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."
Doublt benefit.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, wait. This is slashdot. No one here has any idea what I'm talking about. Nevermind.
Linda Mack! (Score:5, Funny)
I'm tripping over myself to donate more money to WalesCultBomisOPedia!
Re:Doublt benefit.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, the irony.
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Mix wikipedia editing and zero tolerance policies and things could get really dicey really fast.
Re:Doublt benefit.. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is an incredibly exciting new paradigm of teaching, because it puts the power of education directly into the students' hands. Education no longer needs to be a fount that springs forth from some "authority," it can be something that brings authority to the student. And the best part is the huge "fuck you" to the older generation of jaded "educators" (read: administrators), who would NEVER have tried such a thing, expecting only the worst. Instead it has completely revolutionized his classroom. Sure, there are kids with serious problems that aren't getting solved by a class wiki, and no one expects it to. But for the students at large, this is a BIG deal. And they LOVE it! Think of how many potential writers, poets, researchers, who knows, can be encouraged by just having a chance to write on a little webpage, developing the bravery to put it out there among their friends and enemies.
It's truly inspiring.
--Ted
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.
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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.).
1. Academics are NOT dilitantes:
- They already have the background knowledge
- They already have the interest in their subject area (or they would not have gotten PhDs in their field)
2. Academics should NOT be under pressure to do research and publish papers (as this leads to plagiarism and poor quality research as well)
I am very well aware of the controversy of "experts" and PhD's not citing the work of graduate students, not doing diligent research, being paid by corporations to do biased research, etc. Y
Re:Doublt benefit.. (Score:4, Insightful)
- Wikipedia does NOT require that contributors have background knowledge (and that's by design, if you want otherwise go to Citizendium),
- the teacher is supervising their students' work, so I would expect the contributions from their students to be of better average value than the average wikipedia post.
- anything that is not of encyclopedic value should be corrected by the community. That's how Wikipedia is supposed to work, not by dictating arbitrary rules about who should or shouldn't contribute based on someone's expectations about the quality of anybody else's work.
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Wikipedia does NOT require that contributors have background knowledge
True, but irrelevant. The point is about what should be done. The point is that people should not write Wikipedia articles just for the sake of writing Wikipedia articles (or passing a course)
the teacher is supervising their students' work, so I would expect the contributions from their students to be of better average value than the average wikipedia post.
That depends on the quality of the teachers AND the students. I'd like to keep my expectations high when reading Wikipedia. Overall I am impressed by Wikipedia. I am not against students or anybody else writing Wikipedia articles. I am against writing WikiPedia articles merely as an exercise.
anything that is not of encyclopedic value should be corrected by the community. That's how Wikipedia is supposed to work, not by dictating arbitrary rules about who should or shouldn't contribute based on someone's expectations about the quality of anybody else's work.
I agree with your last p
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Wikipedia does NOT require that contributors have background knowledge
True, but irrelevant. The point is about what should be done. The point is that people should not write Wikipedia articles just for the sake of writing Wikipedia articles (or passing a course)
the teacher is supervising their students' work, so I would expect the contributions from their students to be of better average value than the average wikipedia post.
That depends on the quality of the teachers AND the students. I'd like to keep my expectations high when reading Wikipedia. Overall I am impressed by Wikipedia. I am not against students or anybody else writing Wikipedia articles. I am against writing WikiPedia articles merely as an exercise.
anything that is not of encyclopedic value should be corrected by the community. That's how Wikipedia is supposed to work, not by dictating arbitrary rules about who should or shouldn't contribute based on someone's expectations about the quality of anybody else's work.
I agree with your last point.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand your position. To me, your assertions that
The point is about what should be done. The point is that people should not write Wikipedia articles just for the sake of writing Wikipedia articles (or passing a course)
and
That's how Wikipedia is supposed to work, not by dictating arbitrary rules about who should or shouldn't contribute based on someone's expectations about the quality of anybody else's work.
I agree with your last point.
are direct contradictions. Do you or do you not support a criteria for limiting students contributing to Wikipedia as homework, based on your expectations of low quality?
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My point was that students aren't dilettantes either
Then your point is by its very nature fallacious.
diletante:
- An amateur who engages in an activity without serious intentions and who pretends to have knowledge
(WordWeb 4.5a wordweb.info)
- http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=define:dilettante&spell=1 [google.com]
By definition, this is what most students are in my 6 plus years of formal post-high school education, and my many years of informal or work-sponsored education. Students are NOT by definition e
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An appeal to authority that doesn't have any - you were a student for six years, congratulations.
