Students Assigned to Write Wikipedia Articles

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."

Comments

Doublt benefit..

[JustShootMe]

And when the wikipedia admins come through and start wholesale editing or deleting articles, and then banning them when they try to defend their changes, they will also get a lesson in what happens when online communities start losing track of their core mission and are taken over by people with exaggerated egos and an axe to grind.

Oh, wait. This is slashdot. No one here has any idea what I'm talking about. Nevermind. :)

Re:Doublt benefit..

[Doppler00]

Yeah, I've noticed wikipedia is becoming more like that lately. Like, someone thinks it's their duty to go through every article and say "trivia sections are discouraged" or other nonsense little warnings that don't contribute anything to the article. All because it's some inside knowledge that they think they are so great they know all these "rules" about wikipedia and try to make you follow them.

Re:Doublt benefit..

[Johnny Mnemonic]

I was going to moderate your comment down, but instead, fine: I'll rise to the bait. Frankly, your comment isn't very insightful, and it doesn't inspire much conversation. You're simply not as thought provoking as you apparently think that you are. Maybe that's what behind your moderation, instead of some vast /. groupthink. Even if your point has a shred of interesting commentary, you lose that behind aggressive and inflammatory language. There is a way to make a point without using insulting language. If anything, it's for the tone, and not the comment, for which you will be modded down. Finally, if you don't like /., go start your own site. Start a blog, call it wiki-hater-blog, whatever. Then you can write whatever you like, and if people find you interesting they'll read your comments, drive ad revenue to you, leave comments, etc. There. There's your conversation. Fun, huh?

Re:Makes perfect sense

[QuantumG]

I once asked some of my comp sci lecturers why they didn't get students to do something useful, like work on open source, instead of assigning them pointless busy work projects. Two main answers:

1. it's too hard to grade
2. it's seen by many to be exploitative.

So there ya go.

Re:Damn...

[JebusIsLord]

God, i wish we'd had wikipedia when i was in school. The references section is often a wonderful, up-to-date collection of very citeable resources.

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

[serviscope_minor]

My school blocks Wikipedia entirely. When asked why the answer is "anybody can edit it".

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.

Re:not the first

[GaryOlson]

I'm not sure it is newsworthy.

No one was murdered, raped, bribed, extorted, or assaulted. I would claim TFA is far more newsworthy than most of what is claimed as news.

In this exercise the sum total of human achievement is increased rather than decreased. I find that highly newsworthy.