Students Assigned to Write Wikipedia Articles 276
openfrog writes "An inspired professor at University of Washington-Bothell, Martha Groom, made an interesting pedagogical experiment. Instead of vilifying Wikipedia as some academics are prone to do, she assigned the students enrolled in her environmental history course to contribute articles. The result has proven "transformative" to her students. They were no longer spending their time writing for one reader, says Groom, but were doing work of consequence in a "peer reviewed" environment, which enhanced the quality of their output."
Makes sense (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Damn... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Doublt benefit.. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Makes perfect sense (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Doublt benefit.. (Score:5, Informative)
Guess what? Academics are often "MANDATED" to "(not just submit, but) actually publish articles" in peer-reviewed journals, or at least publish their findings in other area-specific literature (perhaps books, etc.). Is that an "indication of arrogance and incompetence" on the part of the university/college that employs them? Hell no - it's a condition of their employment that they produce a quantity of quality writing and original research. Or, to look at it another way, it's what academics do.
Such writing is often under time pressure - that doesn't mean it ends up being plagiarized, or a pack of lies, or 'just' journalism as you imply.
One reason this project works - one reason it's a good exercise to put students through - is that it forces them to synthesize their knowledge on a subject and practice writing in a vigorous, academic style, with the benefits of peer-review, but without the pressure of formal publication.
Link to original article (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the original Associated Press article [google.com] without the annoying Physorg ads. (Google finally cut out the middlemen and started hosting Associated Press content themselves.)
Re:Deleted! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Another milepost on the way to irrelevance (Score:4, Informative)
Re:enhanced quality != correct (Score:3, Informative)
You must be new here.
[Joking aside, the gp post was talking about the development of pidgins [wikipedia.org] and creoles [multiracial.com]. I remember reading a discussion of it The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond.]
Articles created by the students (Score:5, Informative)
This is not the first assignment of its type. There have been more than 40 such projects [wikipedia.org]; there are at least 10 more in progress. The students and the professors need to be aware of the "No original research [wikipedia.org]" policy. Many university-level assignments involve original research, and Wikipedia is not the right place for publishing original research.
Here are some of the articles created as a part of the assignments we're talking about:
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)