Papke,+Katharina

//While I am here for an exchange year I am still improving my english. So please feel free to correct it!//

**My first general impression**
While I did not use wikispace before and I am not a regularly blogger, it is an interesting experience to see how simple it is to create a space like this. In general, I think it is fascinating how spaces, ideas, opinions, reflections and various topics can grow so quickly. Building up a space where you can share everything without being dependent on personal interactions gives you the possibility to learn from other people, read and see what other people know in a very fast and easy way. It also can generate ideas you would not come up with yourself and, of course, you are much more creative when you get inspired by the thoughts of your fellow students. I try to choose contributions or postings, which interest myself and where I might already have some knowledge on. In my opinion, if every student contributes some knowledge (in addition to the main contribution, which can be something totally new), we will experience a collaborative learning process without a lot of effort - and this can be a real advantage. In addition, contributions on topics you didn't know before can make you want to learn more about them and even make you start further research on these topics. I will only add, edit or re-arrange someone's work, when I am sure I can improve the work. If I see something which sounds wrong to me, I would comment on it but for sure not delete it.

**Criticism about this wikispace**
1. However, while I am really attired in this new way of creating a platform, I also think it is important to mention the critical aspects of this special space. Critical aspect might change during my experience and I might get a completely different impression afterwards. That is why I want to outline them now and see if they change or not. My main critic focuses on the way students contribute to this special space, although I already wrote about the positive aspects of contribution in general (of course this brings the space to life!). To understand this criticism, it is necessary to see this virtual platform as a space that is not created by an independent community but created for a university course. This is my main critical point because there is a big difference between open spaces and forums on the one side and a space where contribution is graded on the other side. Grading obviously influences the contribution. There is a big difference between adding a link to somebody’s page or copy-pasting the content from another website to wikispace (which is not really a lot of work) and writing an individual essay. Of course, contribution brings this space to life, but since we get 10% of our final grade for contributing wiki, a lot of students might simply browse the internet and try to find something, which they could easily copy-paste. There is nothing against it, but of course this affects the content of the wikispace. When you get grades for something like this, it would be maybe better to define a few criteria, although this is limiting the main idea of wiki. It probably depends on the outcome afterwards. But although this is an open wiki space – a lot of students would probably not contribute to it, if they were not in this course. In my opinion, spaces like this need more voluntary contribution - so I think this is a special problem of a university course created space. If you are looking for forums where people talk about astrology for instance, they actually love doing research and they love making a contribution, because they are really interested. Those spaces create themselves while a course space also integrates different intentions from the people contributing. This could either signify a real interest in different topics or an interest in getting a good grade for the course. Those different intentions, particularly when it comes to grades, are necessary to know and reflect.

2. This space seems to be an open forum for posting ideas, analyses and reflections. On the other side, there is no real discussion about what the students, who contributed to this space, have written. This would be my second critical aspect. There are the possibilities of changing the others’ contribution but for reflecting on it, you need to know why somebody else has changed it. There is no real learning effect from just changing something but not really talking about it – if it is more than just adding something to the text. I am aware of the the discussion board, however, it seems to me that it would become really messy if everybody discussed everything on this board. Maybe this is just my first impression and it works really well. I’ll probably find it out.

3. My last point would be “another virtual community”. While spending already so much time in front of my computer, this platform is one more virtual platform, which means discussing and reading online but not face-to-face. This might be only my impression but although I am not a computer and Internet nerd, I already feel that watching on my screen is half of my life. I think Internet is great and talk and chat with friends who are all over the world at the moment is wonderful. But I also love face-to-face communication and doing everything online does not always mean for me it is more interesting or better.

My second impression
I was asthonished with what kind of ideas people came up and filled the wikispace. It is really interesting to see how specialised and uncommon some topics are. My thoughts from the beginning are splitted now. On the one side I found that people wrote about different topics and had many ideas, which can inspire other ideas and thoughts. The different cultural backgrounds helped to create a very broad and various table of contents for the wikispace. Therefore an insight into genres, which are really specialised, is possible. On the other side there are still many topics, which are more or less adaptions from wikipedia. In my opinion reading the whole wikipedia website on this topic makes more sense than reading an adapted version. There are also some topics which do not really analyse something but just show some examples of the genre. The variety of topics is interesting but they are so different that maybe more different breakdowns for the table of contents section would help to organize the wikispace better. I would still suggest to talk more about the contribution (especially about the main contribution).

