One problem students might encounter when working in Wikispaces sites is overwriting each others' work with editing simultaneously. This is most likely to happen on a page where many students are expected to contribute before a specific deadline.

A simply way to avoid this problem is to use "headers" to separate each student's work. In the video example below you'll see two users simultaneously editing the same page (and submitting their changes at almost exactly the same time). However, because each user is typing below a header bearing his own name, the page is able to reconcile these concurrent changes:

Wikispaces.com has good documentation about how to set up headers within a page.

Columbia faculty members who need help implementing this technique should feel free to contact the Center for New Media Teaching and Learning at ccnmtl@columbia.edu or 212-854-9054.