The upcoming National Council of University Research Administrators (NCURA) 51st annual meeting in Washington D.C. from October 20 – 24th

NCURA Logo

provides a wide opportunity of training, discussions and meetings that affords research administrators like me a great opportunity to widen our knowledge base to ably support faculty and staff engaged in external research. This will be my first time, so I am excited at the opportunity afforded to me to strengthen my understanding of research administration.

As I reviewed the various sessions and discussion groups for the conference, I couldn’t help but wonder how sponsored departments work to increase the knowledge base of faculty so that they can find information to questions and documentation they need in a timely manner. One idea that I have been considering for some time is the use of a Wiki for the development of a user-generated system that provides the necessary information that this group will need.

Web 2.0 Software:

Now, I must confess I am not particularly wild over the term Web 2.0 (Twitter, Facebook, etc) and all its (supposedly) great benefits, simply because many persons rave about it as if it is the panacea for all our problems, when we have not yet researched the challenges it brings nor has the various elements been sufficiently used or applied. Call me “old school”, but I like things that have been used sufficiently in time and space before I can say it works for everything.

That said, a wiki offers the ability to create content that is relevant and timely to the needs of the target group. Unlike the usual web pages, a wiki allows a pre-defined number of users (in our case, research faculty and staff) “to freely create and edit web page content using any web browser”. (Taken from http://wiki.org/wiki.cgi?WhatIsWiki; “What is Wiki”; September 23, 2009).

User Content:

Users will be able to add content, links to external pages, and organize contributions to be edited, without having to worry about technical web issues and coding. As an instructional designer (where I design and develop learning material for classroom and online courses), this is a plus as collaborative learning strengthens the understanding of material faster than just hearing from persons. The type of topics I envisage developing are techniques of proposal development, sponsored budget calculation, strategies for building and strengthening international collaborations, compliance topics (such as human subjects, animal care and use, and export control), grants.gov submissions, Pre and Post award issues, Finding funding, sub-recipient monitoring, responsible conduct of research, award closeouts, and many other important topics in sponsored programs.

One area where a wiki could have a great impact for faculty is in the development of their proposals. Just imagine faculty being able to develop their proposals

Faculty collaboration

with the help of other faculty or proposal development specialists without having to email countless copies of changes and worrying about which copy is the most recent.

The information technology (IT) department at universities may already have a wiki that could be ported for sponsored programs use. In doing a search of wikis (open source and proprietary) I compiled the list below that should help as a start point for sponsored programs departments.

List of Wiki software:

• http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki – MediaWiki free
• http://www.dokuwiki.org/ – DokuWiki free
• http://sites.google.com/ – Google Sites
• http://www.tiddlywiki.org/wiki/Main_Page
• http://tiddlyspot.com/ – free hosting for wiki
• http://www.screwturn.eu/default.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1 – open source
• http://www.myomnibus.com/browser.php?page=HomePage
• http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/ – proprietary

Each of the above wikis have different flavors of security and development issues that can be best addressed by your IT support department who will also help in the implementation of the software.

I intend to attend as many of the training sessions at the NCURA conference, so that I can begin the development, of what I hope, will be a widening of the education and knowledge for our faculty as we support their research, project and service work.

Are there any sponsored programs departments using a wiki in this fashion?

Will let you know how this self-imposed project goes!