools need ftp in order to edit
or upload pages

 Automatic generation of links with no need of HTML code

 Search facilities including the ability to search full text

 Edit link which gives the ability to edit with an easy and quick way pages

 Supports easy text formatting

 Provision of “TWiki Webs” a grouping ability which can group pages in order to
make mass editing on them

 E-mail notification to subscribers

 Support for structured content, which gives the ability to classify and categorize
various web pages

 Support for file attachments

 Provision of access control system on users and groups

[20] http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Main/TWikiSuccessStoryOfYahoo

33
  Revision control, history of changes and diff functionality to all pages including
attachments

Figure 3.3 Twiki user interface

 Use of variables that allow dynamic composition of pages, for example

automatically generation of table of contents

 TWiki plug-ins: which give the ability to users and developers to extend the
functionality of wiki. Plug-ins are written in Perl language and are server side
modules

 Ability to use templates and skins

 The “What’s new” feature which allow users to see recent changes in Twiki pages

 RSS support

 Statistics

 Topic locking, a mechanism which locks pages that are been editing

3.8.2 Pros and Cons

The pros arguments for TWiki are (Leoni, M.C., Dolensky M., Bentley R, 2004)

 Continuously and constant development adds new features almost every month

 Full public access for a common web browser

34
  New plug–ins arrived from community adding more functionality to TWiki

The cons arguments are:

 The installation of TWiki under windows is a real headache as it requires Revision

Control System

 Not a fully UTF-8 support yet

 It is not provided a What You See Is What You Get Editor in order to make more
easy the page edits

3.9 Wiki comparison

In this section we will choose the features which are necessary and advisable for a wiki
engine and we will explain the reasons we choose these features. After that, we will build
some tables in which the comparison of the previous wikis is been given.

For the comprehensive of this study we choose to classify the features in categories:

 General Features: includes the current version of studied wikis, their

programming language, the data storage type and the license under they are
distributed

 Page features: for example if the wiki detects edit conflicts or if provides a
printer friendly version of a page

 Text formatting rules: ability to use different text formattings such as bold,
italics, list of elements, bulletin lists and so on

 Link features: about the way a wiki engine can realize links to other pages and
websites

 Standards and validation features: compliance with CSS or XHTML or

XML format

 Management features: some examples of such features are user profiles,

user’s authentication, statistics and so on

 Other features: characteristics that cannot be classified to the previous

categories, such as installation facilities, administration, facilities in usage…

35
Below we define the features we took into consideration in order to compare the wiki engines,
as well as, we are going to explain why those features are so important.

3.9.1 General Features

This group of features includes the following one:

 Analyzed versions: indicating what version of wiki engines was studied

 Programming language: Indicates what language was used to develop each wiki
engine

 Data storage type: indicates the way that the data are stored, text files, databases etc

 License: indicates the way that a wiki tool is distributed

The table 3.2 shows the comparison of wiki engines based on the above features.

Table 3.2. “General Features” Comparative Table

Media
DokuWiki TikiWiki TWiki
Wiki
Analyzed Version 24/05/09 1.9.7 1.15.0 4.0.4
Programming Language PHP PHP PHP Perl
Data Storage Type TXT MySQL MySQL TXT
License GPL LGPL GPL GPL

Except TWiki engine, all wiki engines use PHP language. The advantage of PHP lies on its
extensive community of PHP programmers. On the other hand, PHP is considered to be a
heavy and slow language. Another common feature is that two of the wikis deploy databases
in order to store data (MySQL). The feature which is identical to all wikis is the license under
they are been distributed, GPL or LGPL which means that they are free software.
3.9.1 Page Features
This group of features includes the following ones:

 Preview pane: this feature allow users to see the page which is currently being
editing before the definite version of the page

 Printer friendly, allow users to print easily a page

 Recent changes, shows the last changes of wiki

 Revisions, shows the different version of a page in a wiki

36
 Edit Changes Summary, this feature shows in chronological order how a page of a
wiki was changes across time

 Revision differences, which allow users to see the differences between two version
of the same page

 Edit conflict detection

 Search engine

 Access control

 Section editing

 Recent visitors

 Recently viewed pages

 Most / least popular pages

 Calendar

 Comments

Table 3.3. “Page Features” Comparative Table

DokuWik TikiWi MediaWi
TWiki
i ki ki
Yes + Yes +
Printer Friendly Yes Yes
(button) (button)
Preview Pane Yes Yes Yes Yes
Edit Changes Summary Yes Yes Yes Yes
Recent Changes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Page History Yes Yes Yes Yes
Unlimit
Revisions Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited
ed
To To
All All Re-
Revision Differences Currently Currently
Revisions visions
Only Only
Content +
Content +
Search Engine Content Content Titles +
Titles
Backlinks
Edit Conflict Detection Yes Yes Yes Yes

37
 Access Control No ACLs Possible ACLs
Section Editing Yes No Yes Yes
Recent Visitors No Yes No Yes
Personal Personal
Recently Viewed Pages No Yes
Trace Trace
Most / Least Popular No Yes No Yes
Calendar No Yes No Yes
Discuss
Comments No Yes Yes
Pages

As can be seen from the above table, all wiki tools offer “printer friendly” feature but it is
particular easy in TikiWiki and TWiki engines. As concern “Revision Differences”,
MediaWiki and TWiki are more powerful in this case as they allow the comparison of the
contents of a page in all its versions. As concern the “Search Engine” facility, TWiki is the
most powerful tool because it uses more information when it performs searches. As concerns
“Access control” TikiWiki comes first and for the end, as concerns “Recently Viewed
Pages”, the answer is not easy to be given. DocuWiki seems to have a small antecedence.

3.9.2 Text formatting rules

This group of features includes the following ones:

 Bold: this feature indicates if it is possible to write bold type text using the
Wiki tool
 Italics: this feature indicates if it is possible to write italics type text using the
Wiki tool
 Underline: this feature indicates if it is possible to write underline type text
using the Wiki tool
 Monospace: this feature indicates if it is possible to write monospace type
text using the Wiki tool
 Strikethrough: this feature indicates if it is possible to write strikethrough
type text using the Wiki tool
 Super / Sub text: this feature indicates if it is possible to write super (x2) and
sub (x2) type text using the Wiki tool
 Colored text: this feature indicates if it is possible to write colored text using
the Wiki tool
 Center: this feature indicates if it is possible to center the text of a paragraph
or a page

38
  Indentation: this feature allows us to insert indented text in a page
 Bulleted Lists: this feature indicates if a Wiki tool allows insert bulleted lists
in its pages
 Numbered Lists: this feature indicates if a Wiki tool allows insert numbered
lists in its pages
 Definition Lists: this feature indicates if a Wiki tool allows insert definition
lists in its pages
 Headings: this feature indicates if it is possible to include headings using the
Wiki tool
 New Line: this characteristic indicates if it is possible to add a new line using
the Wiki tool
 Boxed: this feature indicates if it is possible to put text into a box using the
Wiki tool
 Tables: this feature indicates if it is possible to insert tables in the Wiki pages
 Emoticon images: this feature indicates if it is possible to insert emoticon
images in the Wiki pages
 Special Characters: this feature indicates if it is possible to insert special
characters in the Wiki pages
 Footnotes: this feature indicates if it is possible to insert footnotes at the end
of the Wiki pages
 HTML tags: this feature indicates if it is possible to insert HTML tags
(HTML code) in the Wiki pages
 Math Formulas: this feature indicates if it is possible to insert math formulas
in the Wiki pages
 Auto Signature: this feature indicates if it is possible realize an auto
signature in a Wiki page

The Table 3.4 is the comparative table of these features for the selected Wiki tools
DokuWik TikiWi MediaWi
TWiki
i ki ki
Bold Yes Yes Yes Yes
Italics Yes Yes Yes Yes
Underline Yes Yes HTML Yes
Monospace Yes Yes Yes Yes
Strike-through Yes HTML HTML HTML
Super / Sub Yes HTML HTML HTML

39
 Colored Text Yes Yes Yes Yes
Center No Yes HTML No
Indentation No Yes Yes Yes
Bulleted Lists Yes Yes Yes Yes
Numbered Lists Yes Yes Yes Yes
Definition Lists No Yes Yes Yes
Headings 5 levels 6 levels 6 levels 6 levels
New Line Yes Yes HTML Yes
Boxed Yes Yes Tables Yes
Yes
Tables Yes (quick Yes + Yes
button)
Yes
Emoticon Images Yes No Yes
(bar)
Special Characters UTF-8 UTF-8 UTF-8 Yes
Footnotes Yes Yes No No
HTML / HTML
HTML tags Yes Yes
PHP (limited)
Yes
Math Formulas No No Yes
(LaTeX)
Quick
Auto Signature No Yes Yes
button

DocuWiki and TWiki do not allow centering the text in paragraph. DocuWiki does not give
the ability to insert indent. For building tables the best tools are the TikiWiki and the
MediaWiki. Because of lack in fully supporting UTF-8 encoding, TWiki has some problems
when come to handle special characters. MediaWikli also support Mathematical formulas in a
good way through Latex.

3.9.3 Link features

This group includes the following features:

 CamelCase: this feature indicates if the Wiki tool support automatically

created links with the “CamelCase” notation
 BackLinks: this feature indicates if the Wiki tool has some facility in order to
localize the links that they refer to the current page in a Wiki web
 File Attachments: this characteristic indicates if the Wiki tool supports
attachments in the Wiki site.

40
  InterWiki: this feature indicates if the Wiki tool allows us to realize links
amongst different Wikis
 Inline Images: this characteristic indicates if the Wiki can display images
into a Wiki page

The Table 3.5 is the comparative table of these features for the selected Wiki tools.