Nope that was anecdotal. Experience by itself can be very informative. I claim no authority and do not claim to be an expert. And the anecdotal evidence was backed up by the subsequent references.
I am curious as to why you listed me as a Friend though.
Regards
You missed the point (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You missed the point (Score:4, Insightful)
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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?
It's an indication of *something* bad-- or at least "less than ideal". This intense focus on publishing, IMHO, distracts from teaching or even learning. That's right, learning. Even professors
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(No problem with the rest of that.)
Re:Double benefit.. (Score:5, Interesting)
My experience has been that those that do this have made very nice contributions for the community. I check up on it to make sure that it is not confused. Of course, I have only tried this in the relatively small classes that we have here at Berkeley.
The academic world is about the developing and sharing of knowledge with our fellow human beings. Wikipedia seems like one of the right ways to do this for well established results with immediate benefits and very little pain.
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Whereas wikipedia is: "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit"
QED. I don't think you have to send this post off to two referees to figure that out.
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You act like this one, perhaps slightly low quality article, is going to break Wikipedia. This is how articles start. Sometimes people who don't know much about the subject write the structure to better entice an expert to stay and fix it up. Eventually other people will read it, and get this, they can edit the page too. It doesn't have to be perfect at the start, it's an iterative process. Collabora
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Thus, if you indeed happen to have the skill to 'improve the knowledge of mankind' (will not comment on the implications of the 'Weltanschauung' that shows up here), do not practice it on Wikipedia.
Rest assured, most with only a semblance of this competence will avoid to waste their energy anyway.
Using Wikipedia (for article submission) merely as an academic e
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Methinks it will be heavily tilted towards her opinion if you want a good grade; when I saw this in TFA:
"You don't get to say that last little bit on, 'This is why this is the truth and the way,'" she said.
I thought WTF: truth and the way?? It's supposed to be a history class, not a seminary class. From this comment I'll bet this prof not only has an agenda (like everyone) but also
Re:Doublt benefit.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm referring to the notability wars, and admins skirting around the whole peer review thing and making wholesale changes to articles, after when they ban if someone reverts them. That's a probl
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Things that otherwise wouldn't get fixed, get fixed when someone is bored.
Re:Doublt benefit.. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Doublt benefit.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Even though there are cases in which other users and admins go too far, one has to learn that the most important skill of being a Wikipedian is to know when to stop arguing and calm the fuck down. Almost everyone who I see get banned for edit-warring is because they refuse to do this.
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I have, however, seen plenty of examples of people who were. It's bad enough that Wikinews is investigating it [wikinews.org].
Wikipedia is a very good idea that has grown too big for itself.
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Of course, what this means is that if you disagree with the deletions, you think the policies need revision (which they probably do).
Re:Doublt benefit.. (Score:4, Funny)
DOUGAL: Squeeze it there. It's a joke telephone.
FR.TED: Dougal. This is a dog toy.
DOUGAL: What? No it's not Ted, it's a joke telephone.
FR.TED: Dougal this is a toy for dogs. This is something people give dogs on their birthday.
DOUGAL: Now seriously Ted, it's a joke telephone. You just give it to someone and tell them it's a phone and they'll try to make a call on it.
FR.TED: Dougal, who would think this was a telephone? Even a dog knows this isn't a phone.
DOUGAL: Eh..Ted... We'll agree to differ alright.
FR.TED: No we won't agree to differ, because you're very very wrong. Look, does the picture on the on the packet not give you a clue. Why do you think the dog is so happy? He's happy because someone has given him a yellow rubber telephone that makes a noise.
DOUGAL: No! No! He's laughing because some one's trying to make a call on the phone - and now look, I am banning you so I guess I win.. Its a joke telephone and thats all that will be said on the matter.
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Re:Doublt benefit.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends. Was the assignment more flexible, asking students to add, say, 500 words to one or more existing articles? If so, did the teacher point out that there are many many articles [wikipedia.org] that need to be expanded, and admins are likely to leave you alone on those. (the decision to add or delete individual paragraphs is a non-admin one, unless the editors aren't able to work together and start an edit war [wikipedia.org]... in which case, admins should still be largely uninvolved other than protecting the page for a number of days to give the participants time to discuss the issue)
Even if the assignment was to create a completely new article, the teacher could have pointed them to the most wanted articles [wikipedia.org] list... any article created that has a ton of backlinks is less likely to be deleted just based on the number of backlinks, and is also more likely to be more obviously notable.
