Over on the Atlassian Blog, I just wrote about how the wiki can help any group work better by adapting to how they work, and letting them see where they’re strong and weak. Because it doesn’t define the terms of interaction and collaboration from the outset, and allows structure to be created, modified and removed as needed, the wiki quickly becomes a desirable tool because it “learns” how people work as they work, not after the fact. In education, this idea can be applied to the old problems with group collaboration: you might be told at the end that someone didn’t contribute equally, but you don’t have any evidence to support or refute the claim; people pick a project topic then struggle with it and product a less than stellar result. Now imagine using a wiki – the revision history of any page documents how often and how much each person has contributed, and the wiki enables you to see a group’s progress at any point and help them keep focused or get back on track when a potential problem is still small and easy to fix.