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

Y4ou insensitive clod!

[Anonymous Coward]

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Re:Doublt benefit..

[JustShootMe]

Yeah. That was part of the point of the comment. There is a certain amount of irony in people moderating comments like this "troll" and "flamebait", as part of the point is to call out the people who would moderate comments like that "troll" and "flamebait". They are making the comment true and don't even realize it.

I really hate that if I don't want to take a karma hit for comments that are intended to provoke discussion and give some kind of insight, that I have to take off the karma bonus or post anonymously because some people just hate it when light is shone on the problem.

Both wikipedia and slashdot have the same problem. The moderation system is entirely broken. Since the goals of the communities are different, however, it manifests in different ways. It's the same root problem, though. How sad.