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It's not Wiki Editing 101 we're talking about.
Re:Doublt benefit.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Eh, I perpetually have "Excellent" karma, and I don't post much, and my posts aren't particularly insightful or interesting. Karma doesn't seem terribly difficult to come by here.
Also, now that the dust has settled... the "karma burning" original post is scored +5, Informative. Oh gee, ouch.
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quote>There is a certain amount of irony in people moderating comments like this "troll" and "flamebait"
Makes sense (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Deleted! (Score:5, Funny)
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Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
I've suggested this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I've suggested this (Score:5, Interesting)
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Take any topic, and do some real seaching on the web, and you'll soon get a deja-vu sense while reading though the "research papers".
Damn... (Score:5, Interesting)
I would suggest teaching students how to find legitimate sources instead of using the brute-force method of blocking everything they don't understand.
Re:Damn... (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing about that is that there are students who actually do try to cite Wikipedia articles as references, I've seen it plenty of times. It usually results in the instructor having to crack down on the practice. I do think though that blocking Wikipedia entirely is overkill, it should just be understood that it does not count as an official source. Wikipedia is a good place to start researching a topic, and I usually end up using one of the external references on a page as a "legitimate source."
Re:Damn... (Score:5, Insightful)
The library was a wonderful place to get peer-reviewed articles that were 20, 30 years obsolete.
Oh noes! They can edit teh internets!11one (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to the rest of the internet which is chock-full of nothing but the highest quality, peer-reviewed content, written universally by the finest experts, hand selected from across the world?
I can only guess you're not reading this from a school computer, since anyone can post comments... and frankly anyone frequently does so.
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Indeed, not everything on the internet is crap, bu
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As opposed to books? Last I checked, anybody can write a book
True, anybody can write a book, but books found in libraries tend to be vetted by librarians (although not experts in any particular subject, it is better than the randomness of the Internet). And Academic journals tend to be peer reviewed (again, not perfect, especially since "peers" often don't check all the references, much less try to duplicate any experiments, etc in a scientific journal, for example). Caveat emptor.
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You should also keep in mind that it is a small subset of papers written that cite Academic journals. The vast majority of papers written use non-peered reviewed sour
Re:Johnny, You Can Be The Editor! It's Fun to Lear (Score:2)
UIUC as well (Score:2)
recursive plagiarists (Score:5, Funny)
Old news. (Score:2)
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not the first (Score:3, Interesting)
What this instructor did was great. I'm not sure it is newsworthy.
Re:not the first (Score:5, Insightful)
In this exercise the sum total of human achievement is increased rather than decreased. I find that highly newsworthy.
Re:not the first (Score:4, Funny)
Nicely put, but consider: the sum total of human achievement is increased in millions of ways every single day in ways which have never been reported on, because... it's not actually newsworthy. It's more like, completely expected.
A lack of human achievement would be newsworthy. Hmmm. Perhaps that's why politics gets so much coverage...
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Half life of a WIkipedia Article? (Score:4, Interesting)
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In short: stop smelling your own farts.
Re:Half life of a WIkipedia Article? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've seen 3 main pathways.
1. Pop culture trash: this doesn't refer to all articles regarding popular culture, but rather just a great many. It usually starts out as(or is quickly whipped into shape by an experienced editor as) a small blurb summarizing the cultural relevance and origins of some item. Over time rampant speculation, positive description, and dubious links filter into it. These get these way because the people who care about and watch the article are not people interested in the academic information involved, but rather people who just like to see more of it. I've fixed up articles like this only to have them return to idiocy in a matter of 3-4 months when I checked up later. Examples ALMOST any article fitting description: "list of characters from {video game/tv show}"
2. Seriously contentious items: These tend to be the best articles on wikipedia because every addition is scrutinized from 30 different perspectives, questionable items are well referenced because someone disagreeing will remove it otherwise, and things tend to be well scrutinized. Good examples: "evolution" and "god".
3. relatively obscure item of actual academic interest: article usually started by someone with a casual interest. Rare(sometimes as rarely as every few months), but consistent, non-vandalized additions adding a sentence or two about the subject and the occasional restructuring of the whole article in accordance with what had been added. Usually one or two guardian users who care deeply about the subject and watch the article for extreme alterations. These kinds of articles improve slowly and never reach the point of incredible quality.