Table 3.5. “Link Features” Comparative Table

DokuWik TikiWi MediaWi
TWiki
i ki ki
BackLinks Yes Yes Yes Yes
CamelCase Yes Yes No Yes
InterWiki Yes Yes Yes Yes
File Attachments Yes Yes Yes Yes
Inline Images Yes Yes Yes Yes

3.9.4 Standards and validation features

This group of features includes the following ones:
 CSS styles standard: this feature indicates if the Wiki is compliant with the
CSS standard
 XHTML standard: this feature indicates if the Wiki follows the XHTML
standard. Usually, the Wiki tools confront to the XHTML standard, version
1.0 Transitional
 CSS validation: this feature indicates if the Wiki allows us to check if a page
is in accordance with the CSS standard
 XHTML validation: this feature indicates if the Wiki allows us to check if a
page is in accordance with the XHTML standard

The Table 3.6 is the comparative table of these features for the selected Wiki tools.

Table 3.6. “Standards and Validation Features” Comparative Table

DokuWik TikiWi MediaWi
TWiki
i ki ki
CSS styles standard Yes Yes Yes Yes
XHTML standard Yes Yes Yes Yes
CSS validation Yes Yes Yes Yes
41
 XHTML validation Yes Yes Yes Yes

All tools has similar behavior as concerns the below features

3.9.5 Management features

This group includes the following features:

 User Profiles: this feature indicates if administrator has the ability to separate
the users of a Wiki site in different user profiles and probably with different
permissions
 User Authentication: this feature indicates if it is possible to require user’s
authentication when a user wants to edit a page
 Page Rename: this feature indicates if the administrator has the capability of
changing the name of a page into the Wiki site
 Page Deletion: this feature indicates if the administrator has the capability to
delete pages from Wiki site
 Themes: this feature indicates if the administrator can choose amongst
different themes or templates for the Wiki site
 Pages locked: this feature indicates if the administrator has the capability of
locking a page into the Wiki site
 Statistics tool: this feature indicates if the Wiki tool provides automatically
created statistics about the Wiki site (visits, more visited pages…)
 Page change Mail Notification: this feature indicates if there is any
possibility for the administrator to receive notifications via e-mail when a
page is changed by another person (user)

The Table 3.7 summarizes a comparison table of these features for the selected Wiki tools.

Table 3.7. “Management Features” Comparative Table

TikiWi Media
DokuWiki TWiki
ki Wiki
User Profiles ACLs? Yes Yes Yes
User Authentication No Yes Yes Yes
Page Rename No Yes Yes Yes
Page Deletion Yes Yes Yes Yes
Themes Templates, Templat Skins Yes

42
 CSS es PHP
Permi-
Pages locked Chmod Yes Yes
ssions
Statistics tool No Yes Yes Yes
Pagechange Mail WikiAdmi
Yes Yes Yes
Notification n

In this group of features, DokuWiki is the weakest tool since it does not support user
authentication, it is not possible by the administrator to renames pages and it does not have
any statistics tool. On the other hand, TikiWiki has the best punctuation since it has more
templates than the rest and its permissions policy is very complete with a lot of options.

3.9.6 Other Features

This group of features includes the following ones:

 Database: this feature indicates if the Wiki tool uses a database system to
store its data
 Cache: this feature indicates if the Wiki tool creates and maintains a copy of
the system in the local cache memory of the machine
 Language Locales: this feature indicates the number of the languages that
the content is available
 Installation: this feature indicates how easy or difficult is to realize the
installation of the Wiki tool. Typically, it is necessary a web server and a
MySQL database
 Documentation: this features shows how complete and useful is the provided
documentation. It is very usual the existence of a user guide, tutorials,
examples of use, test cases, good practices etc
 Facilities of use: this feature shows how easy is to test and to use each Wiki
tool
 Administration: this feature indicates if it is necessary to have an
administrator for the Wiki site. It depends on the characteristics and the role
of the Wiki tool (if the tool realizes user authentication, if there are different
permissions for different users…)
 Environment: this feature indicates the interface (templates, themes, general,
images inside the site, feeling etc) and the environment of work (editing a
page, realizing changes in a page, administration of the site…)

43
  Extras: this feature shows if the Wiki tool includes other extra applications.
For example, TikiWiki includes blogs, forums, FAQs section, calendar,
articles section, ephemeredes…

The Table 3.8 is the comparative of these features for the selected Wiki tools.

Table 3.8. “Other Features” Comparative Table

TikiWi MediaWi
DokuWiki TWiki
ki ki
MySQ MySQL,
Database No MySQL
L FlatFiles
Cache Yes Yes Yes Yes
Language Locales 25 32 60+ 4
Installation Easy Wizard Wizard No easy
Documentation OK OK+ Very good Normal
Facilities of use Very easy Easy Very easy Easy
Administration No Yes Yes Yes
Easy, but Many
Environment Templates Personal
OK templates
Blogs,
Special Perl plug-
Extras - forum,
pages ins
FAQs…

MediaWiki and TikiWiki interfaces are available in almost all languages, while TWiki is
available in only four languages. In general, the provided documentation (user guide,
tutorials, features description…) for the Wiki tools is very good. We believe that MediaWiki
has the most complete information. Probably, the TWiki documentation is a little bit more
limited. The installation of the tools is usually well-documented, too. Nevertheless, TWiki
installation is the most difficult one.
In DokuWiki tool, administration is not a necessity since it does not use a lot of the
authentication and permissions features. Also, it does not use any statistics tool. We would
also like emphasize the extras contained in the TikiWiki tool as blogs, forums, chat, FAQs
section…

3.10 Conclusions
The objective of this thesis is to develop a guideline for the CSCL systems. Wiki tools
are one type of collaborative software as these systems focus on the content of the sites. There
44
are many wiki tools out there. The wiki that we choose to study have a lot of features and
different ways in which they realize these features. So we choose to analyze the most basic of
their feature such as: General Features, Pages and Editing, Linking and Creating pages,
Searching, Revisions, Bad uses, etc. Afterwards, we realized a features-comparative table for
these four important Wiki tools (DokuWiki, TikiWiki, MediaWiki and TWiki). After that the
features were divided in seven groups: General Features, Page Features, Text Formatting
Rules, Link Features, Standards and Validation Features, Management Features and Other
Features.
Finally we have to choose, define and express the scenarios for these wikis and
compare them as concerns the selected scenarios. These scenarios will lead us to make
guidelines for selecting the most appropriate wiki tool in accordance with the requirements of
our environment.

45
 4 Developing a guideline for selecting a wiki tool:
an overview
4.1 Introduction
The guideline which we are going to show below has been divided in five general categories:
1. Page Features
2. Text Formatting Rules
3. Link Features
4. Management Features
5. Extra Features

The above categories are shown in the figures below:

Figure 4.1. High Level Categories

Wiki Tools

Text Forma-
Page Features Link Features
ting Rules

Management Extra
Features Features

Figure 4.2. Page Features Category

Page Features

Printer Recent
Preview Pane History Page
Friendly Changes

Search Comments

46
 Figure 4.3. Text Formatting Rules Category
Text Forma-
tting Rules

Edit Conflict Section Syntax

Text Editor
Detection Editing Tutorial

Figure 4.4. Link Features Category

Link Features

File
Trace Route Inline Image
Attachment

Figure 4.5. Management Features Category

Management
Features

User Page-Change
User Profile Statistics
Authentication Notification

Figure 4.6. Extra Features Category

Extra
Features

Editing
FAQ Forum
Toolbar

Table of
Calendar
Contents

The categories shown above are derived from the two basic needs that are applicable in
educational environments. We have named these needs as “Collaborative Editing” and
“Community Site”:
I. Collaborative Editing: Wikis are sites which allow any users to browse, write,
edit, access and so on every page on it, through web browsers. The philosophy of

47
 wiki is open and free for anyone offering an easy way to everyone to edit the
pages. The goal of wikis is to provide an environment in which two or many
users can edit the same document together, providing all necessary tools for this
procedure like an embedded text editor, a syntax tutorial and an editing toolbar.
There is a need to generate printable versions of wiki’s documents (printer
friendly). When users editing the pages they want to see how will they look like
before they publish them (Preview pane). Users want to have information about
the changes that have been made in a particular page (history page). Users also
may want to post comments inside wiki pages (comments). Users need an
environment in which they can edit pages (Text editors), a toolbar which includes
all tools for formatting their pages (Editing Toolbar) and a tutorial guide for their
editing tasks (Syntax tutorial). They need to know if someone else is editing the
same page in the same time (Edit Conflict Detection). Users may want to edit
only a section of a page and not the whole page (Section Editing). Users may
need to attach files (File Attachments) and to upload images (Inline Images).
Users want to be informed if a page which they are interesting in has been
changed (Page – Change Notification). Also users may want to consult a shared
and common calendar with other users (Calendar).
II. Community Site: User’s communities are shared environments where users can
share pages, articles, images, comments, calendars, thoughts etc. Wikis are
collaborative tools for shared writing and browsing through simple web pages, a
text - based syntax and an open editing philosophy. The target of this requirement
is to provide an environment in order users to share common interesting. Users
want to know what changed on the community site since their last visit (Recent
Changes) or how a certain page has changed along the time (History Page). Users
have inquires related to a specific topic and need to retrieve the information
through the list of the results (Search). Also, they need to find specific pages into
the site (Tables of Contents). Users need to post comments to the contents of the
Wiki pages (Comments). Users need a space where they can post their
contributions (Text Editor), a toolbar to edit their posts as fast as possible (Editing
Toolbar) and to be provided with a help guide in order to realize the editing tasks
(Syntax Tutorial). Users may want to know where they are through the many
levels of information (Trace Route). Users need to attach files (File Attachment)
and include images to the Wiki pages (Inline Image). Users may need to adjust
their preferential views about the site and their own information (User Profile)
and authenticate themselves to be able to edit a post or attach files (User
48
 Authentication). Users might want to know what happens into the Wiki site
(Statistics). Users might have questions concerning the community site or topics
related to the site (FAQ). Users may want to discuss a certain topic or react on a
particular piece of content on the site (Forum). Users may want to consult a
shared calendar in order to be informed about the events of the community site
(Calendar).

