Meredith Farkas relates how she and her colleagues have used media wiki to present subject guides to their users. She makes an interesting point that students use a task-based approach rather than a general subject approach. I certainly identify with this as a perpetual student myself; whether learning about web technologies or languages.
…I love that the guides are searchable and that we can assign categories to each page to allow students to browse as well. While we don’t have a ton of categories now, we may in the future.
…Probably my favorite part of the subject guides is the focus on how-to’s. More general subject guides are great, but usually students are trying to accomplish something more specific. They’re not doing “architecture research” — they’re looking for information on a specific building or architect or design style. They’re not doing “English research” — they’re looking for literary criticisms, book reviews, etc. That’s why I think a task-based orientation works so much better than a subject-oriented one. The majority of the questions we get at the desk are from students trying to do the same few things and now we have guides that address those specific things that students are trying to accomplish.
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