Online Universities Weblog

I've long believed that writing / editing wikipedia articles is a great way to "study" for an exam. You have an actual audience, so it's difficult to become careless.

One teacher recently took that idea to the extreme when she assigned her pupils to write Wikipedia entries instead of term papers. Ars Technia reports on the unusual assignment:

"34 students in one class and 14 student groups in a second participated; all but one student found it a valuable experience, and many reported that they felt more personally invested in the work. For her part, Groom felt that the quality of the work was superior to the typical in-class assignment.

The Wikipedia community, however, was not as impressed. One article didn't survive for 24 hours following its introduction, and four additional ones were ultimately deleted following extensive discussion, their contents merged into existing entries. Groom also noted that some of the comments in the ensuing discussions "were delivered rudely."

The students seemed to have some formatting issues and it looks like they didn't get a warm reception…but, it was a learning experience. Would you like your online professors to hand out Wikipedia assignments? Do you think the public encyclopedia is a proper venue for a class project? Why or why not?

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