Wekan

Provided by: Grant Potter, UNBC

What is it?

Wekan is an open-source and collaborative Kanban board application. Whether you’re maintaining a personal to do list, planning your holidays with some friends, or working in a team on your next revolutionary idea, Kanban boards are an helpful tool to keep your things organized. They give you a visual overview of the current state of your project, and make you productive by allowing you to focus on the few items that matter the most.

What can it do?

Wekan supports most features you would expect of it including a real-time user interface, cards comments, member assignations, customizable labels, filtered views, and more.

How does it work?

The app is opensource and hosted free of cost for BC educators at http://oet.sandcats.io

The Kanban method is a set of principles and practices for managing and improving the flow of work. If you use the Kanban method, you will always have a board.

People use Kanban boards even if they are not following the rules of Kanban to help understand and communicate the progression of work on a project or other endeavor.

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Work items on cards flow from left to right through columns or states.

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The objective of a Kanban system is the smooth flow of work from start to completion without unnecessary slowdown or stoppage. Kanban teams limit the number of items they work on at one time (WIP) in order to reduce the cycle time it takes to get individual things to completion.

Extend your learning

  • https://help.rallydev.com/what-is-kanban
  • http://lifehacker.com/productivity-101-how-to-use-personal-kanban-to-visuali-1687948640
  • https://trello.com/inspiration

How can you use it in your teaching and learning?

Our teaching centre uses Kanban to organize our core functions as well as every event, and workshop we facilitate. It keeps us focused on actionable items, and keeps communications out of email inboxes. Cards on Kanban boards can be linked to emails so that members of the board receive updates on board activity. No need to email your team to let them know you have completed items; the board will notify your team when you move your card using their preferred communications methods.

I am seeing increasing numbers of educators using wekan.io to organize student group projects. Wekan.io and other software Kanban boards have ‘activity’ logs. These logs allow all users of the board to see how items have been moved forward and progressed. As an educator, you can get a visualized perspective of group progress, in addition to the detailed activity log to ensure all students in the group are contributing equitably.

A short task – challenge yourself!

Note: this task and app work best with a browser. 

Do you use checklists in your work with faculty or your students? Take that checklist and create a wekan.io board with it.

Go to Wekan.io and click “Try it out”

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The link will take to to Sandstorm, where you can test out Wekan. Click Try Wekan.

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Once you have a Wekan board set up

  • Add a list, then add cards to that list.
  • Create multiple lists and move the cards from one column to another.
  • Using the Share access icon at the top of the page, you can create a shareable link that you can then use to invite others to collaborate on your board.

Note that the test board created here expires 60 minutes after being created.

Don’t have a checklist?

Try using one of these to create a Kanban board:

  • https://elearningindustry.com/a-compact-instructional-design-review-checklist
  • http://www.unitar.org/hiroshima/sites/unitar.org.hiroshima/files/17_AF07WSII_Instructional_Design_Criteria_Checklist.pdf
  • https://elearning.uaf.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Course_Review_Checklist.pdf
  • http://ctet.royalroads.ca/sl1-checklist

Did you try this activity?

Leave a comment below with your impressions of the app and we will enter your name into a draw to win a $25 gift card from Google Play or iTunes stores (see conditions). Some things you may want to comment on are;

  • Other ideas or ways that this app could be used in teaching & learning?
  • What skills or knowledge do students gain or enhance when using this app?
  • Are there other apps or services that you know of that are similar to this app? How is the app different from that app?
  • What are the terms of service for this app, and what rights did it ask for when installing it on your mobile device?
  • Based on your experience, what is one thing instructors should know when using this app?
  • Things that worked or didn’t work in the app?

CC BY 4.0 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.