Developing web-based tools for the teaching of statistics: Our wikis and the German Wikipedia

When we started the development of our CD to support the teaching of our basic statistic courses our work was twofold: we had to develop the content and the necessary software ourselves. Maintaining our software development in a university environment turned out to be especially difficult since it is time-consuming. At the same time the available open source software has become much more powerful such that our own development has become superfluous. The use of 'standard software' (wikis) allows us to concentrate more on content rather than on software development. In several projects we have used wikis to support the teaching of our students and to publish their projects and homework. However the introduction of the bachelor/master system has reduced the willingness of students to make contributions to our wikis. As a consequence we have now started to involve ourselves and our students in more direct contributions to the German Wikipedia.