That's just my observation and theorizing on the subject. I could see all sorts of reasons people would disagree with my assessment.
Everyone is doing it (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/wikipedia-project-is-a-class-act/2007/10/31/1193618940842.html [smh.com.au]
Complete with kooky picture of said Professor.
I did this (Score:2)
I did mine on one of the essays in the Norton anthology on the reading list, Realism in the Balance [wikipedia.org]. I find it really cool that other people have edited the page, like
Yes, it's great but... (Score:5, Insightful)
The downside is when other people, who don't put nearly the same amount of effort into their research, come along and start adding information to the same article; almost always without any references. As opposed to simple vandalism that can easily be spotted by anyone, bad information degrades the overall quality of the article and is often difficult for other contributers to spot unless they are well versed in the subject matter. To maintain the quality of the articles you put so much work into, the only solution is to check on them constantly, often getting into protracted debates with determined individuals who really know very little. I find this quite depressing, but I see no immediate solutions. Citizendium, Veropedia? Maybe, but for now they're pretty obscure and it will be a long time before either have anywhere near the range of articles that Wikipedia does.
Hardly new (Score:3, Interesting)
This worked well for Japanese History because the English language Wikipedia didn't have too many articles at the time, and even the articles it did have were fragmentary and for the most part abandoned. I'm not sure how easy it'd be to do with more "mainstream" articles. You'd get more feedback from other Wikipedia users, sure, but you'd also be providing far less of the content.
Thanks... (Score:2)
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.)
This is not the first time... (Score:2, Interesting)
Some professor in Australia did this and fucked up (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Some professor in Australia did this and fucked (Score:2, Interesting)
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:
imagine all papers written by every student .. (Score:4, Interesting)
We produce a work just to pass a course or test, and then we never use that report, or term paper again. Odd how we can recycle tin cans but waste the labors of mind.
Re:Makes perfect sense (Score:5, Insightful)
1. it's too hard to grade
2. it's seen by many to be exploitative.
So there ya go.
Re:Makes perfect sense (Score:4, Interesting)
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Off the top of my head, open source typically carries an ideology with it. It would be like a public school requiring students to do missionary for the Mormons - you're forcing people who may not agree to further your beliefs.
Ideology and religion are two separate things.
Public education rams a lot of ideology down its students' throats. That's not an accident -- it's by design. It takes whatever happens to be the majority viewpoint in a particular area, usually as determined by the local school board in conjunction with whatever's written in the textbooks, and impresses that on the students.
Now, generally, that's desirable. There are some ideologies that I think we can probably agree we want rammed down students throats; or, i
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Re:Makes perfect sense (Score:5, Informative)
- The students thought the assignments were more meaningful because they weren't just thrown away at the end of the assignment.
- The fact that assignments were written for the public instead of just one professor gave a whole other level of meaning to the assignments, and meant that they were getting another level of feedback. It is a touch of what peer-review is like.
- Selecting the assignments was often very difficult, because by the time the article had been written, the article would have already been filled in. Also, a lot of topics are already taken.
- She taught some classes where she allowed them to fill in already existing articles, and some where they had to come up with something new entirely.
- She had to prepare them when there were controversial topics, and in one case she actually had to intervene because people were being so rude to a student (I guess the student was also new to wikis). There was a fair amount of orientation into the wiki community.
- She partnered with a technical person during the project. I think it might have been his idea actually.
- Some students had lasting connections with their topics even after the assignments finished. One student was written by a researcher in the field he or she had written the article about, praising them for doing such a thorough, well-written article. That type of validation is hard to get from conventional articles.
- Students generally thought writing a wiki article would be easy, but were not very well prepared for doing so. Writing a well-researched, well-documented summary is very different than typical persuasive essays.
- Original research doesn't belong on Wikipedia unless it's published elsewhere first.
- Grading seems like it would be very difficult. How do you account for what the student contributes, and what other people contribute. Also, how would the student write the article over a course of a few weeks, incrementally, or all at once, and what kind of version control issues would ensue?
So imagine if more schools did this. What would Wikipedia look like then? Any different? It seems like it would encourage a lot more citations if nothing else. It also seems like you would reach a point where it gets increasingly difficult to find a topic that's not incredibly obscure. And then it would be exactly like academia todayRe: (Score:2)
Just because it's different to grade doesn't mean it's hard.
