I haven't set up and used a wiki before but I have discussed doing so
with a couple of colleagues.
My immediate reaction was that it could be a very difficult
quality-control job for you, Chris. One big issue will be the
specification of allowed source materials. The temptation for the
student will be to cut-and-paste from other websites and that could lead
to a bad case of GIGO (garbage in garbage out).
My second thought was to wonder how this was connected to the classroom
experience. Perhaps the entries could be general enough (e.g., what is
"research"?) so that a wiki entry could be discussed in class in the
light of new information and possible edits evaluated.
Perhaps multiple editors should be working on any 1 entry at any moment
rather than 1 student adding a couple hundred words to 1 entry each
week. One interesting aspect of wikis is the give and take of
collaborative writing. This could be paired with classroom discussion.
A small group of editors has to distill/summarize and evaluate the class
discussion and then edit an entry to reflect the consensus (or lack
thereof).
Good luck. Let us know how the project works out.
Ken
Christopher D. Green wrote:
Dear Colleagues,
Sorry for the cross-posting, but I'm not sure where I'm going to get the
best advice.
Next year I'll be teaching a general graduate course in the history of
psychology (by general, I mean that it is taken by grad students of
various specializations, not just those in our History-Theory program).
The course is taken by about 20 student each year.
I want to incorporate a wiki into the course. Has anyone else done this
so far? My current idea is to assign every student to post a sketch of
about 1000 words on a particular historically-significant figure in the
first few weeks of class. This initial essay is to act as a general
framework with respect to that figure for other contributors for the
rest of the term. After those first 20-or-so 1000-word essays go up, in
each succeeding week, every student will be assigned a new figure, to
whose essay the student will be expected to add some new material (and
edit previous contributions as needed). Such additions, I expect, will
be much shorter than the initial essay -- perhaps 200 words each --
typically taking up one particular issue in the figure's life and
expanding on it in some detail. After ten-or-so weeks of this, we should
have a set of fairly well-developed essays of about 3000 words each on
about 20 of the most significant figures in the history of psychology.
(Naturally, the essays need not focus solely on individuals. They could
also be about significant events and institutions: the history of the
APA, of IQ tests, of the use of rats in exptl psych, of the development
of psychopathological typology, etc. "Figure" was just a convenient term
to use here.)
I would like to hear comments and suggestions about this procedure from
you -- experts in teaching and in history -- and especially from people
who have actually used wikis in class before. Do you think this kind of
collaborative weekly assignment will work? What problems should I
expect? What should I look out for? How might I tweak it to make it better?
Regards,
Chris
--
Christopher D. Green
Department of Psychology
York University
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3
Canada
416-736-5115 ex. 66164
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.yorku.ca/christo
======================================
---------------------------------------------------------------
Kenneth M. Steele, Ph.D. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Department of Psychology http://www.psych.appstate.edu
Appalachian State University
Boone, NC 28608
USA
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