Analysis+and+Reflection+(Sidra)

Summary:
Being part of an interactive collaborative environment such as the wikispace turned out to be a very pleasant and educational experience. Everyone contributed a fair amount of work to this space, which kept it going. It was quite evident that everyone put a lot of effort in maintaining the space and did thorough research in presenting the facts. I liked how there were no restrictions in the amount of content we should submit. We could add a few short stubs in the pages if we didn’t have a lot to say on a particular subject or add paragraphs and paragraphs without any limitations. Being able to add a few short stubs made it very easy to contribute and still made us an active participant. It was fairly easy to use and very little technical knowledge was required. The text editor box that we had to type our material in had all the basic functions that we are already familiar with. I did not face any problems in adding content to the pages.

When I first joined the wikispace, I didn’t add as much as I read. I kept browsing through the pages that other students had made. Then I started adding bits and pieces to each page and performing edits in things like the table of contents or within the page like spelling or grammatical errors. It wasn’t long before I got the hang of it.

Wikipedia is without doubt user-friendly with easy to use navigation menus and buttons. It’s fun, easy to get familiar with and most of all lets us acquire additional knowledge. I think we all gained a positive experience out of this assignment as it allowed us to share useful information and personal opinions with others.

**Reflection:**
I think there were very few problems faced by anyone using this wikispace. I experienced minor problems such as accidentally deleting a page. Unknowingly, that occurred only once, but thankfully the process was easily reverted and the page re-appeared. The linking of the pages was very simple also with a click of a button and basically pasting the link in the space provided or selecting the page to be linked to. In terms of the content that was posted, it served its purpose and even if it was not directly related to the course it still turned out to be a subject of interest. Closer to the midterm time, it was amazing to see how many people had filled in the main concepts and terms from the study guide. I myself made a large contribution to the notes and filling in the gaps in the concepts and terms. I was very pleased with everyone’s effort in trying to help each other out. I don’t think anyone of us had actually anticipated that this is how it was going to be. Now that we have gone through this experience with this assignment, I think its great that we actually got the opportunity to experiment with something like this. It provided additional benefits in terms of getting lecture notes, each other’s notes and just important useful information from a variety of areas.

Contributions:
I made countless number of on-going contributions to several of the pages in the wikispace. I kept a high maintenance of the space by editing pages, fixing the spacing between paragraphs, adding external and internal links, adding tables, adding images, adding and formatting content where needed and where appropriate. I made my own pages such as “First Sale Doctrine” and “Virtual Online Communities”. My 3 pages factual content was on the topic of "virtual online communities" that disscusses what a virtual community is and what are the different kinds of communities in cyberspace. i also talked about the various kinds of communitites and what their main purposes are. A number of relevant external links were also provided to give an insight of some of the present communities online.

Suggestions:
I would suggest for future CCIT students to take full advantage of this opportunity to work as a collaborative group. Everyone has something important and useful to say, so take note of it and make use of it. Adding your own factual information and reading other’s leads to time being very well spent. The experience you will obtain from working on this assignment will undeniably benefit you in the future. It doesn’t necessarily have to be time consuming; spending a few minutes here and there is worthwhile. And when you do have the time, then use that time to incorporate something in the space that is of noteworthy to everyone. Everyone working together as one large group on a single big project leads to obtaining a very knowledgeable and informative experience. As for other future references, I think a sample of some of the pages should be included in the space for the students to see before they start off with the actual assignment. I think it will give them a good insight of how it’s supposed to be done and where to get started. I think there should also be a section on the space where it shows how many people are currently online and those that are offline. Other than that, enjoy it and have lots of fun with it.