12.7. Using the Course Wiki
Wikis provide a way for course staff and students to access, share, and
collaboratively edit information both about, and for, your course.
Every course has a wiki that you can set up in a way appropriate for your
course. You can influence how students (and staff) use it by seeding the
wiki with specific content, by explaining how you want it to
be used at the beginning of the course, and by providing clear instructions and
guidelines for its use.
Common uses for the course wiki might
be:
- Sharing answers to course FAQs and collecting new FAQs.
- Sharing editable course information, such as download and installation
instructions for software required for the course
- Providing shared access to student-created resources, perhaps as part of a
collaborative exercise.
- Sharing errata for the course.
- Collecting suggestions for future runs of the course.
As students and staff create and edit wiki articles, they contribute to a
repository of information about your course that can be immediately useful to
other students, or useful for you and your course team as you develop other
courses or future runs of the same course.
The wiki for each course is a “child” wiki of the edX-wide wiki. From within any
course wiki, clicking the top level Wiki link in the breadcrumb trail at the
top of the page takes you to the edX-wide wiki.
12.7.1. Managing the Course Wiki
Keep these points in mind as you design the wiki for your course:
- Be clear about the purpose for the wiki or for different parts of the wiki. For example, are some parts of the wiki only for disseminating information? If that is the case, then make sure that only your course team has write access for those articles.
- Decide whether some parts of the wiki are intended for student collaboration or student input. Make sure that students are able to create and edit wiki articles in those sections, and use text to clearly indicate to students that these pages can be edited.
- Think about the different tasks that will be performed by people in different roles. Typically you want your course team to have some privileges that students do not have. For example, course staff can delete wiki articles, but students cannot.
Course staff can perform these tasks to manage the wiki:
All users, including students, can perform the following tasks, depending on the permissions that you set for an article:
12.7.2. Showing or Hiding the Wiki
When you create a course, a wiki is included by default, and a Wiki tab is
visible at the top of the course page. If you do not want to use the course
wiki, you can hide the Wiki tab at the top of the course.
Follow these steps to show or hide the wiki in the course tabs.
- Open your course in Studio.
- Select Content, then Pages.
- Click the eye icon in the Wiki row. The Wiki tab is hidden when the eye
icon has a slash through it. You can show the Wiki tab again by clicking the eye icon.
When you hide the wiki in your course, any existing articles remain in the edX-
wide wiki, but the Wiki tab is removed from your course pages.
12.7.3. Controlling Access to the Wiki
You can control access to the wiki in various ways: by changing access to the
wiki as a whole, by changing the read/write permissions settings of articles
within the wiki, or by locking articles.
To change access to the course wiki:
- Open your course in Studio.
- Select Settings, then Advanced Settings.
- Scroll down to the Allow Public Access to Wiki field. This Boolean setting is set to False by default, meaning that only course team members and enrolled students can see the course wiki. If you change the value of this field to True, then any registered edX user can access the course wiki, even if they are not enrolled in your course. However, public users would have to explicitly navigate to your wiki via the edX-wide wiki structure, or a link that has been provided to them.
To modify viewing or editing permissions for specific groups of users by
article, see Setting Permissions for Wiki Articles.
To lock an article and prevent further editing, see Locking a Wiki Article.
12.7.4. Setting Permissions for Wiki Articles
To prevent certain groups of users from being able to add or edit articles, you
need to modify the read/write permissions for articles. For example, as a course
instructor, you likely want to prevent students from creating wiki articles at
the top level, so you should remove write access to course-level wiki articles
for most users. (Top-level wiki articles are children of the edX-wide wiki, and
cannot be found within the course wiki).
To modify the permissions for wiki articles, follow these steps.
- View the live version of your course.
- Click Wiki.
- Navigate to the article whose permissions you are modifying, then click Settings.
- In the Permissions section of the Settings page, select or clear the checkboxes for read or write access for Group or Other.
- At the bottom of the page, click the Save changes button for the Permissions section.
Note that there are two different Save changes buttons, one near the top of
the page for the Notifications section, and one at the bottom of the page
for the Permissions section. If you are modifying permissions, make sure you
click the Save changes button at the bottom of the page for your changes to
be saved.
12.7.4.1. Groups Used in Wiki Permissions
There are three groups for each course, managed by adding users to these groups
on the Membership page of the Instructor Dashboard:
- Beta testers (by default there are no beta testers until you add them)
- Instructors (by default, the course author is always in the instructor group)
- Staff (these are course team members)
The permissions for the Others group apply to users who are not in the three
course groups, including students.
12.7.5. Seeding the Wiki
To ensure that students get the most out of your course wiki, design the wiki
space before the course starts by seeding the course wiki with articles that
give it the desired structure.
For example, you could create wiki articles to mirror the course outline. At the
top level, you could provide a course outline, FAQs, and links to the main
articles for each section. In the child articles for each section, you could
provide information specific to the units and components in that section, and a
page for students to share their feedback and experiences.
12.7.6. Adding a Wiki Article
When you add an article to the wiki, be aware of what level you are currently
viewing, to make sure that you add your new article to the correct level in the
course wiki.
