Week 3

What uses might a collaborative wiki or blog have in your chosen (current or desired) work environment? How would they support learning and/or performance? What would be the design and implementation challenges if management tried to do this? What would be the design and implementation challenges of a user-initiated effort?

In my current job at the Department of Highway Safety & Motor Vehicles (HSMV), a collaborative wiki or blog would be very beneficial (in my opinion, at least). This would give our team a means of cataloging various resources, providing tips and tricks we've picked up along the way (perhaps lurking in another community), and ultimately sharing our knowledge and skills with others.

For example (and I mentioned this one on the discussion board), during my first project as an intern, I faced several technological barriers with Articulate. I spent weeks combing Articulate's forums for answers. Finally, after not finding what I needed (and probably because I complained to their customer support so much), I was given a free web conference with one of their best technical support members. I sent him my project in advance, he reviewed it, then I spent a few hours screen sharing with him as he walked me through various issues and their fixes. After that meeting, I knew several work-arounds for 'bugs' in their software, many of which are not intuitive (i.e., to get the wipe animation to complete, add an off screen text box or shape to wipe last, so it will stall out on this object, not the one on screen). Having a team wiki would have provided me with a place to house this information (very knowledge management-esque). Now, it very well may die with me when I leave in a few weeks.

As far as actually implementing this, I see few problems as long as everyone (or mostly everyone) on the team is interested and willing to participate. Our team is pretty close (members and supervisors), so I don't think who this idea came from - management or the team - would be an issue. The only problem I foresee is that of participation, as a collaborative blog would not be useful if no one contributes to it.

Furthermore, since our training is public record, we don't have any security issues to worry about. Additionally, a wiki or blog would not require us to download any software, so I don't foresee the agency's technical support having any issues with us using such a tool, especially since we can speak to the benefits of cataloging information that will allow the team to perform more effectively.

Hmmmm... maybe I can talk the team into starting something like this before I leave...