For some professors, a rare embrace of Wikipedia
Carrie Wells
Issue date: 11/16/07 Section: News
Most term papers have a limited audience. It's you, your professor, and that's pretty much it.
Maybe your mom, too, or anyone who passes it hanging on the fridge.
That is, unless the paper is for one of a growing number of professors who have students posting written material for a potential audience of millions. Professors have recently been assigning their students articles to write or edit on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anyone can change.
The value of the website is more than gaining a wider audience. Professors and students involved say the website's greatest value as a teaching tool is the feedback that the audience offers.
"It creates new knowledge instead of the paper getting thrown in a file cabinet and thrown away after seven years," psychology associate professor Kent Norman said. "I have submitted articles to encyclopedias, but I am just one person. I've probably never written anything without a mistake; with Wikipedia, you can have 30 other experts editing your work."
Norman decided to have his students write articles for Wikipedia in one undergraduate and one graduate class he taught last spring semester, in addition to the class he is teaching this semester.
The approach is not without its critics. Some question the wisdom of assigning students without the necessary expertise in the article's topic to broadcast their work so widely. And the site has come under fire in general for inaccuracies and bias.
Still, students say they appreciate getting feedback on their work and say the wider audience acts as an incentive to make their work better.
Dipal Desai, a senior landscape architecture and psychology major, is taking Norman's class, which has been broken up into six teams that will post articles relating to psychology on Wikipedia. Her team is writing an article on the hive mind, the psychological phenomenon of group collective thinking.
"It's interesting to see my input on a global network," she said. "Before this project, I wouldn't have thought of editing an article, but it's fun to go back and see who made comments and changed it."
Maybe your mom, too, or anyone who passes it hanging on the fridge.
That is, unless the paper is for one of a growing number of professors who have students posting written material for a potential audience of millions. Professors have recently been assigning their students articles to write or edit on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anyone can change.
The value of the website is more than gaining a wider audience. Professors and students involved say the website's greatest value as a teaching tool is the feedback that the audience offers.
"It creates new knowledge instead of the paper getting thrown in a file cabinet and thrown away after seven years," psychology associate professor Kent Norman said. "I have submitted articles to encyclopedias, but I am just one person. I've probably never written anything without a mistake; with Wikipedia, you can have 30 other experts editing your work."
Norman decided to have his students write articles for Wikipedia in one undergraduate and one graduate class he taught last spring semester, in addition to the class he is teaching this semester.
The approach is not without its critics. Some question the wisdom of assigning students without the necessary expertise in the article's topic to broadcast their work so widely. And the site has come under fire in general for inaccuracies and bias.
Still, students say they appreciate getting feedback on their work and say the wider audience acts as an incentive to make their work better.
Dipal Desai, a senior landscape architecture and psychology major, is taking Norman's class, which has been broken up into six teams that will post articles relating to psychology on Wikipedia. Her team is writing an article on the hive mind, the psychological phenomenon of group collective thinking.
"It's interesting to see my input on a global network," she said. "Before this project, I wouldn't have thought of editing an article, but it's fun to go back and see who made comments and changed it."
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