This document presents a SWOT analysis of wikis. It identifies strengths such as openness, facilitating collaboration, and creating knowledge communities, while weaknesses include difficulties trusting content and content constantly changing. Opportunities are motivating collaboration and being a versatile learning tool. Threats include users erasing content and copyright issues. The conclusions state that wikis can help facilitate learning if used to deliver learning experiences, and that addressing weaknesses can improve wikis.

1. A SWOT Analysis
Leonardo Langaro | PD MAL DIT | 21.05.2010

2. Strenghts
 Openness and accessibility
 Facilitate to work with others
 Creates knowledge and communities
 Usability
 Anonymity of authorship
 Public ownership
 Freely technology
 Organized by the context or by links

3. Weaknesses
 Difficulties to trust content
 Used to repeat work
 Content is constantly changing
 Not professionally edited
 Need close control to prevent
vandalism

4. Opportunities
 Motivate collaboration
 Versatile tool
 Long life learning
 Growing and flexible resource
 Comprehensive
 Share knowledge, resources,
experiences
 Everyone is smarter than anyone alone
 Encorage learning and critical thinking
 Large audience
 Virtual community

5. Threats
 Users can erase content
 Vandalism
 Copyright, intellectual property issues
 Taken as the only source of information
 Content can be spammed
 Constraints to the tool
 Openness (no login required)

6. Conclusions
 The Wiki technology can help and facilitates future
students learning, if we had the goal to deliver learning and
eLearning experiences to those students.
 As a legacy, the tool needs to keep growing and
developing, so knwoledge can be expanded and
transmitted.
 Enables simultaneous involvement of all elements of a
group, through a collaborative knowledge creation in a
balanced and gradual manner.
 Allows interaction to insert content and facilitates
eLearning students the opportunity to learn how to make a
learning object with these features.
 The negative aspects can be easely controlled, or even
used as a source to improve the wiki.

7. References
 Barton, M., & Cummings, R. E. (2008). Wiki writing : collaborative
learning in the college classroom. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of
Michigan Press.
 Bruns, A., & Humphreys, S. (2005, October). Wikis in teaching and
assessment: the m/cyclopedia project. Paper presented at the
International Symposium on Wikis, San Diego, CA.
 Ebersbach, A., Glaser, M., & Heigl, R. (2006). Wiki Web collaboration.
Berlin: Springer.
 Forte, A., & Bruckman, A. (2007, October). Constructing text: wiki as a
toolkit for (collaborative?) learning. Paper presented at the International
Symposium on Wikis, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
 Lamb, B. (2009). Wide Open Spaces: Wikis, Ready or Not. EDUCASE
Review Magazine, 39(5), 36-48.
 Schwartz, L., Clark, S., Cossarin, M., & Rudolph, J. (2004). Educational
Wikis: features and selection criteria. The International Review of
Research in Open and Distance Learning, 5(24).
© 2010 Leonardo Langaro