In the paragraphs below we are going to describe the twenty two proposed requirements that
form our guideline for the appropriate wiki tool.

4.2 Page features

Further down we are going to discuss the page features requirements which are: Printer
Friendly, Preview Pane, Recent Changes, Revisions, Search and Comments.

4.2.1 Printer Friendly

I. Description: When a user wants to print a wiki page, is interested for the
content of the page and not for the surrounding elements that composing the
page. Also sometimes, printer friendly version is preferred even for reading
since it excludes elements such as advertisements or distracting elements.

II. Needs:

 The page should be appropriate designed in order for user to print

it

 The section of the page should be in a form that can be printed

 Long pages should have special arrangements in case that a user

chooses printer friendly feature in order to read the page

III. Proposals: A button which transfers to the printer friendly version of the
page should be placed next or near to the table of contents of the page. A
printer version of a wiki page consists only from text and images, in
appropriate format. The link to the printer friendly page could be done via a
hyperlinked button with the label “printer friendly version” for instance and
to be place in a place which can be easily noticed by users. Labels such as
“print” should be avoided as they can misinterpret by users.

49
4.2.2 Preview pane
I. Description: This functionality allows users to see the final results of their
edit before it is finally published. It giving them an overview of all the work
they have done and also allow them to make changes before finalize and
publish their edits.

II. Need:

 Users want to know how their work will look like before they publish
it

 Various elements, such as tables, text, pictures etc may appear

wrongly

 Users may want to review the content of the page that they are been
edit prior posting them in order to make some changes or even some
corrections

III. Proposal: A button that will allow a preview of the current edited page
should be offered by the wiki engine. When someone is in the “edit” mode
and edits a page, usually loses the perception about the general structure of
his / her edits. But there is a need; user wants to know how the edits will look
in final version. The quick button which proposed above will transfer to a
page in which the “edit” mode as well as the previewed version of the page
will be depicted simultaneously. Thus the user is capable to see the structure
of the final page

4.2.3 Recent changes

I. Description: Users visit wiki site vet often and what they see is only a small
portion of the whole wiki. They are unable to see the changes that took place
amongst two visits. Thus a feature that offers the ability to see the changes in
the wiki site in a easy way is desirable.

II. Need:

 Administrators should have mechanisms in order to be aware of the

changes that took place in the wiki site, as well as, who has made these
changes

50
  Users need to know the changes and who made them since their last visit

 A historical revision of what has changes on the site is also desirable

III. Proposal: A page that lists the recent changes on the wiki site that will be
automatically created. By listing the changes in reverse chronological order,
having the most recent one at the top of the list informs the users about what
has changed. Also, helpful is the use of RSS feeds that collect the recent
changed on the site.

4.2.4 History Page

I. Description: The pages of a Wiki site are changing over time. For users and
administrators of the Wiki site would be interesting to follow up the changes
of the pages in which they are most interested in.

II. Need:

 Users want to know when a wiki page has changes and also who
made these changes

 Users may want to compare the contents of two different version of

the same page

 History pane can avoid bad uses or corruptions from users or hackers

 Administrators may want to return wiki in a previous state

III. Proposal: Provision of a special page in which the history changes are
listed. The special history page will contain the information relative to all the
changes that a concrete Wiki page has generated. This feature should allow
users to carry out different possible actions: to preview all the stored page
versions, to rollback to a previous version if it is necessary (for example,
because a hacker tried to corrupt a Wiki page), to compare different versions
of a Wiki page and to provide a way that able them to see the differences
between different version in an easy manner.

4.2.5 Search
I. Description: The search feature is useful as allow users to search around the
wiki and to find what they need, especially in huge wikis. Search feature
should offer various tools in order to support users’ needs.
51
 II. Need:

 users want to retrieve information by searching the wiki

 Sites with lot of information hardened users who want to find

information

 Some users may need full control over the search engine so that they
can be more successful in achieving their goals

III. Proposal: provision of a more specific search tools that support various
types of searching. Secondly, to offer advanced functionality for
searching that has extend capabilities in term of matching, scoping and
output options. Sometimes users don’t know exactly what they are looking
for or how to search the information they want. A normal search facility
along with the co – existence of a more advance search will increase the
search feature. In order to process the search results, these results are sorted
by relevance, starting with the most relevant results and are followed by a
short description.

4.2.6 Comments
I. Description: Comments are useful in every aspect. For example, a user reads
an article and wants to disagree or to express his / her opinion. He /she can
choose to write a comment on that article expressing his / her opinion. Also
comments are useful when a user cannot change the content of a page but he
want to express his different point of view or to make some remarks.

II. Need:

 Users may add complementary comment on an article

 Users may want to express their different opinion

 Users may express their opinion on how useful was the article for
them
 Users may want to give answers to questions or doubts about an
article
 The person who wrote the article may want feedback from other
users

52
 III. Proposal: Wiki sites should provide to the users the ability to add their
comments. These comments should be able to add to places physically close
to the article they refer. Also a useful feature would be the ability to place
private comments which can be seen only from the users who wrote them.

4.3 Text Formatting Rules

In this section we are going to discuss characteristics which are related to text formatting
rules. This kind of characteristics include the text editor, sections editing, conflict detection
and a syntax tutorial.

4.3.1 Text Editor

I. Description: A text editor is a must have feature for every shared editing
environments such as wikis. The text editor gives the ability to users to add
contents to the wiki pages.

II. Need:

 Users may need an easy and straight forwarded way in order to make
their contributions to the site

 Users may want to apply different formats to the text they write such
as bolds, italics, colored text and so on

 Users may want to add images, photos and other features inside wiki
pages

III. Proposal: A text editor should be provided in order from users to make
their contribution to the wiki. The text editor should allow different
formattings such as colored text, bolds, italics, underline etc. Also it should
support justification of the text, indented test, numbered and bulletin lists.
Other characteristics may be the support for automatically generation of table
of contents, the insertion of tables and figures, emoticon images, footnotes,
HTML tags and math formulas.

4.3.2 Edit Conflict Detection

I. Description: It is possible when we have shared environments, two or more
persons to edit the same page at the same time. This means that only the
changes of one person will be tracked, all other will be lost.
53
 II. Need:

 One or more users may want to edit a page in the same time

 A user may want to correct an erroneous page without the knowing

that another person is performing the same task

 One user may want to modify a Wiki page without knowing the more
recent version of that Wiki page

III. Proposal: A wiki page that is being editing should be locked. This feature
may work like that: When a page is being editing the system locks that page
to prevent another user from editing the same page. The system use special
file the “lock – files” which contain the IP address of the user that edits the
page.

4.3.3 Section Editing

I. Description: A wiki page can grow dramatically, for example many pages of
text, images, tables, lists and so on. Wikis should offer the ability to users to
edit only a small section of a page and not the whole page.

II. Need:

 The need to make a minor change to a wiki page

 Users want to find the exact point of the page that they are thinking
to change as soon as possible
 Users may want to edit small sections of the page without to scroll
through the entire page content

III. Proposal: The provision of a quick button that will allow the editing of
selected section of the wiki page instead of editing the whole page. This
solution sometimes called Partial Page Editing and allows users to edit small
portion of a page. The user can find easily the way in order to edit only the
section he / she wants without having to scroll down or up in the page in
order to find the portion he / she wants.

4.3.4 Syntax Tutorial

I. Description: A guided way in which inexperienced users with a little
knowledge of the application are able to add content to a wiki page.

54
 II. Need:

 Many users don’t know how to edit a page or how to add additional
content

 Users may need a quick reference guide to help them on editing tasks
 Administrators may want to suggest a way in which the editing task
would be done (for example, using a template to post the new Wiki
pages)

III. Proposals: To provide an "easy-to-use" access to a syntax tutorial,

assuming that user has no reason or is not able to know all the syntax
options. The solution consists of identifying and ordering the syntax options,
and creating sequential links among them. Links can be one-way or two-ways
forward and/or backward. In order to start the navigation, the first page of the
tutorial should be the corresponding to the most common syntax options and
should include an index page and a quick-reference guide. Also, in order to
allow the return to the beginning of the tutorial it is necessary to establish a
links from every syntax tutorial page to the previous page, to the next page
and to the index page. In order to improve usability it is advisable to support
the user’s orientation, for instance, to include the name of the current page,
the position of the current page, the total number of pages of the tutorial, etc.
This feature mainly intends to provide the user an easy and cool presentation
of the editing possibilities of the Wiki tool.

4.4 Link Features

In this section we are going to discuss issues related to the link capabilities of a wiki tool.
This type of features defines the ways that a wiki can create links to other pages or websites.
The proposed features for this category are: Trace Route, File Attachment and Inline
Image.

4.4.1 Trace Route

I. Description: The trace route feature presents a structured view of
information of the current location of the user. It helps so that the user’s to
become familiar with the site and assist them to navigate easier. Every label

55
 in the trace root diagram represents a link and it assisting the browsing in the
site.

II. Need:

 Visualization of the structured routes inside wiki in order a user to

discover the path he or she wants to follow in order to retrieve the
information he / she wants

 Navigation through pages with a single click

 Most sites navigational system shows the relation of a current page

with its previous or its next page. So, sites with complex navigational
schemes are hiding the information structure

 When a user performs a search losses orientation and the path has
followed in order to retrieve the information

 The path that a user has followed should be displayed

III. Proposals: The automated creation of a row of sequential links that

represents a hierarchical path from the home page to the current. A
button or a text with the name “Trace Route” should be placed in the
beginning of the link sequence. Also the direction between the pages should
be used, such as “ > ” which is going to help the visualization of the path
followed. Each of the links separated with the “ > “ character represents a
link to other page. The current location should be presented with bolded or
even with colored text. The row of the links usually places in the top of the
page.

4.4.2 File Attachment

I. Description: In shared environments, such as wikis, user wants to share and
exchange files such as texts, images, videos, photos, audio files and so on. So
a utility for attaching files embedded in wiki is necessary. Also galleries
(image galleries, video galleries etc.) would be useful since they give ability
to organize the various files.

