A wiki at the service of a facilitation work group

Card's author : Gatien Bataille
Card's type of licence : Creative Commons BY-SA
Testimonies : Since 2012, a work group (WG) on "outside" facilitation is organised in the French-speaking Belgium.
This WG targets environmental education professionals, teachers, volunteers and supporters...
It aims to create the adequate conditions for collective work to promote nature walks in Wallonia, for adults and children alike.

After some "traditional" management by the WG (exchanging emails) the network facilitator decided to create a wiki (yeswiki) together with a mailing list.
This step forward allowed creating a more participatory and decentralised dynamic within the WG.

Initially, the wiki was created and customised by one member of the network with the technical skills.
The wiki pages had been conceived so that "everyone could modify them", the network facilitator had control over the whole content on the wiki and didn't depend on anyone to modify the wiki and bring life to it. To reduce the barriers to participation even further (some network members were not at all keen on using ICT tools and the wiki, even if it is easy to do) "pads" (spaces to write directly without needing an account or technical skills) were included in some of the wiki pages (drafting agendas, minutes of the meeting…).

Using this wiki allowed:

Using this wiki lead to the following remarks:
  • explaining the licence used for collective productions (CC BY SA) was met with astonishing enthusiasm
  • co-drafting the agendas and minutes was a joy for some members who weren't used to doing this kind of thing in their structure
  • It will be useful to have a training session on the wiki so that ALL members can make the modification they want to the wiki
Internet link : http://www.tousdehors.be