Follow-Up

Check if you can add a blog-like character to the wiki. Or some way to draw frequent interest that directs people to the curriculum deeper in the site.

You can't. At least using the Basic-level package. All you can do is continually edit the FrontPage file. I suppose you could add to it, pushing the older content further down the page. This, however, seems unsustainable.

Learn how the discussion forum works. Do you get alerts?

PBworks does not have a discussion forum. A true discussion forum is independent of the main content. It's a place where users can post questions or comments and get short bursts of replies.

It's a poor substitute, but in place of a discussion board, you could leverage the comment and notification features. A user can comment on any page and so long as they have notifications turned on, they'll get an email when the page changes or when another comment is submitted. Notifications can be customized to come as frequently as right away or as few as once a week. Premium users can select which pages they want notifications about. Basic users get notifications about each and every page.

Check on the exportability in case we jump to a different tool.

There's no provision to export a page or group of pages. The Backup feature allows you to download a zip file of your site but it's only available to premium subscribers.

Ask Christopher if there are reasons to move to Google? Where's the University at on that agreement?

Christopher says,

Still too little information on the University's agreement with Google to say whether would be a good solution for this project. We currently don't have an implementation date for the Google Suite. Info about the U of M Google Initiative is on this OIT page.

What about the University Wiki? Besides University branding, are there other reasons to use it?

I'll have an answer after my class on Thursday, Wikis: Collaborative Content Development

BTW, I signed up for a free PBworks webinar. I recommend it if you're sticking with PBworks.