II. Need:

 Users want to share files with other users

56
  Users want to upload file in order to complete their participation to a
specific topic
 Users want to download files in order to comprehend the specific
topic more

 Users want the extra information that can take from multimedia files

III. Proposals: The provision of a tool embedded in wiki that allow users to
share their file, as well as, to organize them. Each page’s content can be
extended with the use of attached files. The attachments should be placed in a
convenient place inside wiki page. It would be useful to display the name of
the file, the type of the file (for example doc file, jpg file, mp3 file and so on)
and the size of the file in mega bytes. Galleries should offer the ability to
organize the files, to make label for each one, to search across files and to
upload and download directly from it.

4.4.3 Inline Image

I. Description: Images should take the right dimension inside a wiki page. This
helps the page to remain easy to read. Also inline images save space from a
page, save bandwidth and allow users to print them.

II. Need:

 Fast browsing through pages

 The structure and the alignment of the pages look better

 It saves space and download time
 Small images are easily recognized by users as reduced screen place
waste
III. Proposals: To display images in thumbnail version which are images in
smaller size and resolution. The inline images should be placed in
appropriate place in the wiki pages. Also clicking in the thumbnail would
allow user to view the image in bigger size and resolution. A description of
image would be useful if it is placed below the image.

57
 4.5 Management Features
The management features of wiki tools are going to be described in this section. These
features are related with the management of the wiki and include: User Profile, User
Authentication, Statistics and Page-Change Notification.

4.5.1 User Profile

I. Description: Users of wiki sites are many, with different culture, habits,
abilities and preferences. So it will be useful to provide the feature of users’
profiles in order to allow them to adjust their own settings and preferences.

II. Need:

 Users may want to change the fonts, the theme or even the color of
the wiki site

 Users want some control over the aesthetic elements of the wiki
pages
 Users wants to save their adjustments as concerns wiki settings and
to restore them with one click

 Administrators may want to assign different permissions to different

users

III. Proposals: To provide an environment where users can set their own
preferences and adjustments that has to do with the presentation of wiki.
These preferences should have the ability to be saved and restored whenever
a user wants to. Also the provision of “fixed settings” with some pre defined
settings would be advisable.

4.5.2 Authentication
I. Description: Wikis have open philosophy which opposed to every user’s
registration / authentication. But there are some cases in which registration /
authentication is necessary, such as when an administrative operation is to be
done. In any case, registration should be performed easily and quickly using a
simple registration form.

II. Need:

58
  Authentication is needed when we want to store user’s preferences
and history actions that will be useful in order to provide custom and
personalized views of wiki site
 Authentication is needed when sending or receiving messages or
when uploading or downloading files
 Registration is required when we want to store personal information
such as name, age, gender, interesting, hobbies and so on.
 Storing user’s preferences helps the provision of better site services

III. Proposals: Offering a simple registration form in which users would be able
to register themselves in an easy and quick way. Registration should offer to
users features such as personal information, login control via a username
and a password. The registration label should be placed in an appropriate place
inside the page. One good point is the top of the screen. Registration should ask
only the absolutely necessary entries from the user. If for example, asks for too
many information users may be frustrated. The registration has to be completed
in a few clicks and a guided system should lead user step by step. In any case,
system should offer anonymous access to the site and to ask for authentication
only in cases of performing tasks that required so.

4.5.3 Statistics
I. Description: Statistics are a very useful tool, especially in collaborative
environments, when we have many users, many contributors, tests, results,
feedback and so on. Statistics will help us to know for example which is the
most viewed article or who is the most active contributor.

II. Need:

 A teacher or an administrator may want to know who is the most

active contributor and if there are members with no contribution

 Information about a page visitation, or the number of people who

viewed or contributed in an article

III. Proposals: In order to know what happens in a wiki site, statistics would
be a useful tool. The key is to identify the useful and necessary
landmarks and create statistics about them. For the teacher would be a

59
 useful tool to know who is the most active student or the opposite one, which
is the most interesting article and so on. Also information about which are the
most popular pages, what are the new pages, which are the last changes, what
is the number of contributors to the site, what is the evolution in the number
of visits to the site, etc.

4.5.4 Page – Change Notification

I. Description: This feature provides a subscribed service which notifies the
user when the contents of a page have changed. Usually the notification is
done via an automatically sent e-mail. In this way, users do not have to come
back and check all the time if the contents of a page has changed. The mail
notification informs them for every change in the pages they are interested in.

II. Need:

 Users may need to follow the evolution of a wiki page

 Users who participate in a wiki page want to be informed whenever a

change has been done in these wiki pages
 Users want to know when a interesting thing is happening in a wiki
page without having to check all the time the wiki page

III. Proposals: Offering the ability to send mail notification to users when the
content of a page has changed. In order to do this, a hyperlink placed in the
top of the page should allow users the enrolment on the mail notifications
when a wiki page has changed. After subscribing to the service every time
when a wiki page

4.6 Extra Features

In this section we are going to discuss the features related with some extra capabilities of a
wiki engine. The features which are described below are: Forum, Calendar, Editing
Toolbar, FAQs and table of contents.

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4.6.1 Forum
I. Description: Is one of the oldest community elements. The forum is a feature
which allows discussion for several topics and it is organized in subjects. It is
not interfering with the rest wiki content and so it is not affected of affects it.
Forums are used for the interchange of users’ opinions in discrete topics.
II. Need:

 Users may want to discuss about the contents of a wiki page but they
don’t want to be published in the main wiki page
 Users may want to argue “freely” and without the restricts that a wiki
page requires
 Users may need the interactivity that a forum offers in comparison
with a wiki page

III. Proposals: Wiki sites should provide a forum feature in order users to
place their comments and arguments. The forum is a place in which in an
overview page are displayed all the subjects under discussion, the number of
the comments have been made in each subject, and when the last comment
has been made. Topic links leads users to each topic page in which can be
seen the comment for the particular topic, provides functionality to navigate
between comment or create your own comment. Each comment has some
information, such as the name of the author, the date that it created the status
of the author (online, off line, the number of the participation etc.). A search
facility is a must have for every forum as it can grow and become non
functional.

4.6.2 Calendar
I. Description: A calendar is basically a list of events that are categorized by
date that took or will take place and can been seen by selecting the date we
want. Calendar is also what its name says: a calendar.
II. Need:

 Need for user’s availability for the arrangement of the appointments

 Coordination and scheduling amongst users
 Scheduling personal events and keeping a calendar

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 III. Proposals: Provision of a calendar in wiki which should display and store
the events with its descriptions and to be categorized according the day,
the week or the month. Calendar should offer the ability to users to edit the
tasks or to add new tasks. Days that hold some events should be extinguished
from other days using colored text and a hyperlink. In calendars with long
lists of events a search capability should be offered.

4.6.3 Editing Toolbar

I. Description: A toolbar is a useful element in applications where the various
functionalities are accessible in more than one way for example through
labels, keyboard shortcuts, toolbars and so on. The editing toolbar is used in
order to make the users aware of the other possible ways to make an action.
II. Need:

 Experienced users want tools which are more “quick” in doing things

 Users should be aware of the different way they can follow to

achieve a result
 The controls should be organized in a way that a user can find easily
what he or she wants without being confused
 Users need some way of discovering the alternative and more
efficient way of performing an action

III. Proposals: To give users the capability to use hints for other ways to
access functions. For every action a well – designed control should be
chosen. The most common used controls should be the most prominent.
If buttons can be used instead of plain text would be preferred and
localization according to tasks should be applied. Also, if a function has a key
combination, shortcut, then it would be useful to show when for example
moving the mouse over buttons.

4.6.4 FAQs
I. Description: This is a list of the most frequent and common questions asked
by users. Gathering all these questions and placing with the answers in a clear
and understandable way would be beneficial for uses. Also this feature will
reduce or extinguish users’ request for help in common tasks.

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 II. Need:

 Users can get information they want by reading the FAQs

 FAQ could provide additional information about several topics
 FAQs could be a guide for every new or inexperienced user
III. Proposals: To create and provide to the users a FAQ page that includes
short and comprehend answers. The questions can be categorized by
subject.

4.6.5 Table of Contents

I. Description: Table of contents is useful where we have text which should be
overviewed and structured. It can answer the questions “Where Am I and
where I am going”. They also provide a quick access to the pages by click in
every field of the table if it is hyperlinked.
II. Need:

 A accurate way to organize the wiki

 Users become aware of the structure of the wiki

III. Proposals: Table of contents should exist in every wiki site. This table
should be placed on the top of the page and it would be useful if it can be
constructed automatically by wiki engine.

Having developed the guideline presented in this chapter, we are ready to choose the
appropriate wiki in accordance to our requirements. In next chapter we are going to show the
wiki page we created in order to support the course of “Requirements Engineering”.

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 5 Building a collaborative learning environment
based in wiki
5.1 Abstract
In this chapter we are going to describe the development of a collaborative e-learning
environment, in other words, a wiki site based in mediawiki engine. The primary goal of this
effort is to motivate postgraduate community of “e-commerce” program of “TEI Piraeus” to
use e-learning collaborative tools such as a wiki site. The wiki site will provide a
collaborative environment for activities amongst users in order to solve problems, exchange
of arguments, sharing of documents, files and so on. Wikis are the appropriate tools for these
requirements. Wikis are simple tools which allow big groups or communities to collaborate.
The site will provide information and further functionality in order to support the community
of postgraduate course. In order to formulate the specific functionality of the wiki, a
requirements analysis phase was performed. The main resource for the formulation of the
requirements of the portal was the e-Learning Systems Support Laboratory (eLLa) of TEI
Piraeus. This chapter describes the general phases of the development, i.e. 1) Definition of
Requirements, 2) Design, 3) Implementation, 4) Testing and 5) Presentation. The particular
implementation was based on Mediawiki version 1.10.0.

