Interesting on the cheating aspect, I haven't heard much about this, I suspect
since it is common practice to share notes. If the content is unauthorized
publishing of tests or direct answers, that could be a violation of academic
integrity or conduct agreements, but if you put it in your TOS, you could
probably significantly reduce the app providers' liability.
The only issue I have seen is in curved classes students won't want to share
notes, as it could affect their grade if others do well. Niranjan from
inkling.com mentioned this from some informal interviews.
The biggest issue for note-taking based on my research for OER at Berkeley is
definitely the copyright issue noted earlier. Our professors retain copyright
of their lectures and are free to license or transfer the right to reproduce
the lecture, e.g. through notes/transcription. Thus students' notes can be
infringements if permission or license are not given (unless there are fair use
claims, which can be tricky).
- Matt
----- Reply message -----
From: "Alec Story" <[email protected]>
Date: Sat, Dec 11, 2010 12:30 pm
Subject: [FC-discuss] Ideas for a Paper/Notes Sharing Webapp
To: "Discussion of Free Culture in general and this organization in particular"
<[email protected]>
The downside to making submissions anonymous is that it increases the
likelihood of spam.
Another issue: some schools may view sharing this content as aiding
cheating, and could take disciplinary action against students. We should
look into policies on that.
On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 3:22 PM, Rich Jones <[email protected]> wrote:
> @Adi - so no offense to your friend, but this website is kiiinnddaaa lame.
> Requires accounts and it pretty much only has any content from Harvard.
> Apparently he's been working on this for over a year and I'm sure we could
> make something better in less than a week. The content is also -NC. Still,
> it shows there is a demand for this kind of service.
>
> @Alec Story - I was assuming that the submissions would be anonymous by
> default. No barriers to consumption and no barriers to submission.
>
> R
>
>
> On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 3:27 AM, Alec Story <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> One thing about sharing notes or papers: it would be very useful to have
>> an anonymized form. While I might be happy to share a paper, I might not be
>> happy to let future employers read papers I wrote, particularly without the
>> context of the class to explain them - it's entirely possible to have a
>> teacher require a paper defending a difficult or commonly-disagreed-with
>> point of view as an intellectual exercise.
>>
>> Ideally, this anonymization wouldn't be correlated across user accounts to
>> prevent people from piecing the data together. Just "anonymous" would be
>> sufficient.
>>
>> RE cheating, if this gets up and running, providing API support for
>> anti-plagiarism software would be a nice touch.
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 10:34 PM, Adi Kamdar <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> I've been chatting with Andrew Magliozzi, who's working on FinalsClub.org
>>> (awful name, I know). It's a non-profit note-sharing site, and he just got a
>>> bunch of money from the Hewlett Foundation (I think) to move forward with
>>> this. I'm preeettty sure the licensing scheme for the site is
>>> choose-your-own-CC, though I'm not entirely sure.
>>>
>>> The point is, he's just underwent going through a pretty big survey of
>>> students regarding whether or not they would use something like this, what
>>> they would want from this, chief concerns, etc. He's always looking for
>>> feedback/input, and it might be useful to reach out to him.
>>>
>>> -Adi
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 9:28 PM, Rich Jones <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I've haven't seen those two services before, but I have seen others just
>>>> like them, and I think they're _crap_.
>>>> There's no need to make this any more complicated than it needs to be,
>>>> and I think the mandatory login is a bunch of bullshit. Very
>>>> pyramid-schemey.
>>>>
>>>> Integrating directly into the note taking application is a nifty idea -
>>>> a piratepad/unnamedSFCnotesapp mashup would be pretty neat - let people in
>>>> the same class take notes together, then publish them directly for
>>>> everybody
>>>> else. Maybe a feature we can work on after then initial push.
>>>>
>>>> R
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Love the idea of making things that students can use!
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> There seem to be two parts of the note-sharing idea:
>>>>> * Taking the notes
>>>>> * Sharing the notes
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>>
>>>>> Two existing note-sharing services to take a look at:
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.notetopia.com/
>>>>> * (for some reason @usc.edu won't get me in...)
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.noteutopia.com/
>>>>> * (this caused a bunch of controversy because they buy/sell the notes)
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm certain that there are others ...
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>>
>>>>> The note TAKING step seems just as compelling, though.
>>>>>
>>>>> On one extreme, I see many many students taking notes in the Microsoft
>>>>> Office notetaking program (OneNote)?
>>>>>
>>>>> On the other, my personal note-taking workflow involves vim +
>>>>> mediawiki.
>>>>>
>>>>> What's a good half-way point between these approaches that encourages
>>>>> sharing?
>>>>>
>>>>> Some of my classmates swear by a non-free Mac program called Scrivener:
>>>>> http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php
>>>>>
>>>>> And I know some others who have a similar relationship to Zim:
>>>>> http://zim-wiki.org/
>>>>>
>>>>> Maybe a specially modified version of Piratepad for students?
>>>>>
>>>>> A project like this could start a bigger conversation about the best
>>>>> tools/practices for students who care about their computing freedom.
>>>>>
>>>>> Exciting stuff!
>>>>> Kevin
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 9:15 PM, Parker <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Just wanted to chime in on the idea of making it about student papers
>>>>> and not notes:
>>>>> I have this feeling that making it about student papers is more of a
>>>>> positive statement and less subversive. I'm kind of having trouble
>>>>> justifying that feeling, though--maybe I'm crazy, or maybe someone can
>>>>> back me up.
>>>>>
>>
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