Student Project Collaboration Using Wikis

A wiki is a web tool that allows users to easily create and edit web pages collaboratively. The ease-of-editing feature and accessibility from anywhere by anyone make wikis ideal for project collaboration. Although the wiki was introduced more than ten years ago, its use is relatively new in academia. This research explores the potential uses of wikis in Software Engineering, especially for software project team collaboration and communication. The author introduced wikis in a project-based software engineering course, and students soon discovered a number of innovative ways in which wikis can augment collaborative software development activities. A student survey indicates that vast majority of students found the wiki to be a good tool for project collaboration, and most of them plan to use wikis for future projects even if not required to do so.