5.2 Overview
First of all, let’s remember what the definitions “collaboration”, “e-learning” and “wiki”
mean. Collaboration is a recursive process where two or more people work together
intersection of common goals - for example, an intellectual endeavor that is creative in nature
- by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus. Collaboration does not require
leadership and can sometimes bring better results through decentralization and
egalitarianism [21].
A wiki is [21] “a website that uses wiki software, allowing the easy creation and editing
of any number of interlinked Web pages, using a simplified markup language”. Wikis are
often used to create collaborative websites and to powerful community websites. The
collaborative

[21] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration

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 [22]
encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the best-known wikis. Wikis are used in business to
provide intranet and knowledge management systems. Ward Cunningham, the developer of
the first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as "the simplest online database
that could possibly work."
"Wiki" (English pronunciation: /wiːkiː/) is a Hawaiian word for "fast". "Wiki" can be
expanded as "What I know is" but this is a backronym.
Electronic learning (or e-Learning or eLearning) is a type of Technology supported
education / learning (TSL) where the medium of instruction is through computer technology,
particularly involving digital technologies. E-learning has been defined as "pedagogy
empowered by digital technology". In some instances, no face- to- face interaction takes place
[23]
.
Generally, wiki sites consist of web services that are modular web applications such as
modules, addins, components, extensions and other (Conallen, 1999). These applications can
be independently deployed and invoked on the Web. The group of e-Learning services
includes synchronous and asynchronous communications, collaboration, course management,
tools of assessment and many other related modules (Lim et. al. 2005).
Now, since we have seen the role of collaborative e-learning environments that based
in wiki, it’s time to make an overview about our project. The particular wiki web site will be
based on the latest Internet solutions and is going to be a promising technology, a tool for on-
line education, allowing access to the system for students, as well as, to the teachers.

As we have said, our primary goal is to motivate the educational community of “E-
commerce” postgraduate course of TEI Piraeus to use e-learning collaborative methods and
tools. Our wiki will provide information, functionalities and useful content for the learning
process. In order to formulate the specific functionality of the portal, a requirements analysis
was performed. One of the main resources for the formulation of the requirements was the e-
Learning Systems Support Laboratory (eLLa) of TEI Piraeus. Some of the most important
functions of the portal will be:

 Information about “Requirements Engineering” course which belong to the

postgraduate studies in “Electronic Commerce” of TEI Piraeus
 Information about how to use the Wiki site of “Requirements Engineering” course
both for teachers and students
 Theory about “Requirements Engineering” course, methods and tools

[22] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-learning
[23] http://www.wikipedia.org

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  Coordination of groups of students
 Assignments to students and groups of students
 Useful links focused on collaborative e-learning
 Material about assignments, learning groups, groups of assessment and testing
 Personalized access to information, such as releases, learning materials etc
 Samples of problems with their answers
 Case studies, past papers, problems and answers from the real world
 Links to other material about “Requirements Engineering” course, such as the
official web site of the course, forum of the course, information about the tutors and
so on.

Our wiki site consists of four integrated core element which can be further divide into
functionalities supported by corresponding applications:

1. The portal Web site framework: This element will be the top tier and responsible
for managing the access to the range of available content and services
2. Web Content Management System: It will provide the controls for managing the
content of the site
3. Learning Management System (LMS): This system which is responsible for
delivery, management and administration of assignments and assessments
4. Central Repository: This element is responsible for holding all necessary data of the
wiki
Below in figure 5.1 we can see the architecture of the core elements of our wiki site. The
portal framework consist the front – end or top tier of the platform, the Content
Management System and the Learning Management System consists the middle tier and
the central repository consists the bottom tier or the back – end of the platform.

5.3 Defining the Requirements

In this section we are going to define the functional and non – functional requirements of our
wiki site:

1) Users/Actors

 Each person that is part of the wiki site, member or otherwise, will be a user
 Each member of the wiki, in other words a user with authorities, such as
administrators, instructors, students and editors/authors, will consist of an id,
surname, name, username, password, address, phone and an e-mail address.
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 Actors

 Administrators
 Students
 Instructors Tutors
 Instructional Designers
 System Guests

Table 5.1 Actors of the wiki (Goodland et. al. 2001)

WWW

E-Learning wiki

Portal
Framework

Wiki Learning Management

System (LMS)
(Mediawiki)

me(OpenCMS)

Repository

Repository
Fig. 5.1 The architecture of the e-Learning wiki

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2) Profiles

 Each person that is a member of the wiki will have a profile

 A profile will be continuous for the duration of the membership
 The profile will be created in the same time with the registration
 The duration of a profile will have a expiration time
 A profile will be kept for one year after the membership expiration. Then, if the
membership is not renewed, the profile will be deleted
 A profile will contain personal information for each member of the wiki

3) Login

 The wiki will include a sub-wiki, the Assignments Virtual Classroom (AVC). This
will be an area accessible only to authorized users (members)
 The wiki should provide a means for its members to login the AVC
 All members must login the AVC in order to be able to have personalized access to
specific information
 The login consists of two fields, username and password.
 The password field is required to be hidden
 Once a user is logged in, his surname, name and (optional) his alias will be displayed
on the top of the page
4) Searching

 The wiki should provide a searching function for all of its pages
 The searching machine will collect links for pages that are part of the site
 Searching must be user-friendly, fast, accurate and scalable. It must give facilities
such as classification of the results by relativity or by the most famous and so on
 The search engine must be able to comprehensively index content from different file
formats, for example images, videos, documents files, spreadsheet file and so on
 A link to the page with the search machine should be provided in the right area of
each page. Also a quick search function must be available in each page. This will be a
text filed in which users will write the text they want to search
5) Navigation

 The navigational structure should be global, hierarchal and sequential

 The MediaWiki:Sidebar should be visible at the same point on every page of the
portal

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  The embedded links should, by default, open a new window or tab in the users
browser
6) Information about Learning Management System (LMS)
 The portal will provide information for the professors who desire to implement an on-
line course by the help of LMS
 The portal will provide information for the students who want to gain access to the
on-line courses
7) Management of the Aignmnetns Virtual Classroom (AVC) members
 The wiki allow the online management of members (students, instructors and other
authorized users) of the Assignments Virtual Classroom.
 This function will be available by using a unique username and password, only to the
wiki administrator
 The administrator will be able to register a new member in the Assignments Virtual
Classroom
 The administrator will be able to search a member or some members of the AVC
 The administrator will be able to update the personal information of a member

Figure 5.2 The MediaWiki:Sidebar

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8) Specific services of AVC
 Matter for the teaching of each module
 Exclusive releases and announcements
 Subjects of assignments, thesis, case studies and so on
 Matter for the formation and administration of students’ groups
 A place for collaborative activity for the students
 A place in which assignments and the solutions will be discussed among students and
tutors
 Discussion Forum
 Links to the Learning Management System of TEI Piraeus

9) Wiki
The administrators of the wiki will be the only persons which will have the privileges to
change the general structure of the wiki, to add more functionality to the wiki, to manage the
users’ privileges and in general to perform administrative tasks as concern the wiki site. Apart
from that, every registered user will have the ability to add new pages, to edit pages, to write
on existing pages, to make links, to post files (images, documents etc), to use its own calendar
or to use a shared calendar, to use the statistics, to use themes and to lock pages (with the
license from the administrators) and so on.

Non-functional Requirements

1) Server Side

 Operational system: Linux systems based on kernel 2.4.35 and upper

 Web Server: Apache 2.2.8
 Programming Language: PHP
 Database: MySQL 5.0
 Disk space on the server: At least 200 MB

The server side of the wiki will consist from the below components:

 Web interface: It’s required to interact to the wiki from user side
 Abstract web interface: It serves as a middle layer between user interface and the
wiki engine
 Multithreading component: It serves parallel requests from several different users

70
 and transfers them to the server
 Virtual engine: It’s responsible for serving active resources
 Registration Manager: It works with information component of the system
 User Manager: It works with user records of the system
 Session Manager: It’s used to work with user session records
 System component. It consists from low level function for interacting with API of OS
and database

2) Client side

 Operation System: Windows/OS/Unix/Linux

 Browser: Internet Explorer 5.1, Netscape Navigator version 6.2 and above, Mozilla
Firefox 2.0 and Opera 5+

3) Extra considerations

We take a special care in order people with disability to be able in using the wiki site. Below
we array some special features towards to this direction:

 Printer Friendly Version: All wiki pages should be available in a printer friendly
version, optimised for A4 portrait printing
 Text content is presented in black text with a white background
 Default font styles should be optimised for the web – e.g. Verdana
 Font point size should be 12 and headings at 14
 Colours of user interface should be pleasant and relaxed.
 Italics should not be used very much
 The screen should not be more than half full of text
 Only the hyperlinked text should be underlined
 Capitalisation, apart from the first letter, should be avoided
 The wiki should provide an easy-to-use facility for printing, copying and saving the
desired piece of text as a text file or picture rather than as html file

4) Access Rights

 The users’ authentication should be done by using an external LDAP server

 The system should support username / password access
 A username / password reminder option should be available in the system
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  The wiki is required to provide a magnificent level of security for access to AVC by
only persons that are authorized
 Guest users should not be able to access contents of AVC

5) Other

 The wiki must be protected from hacker and viruses’ attacks by using appropriate
software or hardware devices
 The wiki is required to run 24 hours a day / every day / all year
 The wiki should provide storage redundancy in case of a power failure
 The system should be protected by AC / DC malfunctioning by using appropriate
devices

5.4 Design of the Portal

As we said, the purpose of this wiki is to be used by education community of “Requirements
Engineering” course. Students called to research upon their assignments which consists in
defining requirements upon given theoretical and practical problems. The duties of the
students are to produce requirements catalogs, demonstrating models of systems that they
research, (such as data flow diagrams, use case and so on), to produce entity relationship
diagrams, class models, rich picture etc. Also ending in a possible solution about given
problems and of course to argue with teachers and other students upon their approach they
followed.

