On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 8:50 AM, Charles Matthews <[email protected]> wrote: > The argument that class > assignments will prove the soft underbelly of academia depends on some > things we can know about (assessment methods, for example - pretty much > ruling it out here in the UK), and some we don't (whether more intimate > contact with WP mechanisms will enthuse academic experts or put them off). > > Obviously catering for evaluation makes sense. But I suspect the key > issue is going to turn out to be this: do 20 hours working on a WP > assignment teach a student more than 20 hours working on something more > conventional? If WP work turns out to be educational, then academics > ought to support it. I think there are reasons to be positive about this > point.
And as usual, El Reg's coverage manages to be negative anyway. They are truly a lesson to all of us. From http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/01/wikipedia_makes_students_do_better_work/ : > This is achieved, however, not by the kids finding stuff out on the > notoriously unreliable site, but rather by getting them to write material for > it. Fear of criticism by the obsessive Wiki-fiddler community apparently > motivates youngsters far more than the worry that their academic supervisors > might catch them out in an error.... > Normally in cases of Wikipedia's effects on academia - or indeed other fields > of endeavour such as journalism, politics etc - the story is one of lazy > students, hacks, speechwriters etc clipping stuff from the site without > checking it or even disguising it before claiming it as their own work. Today > we hear of a new way to exploit the unpaid Wikipedian: lazy college > professors can use the crowdsourced encyclo-custodians to mark their > students' work, again without any guarantee that they will do so properly or > accurately. -- gwern http://www.gwern.net _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
