The Material Wiki Project: A Call for Collaboration
The following abstract was presented by Douglas R Seidler at: The Interior Design Educators Council 2010 Annual Conference - Atlanta, GA: March 25, 2010.
Abstract
Purposes
The purposes of this teaching forum are 1) to introduce methods of creating a community knowledge base as a tool for learning, exploring, and collaborating in a single interior design course and 2) a call for collaboration with other educators to benefit from and contribute to a growing material research knowledge base.
In interior design education, material knowledge is traditionally transferred in one direction: from the source (instructor, expert, or textbook) to the student. This one-way conveyance of information does not provide opportunities for thorough investigation and in the case of textbooks, cannot adequately react to innovations in emerging materials.
Mendoza (2009) argues in The WikilD: An alternative approach to the body of knowledge, that wikis provide a framework for the collection, dissemination, and critique of any dynamic body of knowledge. Mendoza also argues that wikis offer unique opportunities to learn from individuals on the periphery of educational communities. The wiki framework was adopted for the MaterialWiki Project because it provides students an opportunity to build on existing research and collaborate with experts outside the classroom.
The call for collaboration is the second phase of this project. It is intended to formally expand contributions to the MaterialWiki Project allowing unique opportunities for collaboration across traditional university boundaries as students contribute to this dynamic body of knowledge.