Putting all of these in logical manner we can say that:

1. Students first join groups of three members

2. Group chooses the problem to resolve

3. The group update wiki by declaring the problem that has chosen and sends e-mail to
the corresponding tutor or supervisor

4. The tutor approves the assignments and put it in the corresponding wiki page

5. The group writes the first rough copy

6. The group and the tutor interacts each other by making questions and giving
directions respectively

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 7. The tutors as well as volunteers (other tutors or other students) inspect the work that
is been done by the group and make suggestions

8. The group improves its work based on the comment from the other users

9. The group develop the final solution of the problem and cites it in the wiki

10. All students can use other group work for study purposes

Our purpose is to build a wiki site as usable as possible. It’s the only way for ensuring wiki’s
success and effectiveness (Nielsen, 2000). This section presents the overall design of our
wiki. Most particular, it presents the structure of the wiki via a set of web pages as well as the
content of those pages.

The main page of wiki site is given below:

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 Figure 5.3 Wiki’s site first page

At the left of the page we have the, what so called, “sidebar” of our wiki (figure 5.4)

Figure 5.5 Wiki’s image

Figure 5.4 Wiki’s sidebar

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The sidebar includes the most useful or the most common links of the wiki. Just above sidebar
we have embedded a picture (figure 5.5) which represents the course “Requirements
Engineering” and which is a hyperlink to the first page of our wiki. Also, in the main page of
the wiki, we have a link with the rules that every user must accept in order for the best
function of the wiki. Along with the rules, first page provides a table which shows the same
element as sidebar does (figure 5.6) and also some other useful links such as “How to use
wiki”, “Past papers” etc as shown below.

Figure 5.6 Wiki’s image

Below we give a map of our wiki which illustrates the structure of the wiki and the immediate
links from the first page or for all pages thanks to the sidebar on the left.

Home page

|_Αρχική Σελίδα (First page) (This page links to the starting page of the wiki)

|_Σελίδα του Μαθήματος (Page of the course) (This page redirects to an external
web page)

|_Forum Μαθήματος (Course forum) (This page redirects to an external web page)

|_Υλικό του Μαθήματος (Course Material) (This page redirects to an external web
page)

|_Εργασίες (Assignments)
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 |_1η Εργασία (1st assignment)

|_2η Εργασία (2st assignment)

|_ 3η Εργασία (3st assignment)

|_ 4η Εργασία (4st assignment)

|_ Χη Εργασία (5st assignment)

|_Ομάδες Εργασιών (Groups of Assignments)

|_1η Ομάδα εργασίας (1st group of assignments)

|_Εργασίες της 1ης ομάδας (Assignments of 1st group)

|_2η Ομάδα εργασίας (2st group of assignments)

|_Εργασίες της 2ης ομάδας (Assignments of 2st group)

|_3η Ομάδα εργασίας (3st group of assignments)

|_Εργασίες της 3ης ομάδας (Assignments of 3st group)

|_Χη Ομάδα εργασίας (xst group of assignments)

|_Εργασίες της Χης ομάδας (Assignments of xst group)

|_ Case studies

|_ Παραπομπές – Σύνδεσμοι (References – Useful links)

|_ Καθηγητές (Tutors)

The second section includes the final evaluation of assignments which have been done by
tutors and concerns the last years:

Αξιολόγηση εργασιών (Assignments assessment)

|_ Αξιολόγηση 2004 (Assessment 2004)

|_ Αξιολόγηση 2005 (Assessment 2005)

|_ Αξιολόγηση 2006 (Assessment 2006)

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 |_ Αξιολόγηση 2007 (Assessment 2007)

|_ Αξιολόγηση 2008 (Assessment 2008)

Fig. 5.7 Portal page map

Both registered and not registered members can see the most of the site's pages but only the
registered / authenticated members can edit or add new the pages.

Let's explain at this point the section mentioned in figure 5.7.

“Αρχική Σελίδα”: This page links to the first page of the wiki. It is useful when someone
wants to be transferred to first page with one click.

“Σελίδα του Μαθήματος” This page redirects to an external web page and specific to another
web page which concern “Requirements Engineering” postgraduate course. This page is
http://lvc.teipr.gr and has information about the course such as lectures, supervisors,
announcements and so on.

“Forum Μαθήματος”: This page redirects to an external web page where the current forum of
the course in been hold.

“Υλικό του Μαθήματος”: This page also redirects to an external web page, same as above in
http://lvc.teipir.gr.

“Εργασίες”: With this link in fact we come into the heart and to the purpose of the wiki. Here
is the place where tutors and supervisor put the assignments with their explanation and
comments as concern the assignments. The students read the assignments and they should
select a specific problem to solve by sending an e-mail to the corresponding supervisor. When
supervisor accept group's selection, puts a tag in the corresponding assignments in order to
declare it as “already taken”. This page can been edit only by users with the appropriate
rights, which means tutors, supervisors and administrators of course. Also in this category are
published the various assignments which are given by tutors in the duration of an academic
year or semester.

“Ομάδες Εργασιών”: This link redirects to the page in which groups of students are shown. It
includes information such as the number of the group (usually three students), the assigned

77
problem, the progress they have made upon specific assignment and so on. Also here is the
place in which interaction between tutors – group – other students is taking place. So tutors
and students can inspect the work doing by the groups and make their suggestion.

“Case studies”: This is a link which transfers us to the page of case studies. With this terms
we mean some well defined real world problems and the solution is been given to them.
These problems, as well as, their solution have been taken by everyday tasks that enterprises
and organizations are being facing. The solutions are academically justified and evidently
appropriate with the specific problem. This link can be used from tutors and students for
further study or for investigating the right approaches that are been followed by professionals
in order to solve real world problems.

“Παραπομπές – Σύνδεσμοι”: In this link we have some references and useful links as concern
“requirements engineering” course and as concern students needs.

“Καθηγητές”: The last of the “structured” links is that which have information about the
tutors and the supervisors. Information such as in what course they are responsible or what
assignments they are supervisors, what is their e-mail or which are the days and the hours that
students are accepted for conversation.

The second section (Αξιολόγηση εργασιών) is an auxiliary section which includes problems
among with their solution that come from previous years that the course was taught.

These were the main links of our wiki main page. Some other useful links are also hosted in
the main page. These are:
 Κανόνες (Rules) which refer to the rules that each member of the site should respect
in order for the best operation of the site.
 A link – “How to use this wiki” which contain information on how to edit pages in
wiki using simple rules and writings and also tips and hints.
 A Log in / create account link at the top right of every page of the wiki which does
what it says. Give access to registered users or help users to register themselves in
order to have the privilege to edit pages.

Figure 5.8 Login / create link

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 5.5 Implementation
5.5.1 Setting up the server
This section describes the steps we followed in order to set up and run the whole wiki site. As
we have mentioned before, in order for the site to work and function properly, we had to set
up a pc x86 architecture which plays the role of the server. In other words, the computer
which holds the web server (the one that serves the requested pages), holds the PHP machine,
the SQL databases and of course the wiki site. The computer we use is a middle category
computer since it is consisted by an Intel Pentium 4 hyper threading technology (a 5 years
technology back) with 2 gigabyte of RAM and with 120 gigabyte capacity of hard disk drive.
The operating system we choose was the Ubuntu Linux 8.10 with 2.6.24-23 generic kernel.
The steps we followed in order to install and run the ubuntu linux, the php, the mysql
and finally the mediawiki engine were taken by the very good online documentation which is
provided by many sources, as well as, by the various online forums which deal with the same
matters. Also the changes we had to do in PHP and MySQL are not going to be presented in
this dissertation as they are beyond the scope of this paper. All information needed is given in
the references at the end of this thesis.

5.5.2 Setting up the wiki

The steps below we followed in order to set up our site:

 Setting up a site
 Creating Pages
 Adding Content

5.5.2.1 Setting up a site

The first thing we wanted is the site to look beautiful and attractive. Fortunately the default
mediawiki's template is quiet satisfying (figure 5.3) so we are not concerned with this matter.
The wiki site is located at “http://localhost/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page”. Then a
registration on the site is needed. Administrator’s password is been prompted at the procedure
of installation of wiki site, so administrators can sign up and sign in just after wiki’s
installation and start editing the pages or start setting up the preferences of the wiki.
The first thigng we wanted to change in our wiki site was the logo on the left of the
first page. Instead of the default (figure 5.9) we wanted something more representative and
characteristic which will directly links to “requirements engineering”. In order to do that we
had to erase or rename the “logo.png” image from the directory which mediawiki has been

79
installed (by default /var/www/mediawiki) and place the new image with the name
“logo.png”.

Figure 5.9 default mediawiki's logo Figure 5.10 new mediawiki's logo

Alternative we can have edit the “LocalSettings.php” file which is located in root directory
of mediawiki installation and to change the parameter $wgLogo = "logo.png” into $wgLogo
= "new_photo.png”. A constraint that should be fulfilled is the images should have dimension
of 135x135 pixels and the image to be in .png format.
After those changes and after have logged in as administrator, we are ready to create
pages and start filling it with contents. For example, in order to design the wiki’s sidebar we
have to give in “search” text box (figure 5.11) the string “Mediawiki:sidebar” and press the
“go” button.

Figure 5.11 search box

This will transfer us to the page that represents the sidebar and it will give us the ability to
edit the sidebar. In figure (5.13) we can see the page that represents our sidebar in view mode.
In order to edit this page we have to press the “εμφάνιση κώδικα” (source code view) as
shown in figure (5.12).

Figure 5.12 search box

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 Figure 5.13 source code view

The result is the above figure:

Figure 5.14 source code

Wiki’s side bar is a very useful menu which holds the main links - elements of the site. The
side bar is a steady element of the wiki which means that will always appears in the left of
any wiki page.
Further down we are going to explain how to make new pages, how to format the
content, how to make hyperlinks, bulletin lists, tables, uploading files and so on. In general in
order to be able to edit or add pages we must register ourselves by using the “Login / Create
81
account” link (figure 5.8).