To move down a level in the wiki, click the See all children link; to move
up, click the appropriate level in the wiki breadcrumb trail links at the top of
the page.
12.7.6.1. Add Articles at the Same Level
Follow these steps to add a wiki article at your current level. If you do not
have permissions to add an article, when you click the Add Article button, a
message indicates “Permission Denied” .
- In your course, click Wiki.
- Navigate to the level where you want to add a new article.
- Click the Add Article button near the top right of the page.
- On the new article page, add a title for the page, and optionally a few
keywords to create a “slug” that provides a more specific location identifier for your article.
- Add contents to the article. You can enter plain text and use Markdown syntax to add formatting. For help with Markdown syntax, click the link to the cheat sheet at the upper right corner of the Contents field.
- When you have finished entering content for your wiki article, click Create Article.
12.7.6.2. Add Articles Below the Current Level
Follow these steps to add a child article to your current article. If you do not
have permissions to add an article, when you click the Add Article button, a
message indicates “Permission Denied” .
- In your course, click Wiki.
- Navigate to the level above where you want to add the new child article.
- Click See all children.
- Click the Add Article button under the wiki title.
- On the new article page, add a title for the page, and optionally a few
keywords to create a “slug” that provides a more specific location identifier for your article.
- Add contents to the article. You can enter plain text and use Markdown syntax to add formatting. For help with Markdown syntax, click the link to the cheat sheet at the upper right corner of the Contents field.
- When you have finished entering content for your wiki article, click
Create Article.
12.7.7. Editing a Wiki Article
If you have permissions to edit an article, you see an Edit button and icon to the right of the article content.
Follow these steps to make changes to a wiki article.
- In your course, click Wiki.
- Navigate to the article you want to edit.
- Click Edit.
- Make your changes. For help with Markdown syntax, click the link to the cheat sheet at the upper right corner of the Contents field.
- In the Summary field at the bottom left, below the Contents field, enter a short description of the changes you made. This description appears in the Changes list, and helps other users of the wiki understand what changes you made to the article.
- When you have finished making edits, click Save changes.
12.7.8. Searching for Wiki Articles
A Filter field is available only if any level of the wiki contains multiple
articles.
Enter a text string in the Filter field to find a list of all
articles with that text string in their titles.
12.7.9. Managing Versions of Wiki Articles
The wiki includes a change history for each article. You can view each past
version of the article, roll back to a selected earlier version of the article,
or merge the current version of the article with a selected earlier version.
12.7.9.1. View a List of Previous Versions of a Wiki Article
- In your course, click Wiki.
- Navigate to the wiki article for which you want to see the change history.
- Click Changes. Previously saved versions of the current article are listed, with the most recent at the top.
12.7.9.2. View a Previous Version of a Wiki Article
- On the Changes page for your wiki, select the revision of the article that you want to view.
- Click Preview this revision to see the article as it appeared after the revision was made.
12.7.9.3. See Line by Line Changes in a Previous Version
- On the Changes page for your wiki, select the revision of the article that you want to view.
- Click the linked date, time, and author information to see the line-by-line changes made in that revision. Text that is highlighted in red has been replaced by the text that is highlighted in green below it.
12.7.9.4. Replace a Current Version with a Previous Version
- On the Changes page for your wiki, select the revision of the article that you want to roll back to.
- Click Switch to selected version to replace the current version with the selected one.
12.7.9.5. Combine a Current Version with a Previous Version
- On the Changes page for your wiki, select the revision of the article that you want to merge with the current version.
- Click Merge selected with current to combine the current and the selected versions.
12.7.10. Locking a Wiki Article
Locking a wiki article prevents further changes from being made to it. Follow
these steps to lock a wiki article either after you create it, or after you make
specific edits.
- View the live version of your course.
- Click Wiki.
- Navigate to the article you want to lock, then click Settings.
- In the Permissions section of the Settings page, select the Lock article checkbox.
- At the bottom of the page, click the Save changes button for the Permissions section.
12.7.11. Deleting a Wiki Article
Only course team members can delete articles. In addition, you can only delete
an article if you have permissions to edit that article. If you have the
required permissions, you see a Delete article button at the bottom of the
Edit page.
Follow these steps to delete an article:
- View the live version of your course.
- Click Wiki.
- Navigate to the article you want to delete, then click Edit.
- Click Delete article.
- On the deletion confirmation page, select Yes, I am sure.
- Optionally, also select the Purge checkbox. For details, see Purging a Wiki Article.
- Click Delete article to confirm the deletion.
12.7.11.1. Purging a Wiki Article
When you delete and purge an article, it is completely removed from the wiki,
with no option to undo the deletion. Select this option only if you are sure you
will not want to restore the content.
To purge an article as you delete it, select the Purge checkbox on the
deletion confirmation page.
12.7.11.2. Restoring a Deleted Wiki Article
Articles that have been deleted but not purged can be restored. A link to the
article remains visible at the level at which it was created.
To restore a deleted article, click the link to the article and click
Restore.