For example submitting a new article on wikipedia can result in 2 things:
- minor edits (except for typos)
- major edits
Changes can be observed through the change log. In the former case the grader will have to grade the whole text, in the latter case a lot of the grading has been done for you. So yes, you exploit a community to perform partial grading for you.
As for comp sci tasks. It's not about the end result, it's about t
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Re:enhanced quality != correct (Score:5, Insightful)
To say that wikipedia is an approximation of the truth is meaningless. All encyclopedias and written sources contain errors. Wikipedia has been shown to contain *fewer* errors than most of the competing sources, and if you've ever read wikipedia articles, you know they are better edited than most books and are generally very readable.
>I must say that given the output of high-schools today, we should be attempting to
>prevent students from contributing, not encouraging them.
Off topic. Read the article, or at least the summary. The students are from the University of Washington (a very good school btw). They are not high school students.
>I mean, hearing Profs say that students can't do simple algebra or even remotely think
>logically is now common place.
Why do you think that is?
In the US we have extremely poor k through 12 education, and then some very excellent colleges (in most other countries it is the reverse.) US high schools are paid for by *local* property taxes, so kids who grow up in rich neighborhoods get an excellent education, and most kids who grow up in middle or lower class neighborhoods get no education whatsoever until college. Many of my generation skip high school altogether and go directly into community college. The school districts provide for this in tacit acknowledgment of how worthless public high schools are.
Students are essentially expected to make up for 12 years of non education in 4 years of college. Most high schools, including the one I went to, are just jails to keep kids off the street until they turn 18.
BTW. Some, such as myself, come out of that and go on to do well in college and get a good job, only to end up paying social security to provide for the retirement of a generation which wasn't interested in providing for my generation's education. This seems fairly nonsensical to us, and so we are disinclined to continue this practice of "social security". What goes around comes around.
>Hell, I've seen what these people produce, and the only excuse that one can have is that
>English is
>first language. Hell, from what I've seen (several Universities over several years),
>the foreigners do better with English than the "natives."
Languages evolve over time, and the previous generation always have the sense that the next generation is somehow speaking the language wrong. Your parents probably thought that there was something wrong in the way you talked as well. If you went to shakespeare's time, I'm sure people would think that you were some kind of idiot who couldn't speak properly.
The thing is, that english is *improving* not getting worse. Languages change in response to changing concepts, and the addition of new terminology. Modern english has extremely precise technical terminology embedded in it. Many things that were considered passive are now considered active, and so now are expressed as verbs instead of nouns. Many grammatical constructions have changed to allow for expressions that have become more common to be expressed more clearly and unambiguously. Many sophisticated systems for expressing common phrases in shorthand have developed so that ideas can be expressed more concisely.
You have to remember that no one ever *designed* the English language and that there *is no* authoritative English grammer or vocabulary because the English grammar and vocabularies are an *open set*.
The ability to construct language is genetically ingrained in all human beings, and if vocabulary or grammatical productions are ever missing or inadequate, we have the capacity to create them at will. If you leave some kids alone on an island and let them fend for themselves without teaching them any known human language, it has been demonstrated that they will generate their own complete language from the ground up in precisely 2 generations. This has been demonstrated many times. There is no real need for English language education for native speakers.
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I agree with you that English is an open set, though.
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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.]
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Unless they merely write total nonsense, their flawed contributions will be corrected, and Wikipedia will gain. The students also gain. Where lies the problem?
Sounds like you just wanted to vent...
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That was scary. A lot of my language has been picked up from indirect sources - movies, books, comics, etc. Not as much human contact per se, which would usually lead to a horrid pronounciation.
One thing to keep in mind is that, with rare exception, the local dialect of English is further from "true English" than what you see in the media. Take something as simple as describing a soft drink. Depending on location the terms soda, pop, soda pop, coke, or soda water could be used. In each case describing it as a "soft drink" will get the point across where a misplaced local name would prompt confusion, so that is what you see in national and international media.
Well, that and learning another lan
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Also referred to as wikidiving. My favourite method is picking two unrelated topics of interest and trying to get from one to the other via internal links, reading every article along the way. It as good a method as any for acquiring a well-rounded education.
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Secondly, material written by the p
Re:Another milepost on the way to irrelevance (Score:4, Informative)