5.5.3 Creating Pages

There are two ways in making new pages. The first one by typing the name of the page we
want to create in the “search” text box. Then mediawiki transfer us in a page which tells us
that the requested page does not exist and if we want to create it (figure 5.15) and (figure
5.16).

Figure 5.15

Figure 5.16

If the page we requested already exists, then the mediawiki engine simply transfers us to the
specific page.
The second way in adding new pages is by declare it as a hyperlink in the contents of
another page. For example, we have a page with text and we add the following line in order to
declare a page which links in the same wiki. Links can be added by using the brackets
between the name of the page we want to add, for example with this [[text]] we declare a new
page with the name “text”. Again, if the page already exists the mediawiki just transfer us to
the page, otherwise it creates the page by giving the name between the brackets.

82
 5.5.4 Adding contents
As concern the formatting of pages, mediawiki uses a very simple and easy to learn schema.
No HTML or other “web” language is needed. Above is presented the formatting rules and
have been taken by mediawiki's official site.

5.5.4.2 Text formatting markup

Description You type You get

character formatting - applies anywhere

Italic text ''italic'' italic

Bold text '''bold''' bold

Bold and italic '''''bold & italic''''' bold & italic

Escape wiki markup <nowiki>no ''markup''</nowiki> no ''markup''

section formatting - only at the beginning of the line

=level 1=
==level 2==
Level 1
===level 3===
Level 2
====level 4====
=====level 5===== Level 3
Headings of different
======level 6====== Level 4
levels
Level 5
An article with four or more headings Level 6
will automatically create a table of
contents.

Horizontal rule ----

* one  One
* two  Two
Bullet list * three  Three
** three point one
** three point two  three point one
 three point two

83
 1. one
2. two
spanning several
lines
# one without breaking
# two <br />spanning several lines<br the numbering
/>without breaking the numbering
Numbered list # three 3. three
## three point one
## three point two 1. three point
one
2. three point
two

;item 1 item 1
:definition 1 definition 1

Definition list ;item 2 item 2

:definition 2-1 definition 2-1
:definition 2-2 definition 2-2

Single indent
::Double indent Single indent
Adopting definition list Double indent
to indent text :::::Multiple indent
This adoption may be controversial Multiple indent

from the viewpoint of accessibility.

# one 1. one
# two 2. two
#* two point one  two point one
#* two point two  two point two
# three 3. three

Mixture of different #; three item one three item one

types of list #: three def one three def one
# four 4.four
#: four def one four def one this
#: this rather looks like the rather looks like the
continuation of # four continuation of # four and
#: and thus often used instead of <br thus often used instead of

84
 /> <br />
# five 5.five
## five sub 1 1. five sub 1
### five sub 1 sub 1 1. five sub 1 sub 1
## five sub 2 2. five sub 2
;item 1 item 1
:* definition 1-1  definition 1-1
:* definition 1-2  definition 1-2
: item 2
;item 2 1. definition 2-1
:# definition 2-1 2. definition 2-2
:# definition 2-2
The usage of #: and *: for breaking a
line within an item may also be
controversial.

preformatted text is done with a

'''space''' at the ''beginning'' of the line
preformatted text is done
This way of preformatting only applies
with a space at the
Preformatted text to section formatting, and character
beginning of the line
formatting markups are still effective.

5.5.4.3 Paragraphs
MediaWiki ignores normal line breaks. To start a new paragraph, leave an empty line. You
can force a line break within a paragraph with the HTML tags <br />.

5.5.4.4 HTML
Some HTML tags are allowed in MediaWiki, for example <code>, <div>, <span> and
<font>. This apply anywhere you insert them.

Description You type You get

Strikethrough Strikethrough

85
 <del>Strikethrough</del>

<tt>Fixed width text</tt> Fixed width text

Fixed width text

text text text text text

text text text text text
text text text text text text text text text
text text text text text
text text text
text text text text text
text text text text text text text text text
text text text text
text text text
quote quote
Blockquotes <blockquote> quote quote quote quote
quote quote
quote quote </blockquote>
quote quote
text text text text text text text text text
text text text text text
text text text
text text text text text
text text

<!--This is comment-->
Text can only be viewed in the edit
Comment
window.

<pre>this way, all markups are <pre>this way, all

Completely preformatted '''ignored'''</pre> markups are
text '''ignored'''</pre>

Administrators can allow full HTML to be used by users by setting $wgRawHtml = true in
LocalSettings.php. This implies that administrators trust users, because full HTML access
could be proved harmful for the wiki.

As concern linking in to pages, mediawiki uses four sorts of links:

1. internal links to other pages in the wiki
2. external links to other websites
3. interwiki links to other websites registered to the wiki in advance
4. Interlanguage links to other websites registered as other language versions of the wiki

Description You type You get

86
 Internal link [[Main Page]] Main Page

Piped link [[Main Page|different text]] different text

Redirect #REDIRECT [[Main Page]] → Main Page

Internal link to an anchor [[#See also]] #See also

Section headings and the top
of the page are automatically
anchored.

Internal link to an anchor at [[Help:Images#See also]] Help:Images#See also

another page

Internal link to the current [[{{TALKPAGENAME}}|Disc Discussion

page's talk page ussion]]

Internal link to a subpage [[/example]] example

Shortcut for
[[Help:Links/example]].

Internal link to a category [[:Category:Help] Category:Help

page

Internal link to an image or a [[media:example.jpg]] media:example.jpg

file of other types
[[media:example.pdf]] media:example.pdf

External links
Description You type You get

External link http://mediawiki.org http://mediawiki.or

g

External link with different [http://mediawiki.org MediaWiki] MediaWiki

label
87
External link numbered [http://mediawiki.org] [1]

External link icons [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.avi Video

video]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.wav sound
sound]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.pdf
document]
document

External link icons may differ

depending on the file type of the
target.

External link to the same host [http://{{SERVERNAME}}/pagena [2]

me]

External link to other host [http://google.com/search?q={{PAG [3]

passing the pagename ENAMEE}}]

Mailto link [mailto:info@example.org email me] email me

Mailto named with subject [mailto:info@example.org?Subject= info

line and body URL%20Encoded%20Subject&body
=Body%20Text info]

Administrators can control which protocol (like http, https and so on) are allowed in the
$wgUrlProtocols setting of LocalSettings.php file.

5.6 Interwiki links

“Interwiki links are links with the internal link markup to a website registered in advance. For
example, you can link to the Sunflower article on http://en.wikipedia.org by typing
88
[[wikipedia:Sunflower]], which will result in a link wikipedia:Sunflower. This is because
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ is registered to your wiki by default with the prefix of wikipedia.
This link may not work properly, if the admin of your wiki has changed the setting. Similar to
internal page links, you can create piped links, with alternate link label, e.g.
[[wikipedia:Sunflower|big yellow flower]]. Basically this is an abbreviation for longer URLs.
A very similar link could be created as a normal external link by typing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunflower Sunflower, but interwiki links allow you to type out
an easy and compact link, almost as if you are linking to a page on your own wiki.

Interlanguage links
If your wiki has other language versions, you may find “interlanguage links” in the sidebar,
just below toolbox in the box named “in other languages”. Interlanguage links behave similar
to interwiki links, except that they are listed in the sidebar. To create an interlanguage link
from a page, just type [[language prefix:pagename]] wherever you like in the page; the
language prefix is the prefix specified at your wiki for the other language version (typically
the ISO language code). If you want to make the interlanguage link to appear in the content of
the page, you can add a colon before the language prefix, e. g. [[:en:Sunflower]].

In figure (5.17) we can see a paradigm of a page creation of our wiki site:

<big>'''Requirements Engineering'''</big>
Heading

Καλώς ήρθατε στο wiki site του μαθήματος Requirements Engineering (Ανάλυση
Απαιτήσεων). Μέσα από αυτό το wiki θα προσπαθήσουμε να κάνουμε το μάθημα πιο
κατανοητό και αλληλεπιδραστικό.
'Wiki' (προφέρεται ουίκι) είναι ένας τύπος ιστοτόπου που επιτρέπει σε οποιονδήποτε να
δημιουργήσει και να επεξεργαστεί τις σελίδες του. Έτσι για παράδειγμα θα μπορείτε να
συμμετέχετε και εσείς σε αυτό τον ιστοτόπο γράφοντας, διορθώνοντας ή σχολιάζοντας όσα
γράφονται εδώ από οποιοδήποτε και να γράφονται, ακόμα και από τον ίδιο τον καθηγητή του
μαθήματος.

Για παράδειγμα στη σελίδα με τις εργασίες που έχουν ανατεθεί στις διάφορες ομάδες, θα
μπορείτε να σχολιάζετε και να καταθέτετε την άποψη σας, τα σχόλια σας και τις διορθώσεις
σας σχετικά με την εργασία της ομάδας.

89
Γενικότερα μπορείτε να γράφετε οτιδήποτε σε οποιοδήποτε κομμάτι αυτού του ιστοτόπου
αρκεί βέβαια να είναι σχετικό με το μάθημα και να μην παραβιάζει κάποιους απλούς αλλά
βασικότατους [[κανόνες]]. Internal link

Ξεκινήστε από [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Contents εδώ] όπου υπάρχουν οδηγίες

για το πως θα γίνει αυτό. Highlighted text
External link

Section
formatting
== [[Εργασίες]] ==
[[Εργασίες|Εδώ]] παρατίθενται οι εργασίες με τις διατυπώσεις τους και διάφορες χρήσιμες
διευκρινήσεις...
Piped link

== [[Ομάδες Εργασιών]] ==
Οι [[Ομάδες Εργασιών]] όπως αποφασίστηκαν από εσάς είναι οι ακόλουθες:

[[1η ομάδα]] αποτελούμενη από τους φοιτητές:

* 1. Παναγιώτη Τροχίδης
* 2. Γιάννης Παλαιολόγλου
* 3. Νίνα Δεσκάτη

[[2η ομάδα]] αποτελούμενη από τους φοιτητές:

* 1. Πέτρος Δήμογλου
* 2. Νίκος Λακόπουλος
* 3. Μαρία Τζιτζικλή

[[3η ομάδα]] αποτελούμενη από τους φοιτητές:

* 1. Κωνσταντίνα Δουβλετή
* 2. Όλγα Κύρπη
* 3. Ευανθία Χατζηγεωργίου

== Παραδείγματα - case studies ==

[[case studies|Εδώ]] βρίσκονται δημοσιευμένα κάποια παραδείγματα καθώς και πραγματικές
90
εφαρμογές υλοποίησης ενός έργου ανάλυσης απαιτήσεων

== Παραπομπές - Σύνδεσμοι ==
[[Παραπομπές - Σύνδεσμοι|Εδώ]] βρίσκονται χρήσιμες παραπομπές καθώς και σύνδεσμοι
σχετικοί με το μάθημα

== Παλιότερα θέματα ==
Σε αυτό τον [[σύνδεσμο]] θα βρείτε όλα τα θέματα που έχουν υποβληθεί προς εξέταση από
την αρχή του προγράμματος έως και σήμερα...

