Wikisensors: A wiki from students for students

Wikisensors is novel teaching initiative carried out experimentally in the 2011-2012 course of Physical Techniques I, subject from the second course of the Physics degree at the University of Zaragoza in Spain. It consisted on the construction of a public web page with the wiki technology, where information about physical sensors, their operating principles, electrical characteristics and other parameters of interest were collected by the students. It was integrated as part of the evaluable tasks of the students in the course, and offered additional teaching value with respect to traditional coursework, fostering multidirectional learning, active feedback from teachers and students, potentially more accurate evaluation of the student's work, and continuity beyond the single course environment. In this paper we describe the activity, its development and results during the experience of the 2011-2012 course, and preliminary evaluation of its impact by means of student feedback. The work is part of a innovative learning project performed as a collaboration of the Departments of Theoretical Physics and Electronics and Communications Engineering of the University of Zaragoza.