For example:

- talking about the sources we can or should use for our main contribution - giving examples to show how to organize it - giving a few criteria to analyse a special genre or: talking about criteria students are thinking about - showing different contents to see, which one is maybe better analysed than another one, talking about content contribution in class (for example: pick two or three contributions in every lab session and talk about it) - while this is an open space it is also created for an university course. For this reasion I think it would make sense to talk more about the contribution and how the students can improve their contribution.

My third impression
In my final reflection, I will make some suggestions for the wikispace and for further wiki-users. Regarding the wikispace I would recommend changing a few things at the table of contents page. I would distinguish between two sections - one for the media genres and one for other topics. At the moment it seems not really organized, because the next to pages about authors are pages about billboards. Moreover, I would discuss a few things in class before starting the wikispace. This would include talking about the purpose of this special wikispace and what students think the contribution should look like. At the moment some pages are really interesting, others are less interesting (contributing a page about something and writing 2 sentences about it without further comments is not really interesting in my opinion). For this reason having a discussion about it upfront would help that people think about their contribution. This step usually includes more reflection on what you contribute. In general, there should be more discussion in the lab about the wikispace. We are creating a wikispace but the discussion-boards are not really working. Simply asking people what they think about this or that in the wikispace would help I guess. I have to admit that I am somewhat disappointed with the fact that we are creating a wikispace but without talking about it. For further wiki-users I would thus suggest constant contribution. In order to make the space more interesting, I think it is indeed useful to use other sources than just wikipedia. Consulting and using different sources makes contributions more valuable for other readers and for sure makes it more unique.

Last entry...
While I already wrote about my ideas to improve wikispace in my last reflection, I will focus on the course and try to make some suggestions for improvements. Overall, I liked the readings and textbooks and the different areas which they talking about. However, what I felt lacked in this course was a structure. Upon beginning this course I understood were going to learn something about critical analysis. The graphic novel analysis was a good example for this. While starting with a special media form (comic) and its analysis I missed an introdus part of the studies on media forms and its different analysis tools. Of course this course is not able to offer everything, but just saying that for example film can be analysed by different methods like the neoformalism approach, the feminisn approach or the semiotical approach would help to give a broad overview about different form of media and its analysis tools. When these tools and approaches exist (like McClouds approach to analyse comics) why not present an overview over this field and then start with one selected example - like a graphic novel - and its special analysis. In my opinion this would make more sense and this wouldn't have make me feel a little bit lost. We were talking about genres - media forms - in a very broad way and even Manovich elements of genre didn't gave something for an indepth analysis. For me the focus on analysis tools and ways to apply them was missing. I really wanted to learn more about how to analyse something (like we did it with our graphic novel assignment) and not contribute all the time to a wikispace we are not talking about. In my opinion the wikispace is a good idea but why not using it for an assignment like the first assignment and not for all and everything. Particularly, because so many people still contribute something in the end just for contribute anything (see my criticism about the wikispace above) and just getting information on something wasn't my interest in this course. To write a good analysis has to do with knowing different analyses tools and what kind of approaches exist. In my case I have to say that I was disappointed regarding the amount of focus on wikispace and would rather more learn about analysis and tools than just using an online tool.

**My Contribution**
Main contribution: Oct 31, 2006 Table of Contents: created a new entry: Television News Genre (it is still under construction!)

Dec 4, 2006 Posted a question on the discussion board: Wikipedia as a source? Dec 4, 2006 Table of Contents: Bildungsroman: put in some more information Nov 24, 2006 Home: put up a note to visit the [|Meatrix] Nov 13, 2006 Table of Contents: linked Satire News and Political News to my main contribution Nov 12, 2006 Table of Contents: Facebook: added a link to OpenBC - another platform to meet people Oct 10, 2006 Table of Contents: created a new entry: "Comics in Scholarly Writing" and linked it Oct 9, 2006 Table of Contents: changed the entry "Comics": added paragraph about the characteristica of comics Sep 29, 2006 Hierarchy of Media Genres: added different film genres Sep 29, 2006 Table of Contents: Comics: created a link to a "Max and Moritz" homepage Sep 29, 2006 Table of Contents: Marshall McLuhan: asked for references