== Forum μαθήματος ==
[http://lvc.teipir.gr/QuickPlace/msc_re/PageLibraryC225700E00626136.nsf?Login&Redirect
To=%2FQuickPlace%2Fmsc_re%2FPageLibraryC225700E00626136.nsf%2Fh_Toc%2F612
93DD9FB8E981BC22570C8006A77BA%2F%3FOpenDocument Εδώ] μπορείτε να
εισέλθετε στο χώρο συνομιλιών του μαθήματος, να ανταλλάξουμε απόψεις και να εκθέσετε
τις απορίες σας
== Υποδείξεις - Διάφορα ==

Χρήσιμο υλικό για το μάθημα "Requirements Engineering" μπορείτε να βρείτε...

== Πως να χρησιμοποιήσετε αυτό το wiki ==

Στον παρακάτω σύνδεσμο θα βρείτε όλα αυτά που χρειάζεστε ώστε να αρχίσετε και εσείς να
συνεισφέρετε στο site αυτό.
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Contents
Figure 5.17

Content other than text that some user may want to add are images, files, tables and so on. In
order to upload images and in general all kind of files, administrator should make “images”
directory writable and set $wgEnableUploads in LocalSettings.php to true. Also the file type
must be allowed in “/includes/DefaultSettings.php”. For example:

$wgFileExtensions = array( 'png', 'gif', 'jpg', 'jpeg', 'doc', 'xls', 'pdf'

);
There are many options when uploading images. For instance, allowing directly uploading
files from a URL using “$wgAllowCopyUploads = true” command, using thumbnailed
images by using [[image:test.png|thumb|caption]] in a page. Also we can use alignments for

91
uploaded images, for example: [[image:test.png|left|thumb|50px|]]. For more information one
can consult mediawiki’s site.

5.6.1 Creating tables

Creating tables is a simple task in mediawiki. Beside is given a summary with the necessary
markups for table creation:
{| table start
|+ table caption, optional; only between table start and first table row
|- table row, optional on first row -- wiki engine assumes the first row
! table header cell, optional. Consecutive table header cells may be added on same line
separated by double marks (!!) or start on new lines, each with its own single mark (!).
| table data cell, required! Consecutive table data cells may be added on same line
separated by double marks (||) or start on new lines, each with its own single mark (|).
|} table end

An example of a table:
You type You get
{| style="color:green; background-
color:#ffffcc;" cellpadding="20"
cellspacing="0" border="1" Orange Apple
|Orange Bread Pie
|Apple
|- Butter Ice cream
|Bread
|Pie
|-
|Butter
|Ice cream
|}

Also for uploading any type of files some necessary settings have to be set. Thus, with a
combination of text and formatting we can start filling our pages. Users need little time in
order to become familiar with these simple rules.

5.7 Testing
In this section we are going to describe some significant user scenarios based in different
roles of wiki’s participants. From wiki’s perception, every user has some authorities and
privileges. For example supervisors and tutors can edit all wiki pages except pages that have

92
to do with wiki’s administration. On the other hand, administrators can edit all pages included
those which have to do with the site administration. Students can edit only the pages that
administrators have given rights to do so. For example, they cannot edit pages which are
related with assignments posted by supervisors and tutors. Following the same logic, guests
which are the visitors of the wiki are not able to edit a page at all. They can only view some
of the pages. We choose to study two scenarios which have to do with the supervisors’ aspect
and students’ aspect.

More specific the two scenarios are:

1. The supervisors’ role. How do they cite assignments, how do they make
comments and answer students’ questions.
2. The students’ role. How do they access supervisors’ assignments, how do
they choose assignments, how they present their solution in the wiki and
how they participate in the collaborated effort of reviewing and
commenting other group solution.

Supervisors
First of all, supervisors are users of the wiki. So they should login or register themselves by
using the Log in / create account link in the top right of wiki pages.

Login / create account link

Figure 5.18

Then the following page is displayed:

93
 Create an account link

Tutor registers himself / herself

Figure 5.19
If the tutors has already registered then types his/her username and password. If not, he/she
has to use the “Create an account” link which leads to the next page:

Create an account page

Figure 5.20

Here supervisors should fill the desired fields with the requested data. Then the “Create
account” button has to be clicked in order to finish the registration. Then a “Login
successful” page is displayed which informs the supervisor that the registration was successful
and prompts a link which links to the main page.

94
 Login successfully

Figure 5.21

Main page link

After that, supervisor is ready to cite his / her assignments in the corresponding page. All that
has to be done is to select “εργασίες” (assignments) link from the sidebar at the left of the
main page. Then the “edit” button at the top of the page gives the ability to edit the page and
to add content. In the specific example, tutors can simply add for example the “[[2η
Εργασία]]” text in order to create the same time a link to and the page with the name “2η
Εργασία” (2rd assignment).

95
 Edit button

Figure 5.24

assignments link

Figure 5.22

Figure 5.23 Editing “εργασίες” (assignments)

page

Thus, as figure (5.24) shows below, the page has been created and as previous with the “edit”
button in the top of the page, supervisors can add content to the page, creating links,
uploading files and so on.

96
 Figure 5.24

Students
Students are users so they should registered themselves prior start using the wiki features.
Students are members of at least three - persons group in which assignments are been
assigned by supervisors. So, each group chooses a problem by sending an e-mail to the
corresponding supervisor / tutor. When the tutor responds positive to group’s selection the
problem is assigned to the group. Groups are being declared in a wiki’s discrete page which
shows the group’s name and the students which consists each group.

“groups” link

Figure 5.25 Figure 5.30

97
More specific, a group chooses the “Εργασίες” (assignments) link from the left side bar
(figure 5.26), then chooses the corresponding assignment from the list (figure 5.27) in order to
view the assignments that tutors has published. Finally choose which of the posted problems
is going to solve (figure 5.30).

Figure 5.26
Figure 5.27

Figure 5.28

So the group has chosen the assignment and starts working on problem. Group cites its
progress in pages dedicated to their group (figure 5.27). For example, the 1st group cites all its
progress in “1η ομάδα” (1st group) page. In this page students of the group can put their
questions or engrossments so as tutors or other students can inspect them and make their
comments, give advices and so on. With the help of supervisors or from other students, group
can improve its work. Students can edit pages with rules that have been mentioned above. In
the process of the problem solving, students can have virtual meetings with the supervisors or
with other students in order to exchange arguments as concern the assign problem.

98
 6 Conclusions and Recommendations
The Word Wide Web has inevitably boosted human activities. One of these activities, -
education- seems that will experience a lot of challenges and transformations the upcoming
years. Collaboration, open and distance learning, the usage of computers and the World Wide
Web, have created and will continue to create a new category of educational applications that
will fulfil educational needs.

Wiki tools is a new software category which emerged from the need of open, distance
and collaboration learning in which tutors and students are “equal” and both of them can
participate in learning procedures in an easy way without the need of expertise coding
knowledge. Wiki is an easy to use and to maintain software which gives a shared space in
collaborators in order to work together. The first wiki (wikiwikiweb) was developed in order
to to make the exchange of ideas between programmers easier. As years passing by and the
usefulness of the wiki software has been acknowledged many wiki tools created and many
organizations, both educational and enterprises, start using them.

Our project came from such a need and aims to develop a guideline for evaluating and
selecting the best wiki tool in accordance with a specific educational need. The first thing we
thought was to record all the functions that such systems support or should support and
provide a functionality list which could form a guideline for someone who wishes to
evaluate/select such systems. We used the inexhaustible source of World Wide Web as the
main source for defining the functionality list. However, our literature review pointed out that
usability matters are essential for evaluating / selecting software systems and we had to take
into consideration this dimension. Usability is a qualitative characteristic and it is difficult to
measure it. Then we make a review and functionality analysis of the most well known wiki
software and finally we develop a guideline for selecting a wiki tool for Collaborative
learning environments based on five criteria: Page Features, Text Formatting Rules, Link
Features, Management Features and Extra Features.
After selecting the most suitable wiki tool according to our requirements we utilize a
real case study for supporting a course of “E-commerce” postgraduate studies. The course
called “Requirements Engineering” and with the usage of wiki tutors and students can have a
common and shared space in which learning process can be taking place.

99
 6.1 Future research directions
This project faced a lot of issues, which we can definitely say that are still open and need
further research. We briefly describe some of the most important ideas for future research
directions:

 Our guideline needs extensive evaluation from many people in order to be evaluated
in practice. We need more evaluations that will refine many aspects of the guideline
as well as prove its usefulness.
 The development of a tool that will support our guideline is also essential. The tool
should be web-based too in order to be accessible to a broader audience.
 The development of a portal that will hold evaluations following this guideline and
make them available to all members of the portal will be valuable
 The continuation of work in this area in order to refine our guideline especially in the
usability performance dimension which seems to be promising for an integrated
evaluation framework
 The way a wiki tool could be integrated with an open source Learning Management
System.

100
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