Abstract:

Advances in any field of study require interdisciplinary and collaborative work. The exchange of knowledge and methods between different areas of research increases the effectiveness and improves the results obtained. As university teachers we have the obligation to train future professionals/researchers who will be able to work together and to integrate interdisciplinary knowledge in their respective areas. To meet this objective, it is necessary to enhance collaborative work between teachers in different fields.

In order to promote collaboration, it is necessary to make available to students and teachers tools that facilitate interdisciplinary teaching and learning. Teachers and students should be able to quickly and easily access all the necessary information to relate what they are teaching/learning with other areas of knowledge.

Information and communication technologies (ICT) offer good tools for interdisciplinary work. In general, the internet provides us all the information we need. Often the problem is not the "quantity" of information to which we have access, but the management of it.

Humanities have been one of the most reluctant areas to introduce ICT in its teaching methodology. Interdisciplinary collaboration between areas such as linguistics and literary studies has not been very common, despite sharing objectives and problems.

In order to solve the problems referred above, we are working in the design and implementation of LITELE, a computational tool for knowledge management in the field of language and literature. Our project involves interdisciplinary collaboration among a team of teachers from different areas of knowledge in the field of Hispanic Studies. Our aim is to provide a platform of knowledge in language and literature with proven, cross disciplinary and accurate information.

Among the different technological tools we have at our disposal, we have chosen the wiki because it is one of the easiest and most effective web tools for educational purposes. The novelty of the project presented here lies in the fact that our wiki is not used as a basis for cooperative work in the teaching-learning process –that is, in the teacher-student relationship— but it is used to foster collaboration among teachers.

Given the fact that sharing knowledge is one of the great possibilities of wikis, LITELE collects concepts, theories and basic bibliography on different areas in the field of language and literature. We select, synthesize and systematize knowledge in language and literature in order to make it available to teachers and students as a documentary source that may be used in the different subjects of their university degree.

LITELE will be used as a space for collaboration among teaching professionals. It will facilitate the communication between teachers allowing the joint production of teaching materials and its dissemination. Our wiki will create a network of resources in the field of language and literature.

Wikis are simple tools and have a great potential for use as a collaborative virtual learning environment. Wikis involve cooperation, networking and synergy by pooling the interests of students and teachers from different studies. The use of wikis as LITELE will make education no longer focused on individual disciplines and will open the way to the interface between disciplines, to the interdisciplinary knowledge.

Keywords:

Interdisciplinarity, Collaborative work, Wiki, Language, Literature.