Section 4.4 Perusing the paradigms program wiki
The new faculty varied widely in their knowledge about and use of the paradigms in physics program wiki (physics.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki). This resource has been under development for many years and continues to evolve. The degree of detail provided varies across the courses. One new faculty member described the helpfulness of this wiki as follows:
The wiki has been very helpful in teaching (a paradigms course), first in providing how the content fits together in one narrative, one content ordering; I feel free to change the ordering, but it is helpful seeing one possible ordering on the wiki.
The wiki has several different levels: courses, activities, and sequences of activities. First, I use the course level descriptions a lot. I see the topics as being a set of things proscribed and I try to cover everything I'm “supposed” to cover because I understand that there's an expectation across courses that that should be the case. Second, when I'm doing particular activities, I value the instructor guide for the activities.
However, another new faculty member needed more than the wiki provided:
In my paradigms I felt the activities were kind of sparse. Only a few of them were there and I often had trouble; I'd go to the activity and it wasn't clear to me where that activity should be in the sequence of events. I just looked at the wiki and said this doesn't help me plan my course at all. There are a few ideas here and a few activities, and there weren't that many in my paradigms. I guess I think the wiki has a place; you can't just put every piece of material on the web.
Another new faculty member acknowledged both the strengths and variability of this resource:
I almost exclusively based my planning on what was on the wiki; ...fortunately the wiki was pretty good for that paradigm; it's not equally good for all paradigms.
One problem with the wiki for this individual, however, seemed to be that it had too much information:
(The wiki) has a fair amount of stuff that's up there. I don't know all of it because I haven't read it. When I first focused on the wiki as a learning tool, I was very focused on the course I needed to teach, and I have glanced at a few other things, but the problem, I think, where there is a problem with the wiki, is that it has an excess of information; that excess of information can be as bad or worse as having too little information, because the result is that you feel unable to have time to process all of it.
Another new faculty member expressed a similar perspective:
I feel like there's a lot of material available, especially now on the wiki and everything, but I'm intimidated by how many hours it would take me and maybe I just have a false notion of how long it would take, but I'm intimidated to go and look through every page of the wiki.
As a work in progress, the wiki has been deeply appreciated by those finding it helpful for the assistance provided. As part of the Paradigms 2.0 process, efforts are underway to streamline organization of information already there and increase coverage for some courses.