Overall, her students really liked this approach.\u00a0 All but one student had a very positive experience.\u00a0 The main problem was with the Wikipedia community.\u00a0 They deleted one article because it was not relevant enough to warrant an entry and they moved the contents of four other articles into existing articles.\u00a0 Some of the comments by the Wikipedians weren’t so friendly.\u00a0 I think Groom used the term “rude” in her description.<\/p>\n
Just last week I had worked with one of my classes on a wiki project.\u00a0 When I originally added this activity to this course a couple of\u00a0semesters ago, I thought about having the students post directly to Wikipedia.\u00a0 After about\u00a0two minutes of hard thought, I decided it would be better if we did not\u00a0mess up\u00a0Wikipedia during our “learning experience”.\u00a0 Instead, I setup a blank copy of Mediawiki<\/a> (the program used by Wikipedia) and we created our own wiki dealing with the topic of copyright.<\/p>\n I created fifteen blank articles and assigned four students to each one.\u00a0 The topics were fair use, DMCA, plagiarism and other things related to copyright law.\u00a0\u00a0Each group was to use the discussion portion of the wiki\u00a0as a planning area and together determine\u00a0the contents of the article.\u00a0<\/p>\n Groom’s work aside, here is why a wiki is a great tool for group work.\u00a0 Any time multiple students submit one paper it\u00a0can be\u00a0difficult to determine how much each student contributed.\u00a0 Mediawiki archives all these details.\u00a0 Below is a snippet of the history<\/a> of the Wikipedia entry for Copyright<\/a>.<\/p>\n At any time a comparison of two versions of the article or discussion can be executed.\u00a0 By selecting two different versions and clicking the “compare selected versions” button, a side-by-site version (pictured below) is shown.<\/p>\n This comparison shows exactly what was modified by the second editor.\u00a0 Going through the history of each assigned article, I was able to determine which students initiated the original version of the article, which students added relevant content, which students spruced up the wording and layout of the\u00a0text and which students did nothing at all.<\/p>\n The history file is listed chronologically reversed (last modification is first on the list).\u00a0 I could see how the article took shape over a one-week period. \u00a0I could also see which students didn’t login until after midnight on the day the article was due.<\/p>\n For group work, I have not used a better tool than Mediawiki.\u00a0 It is simple for the students to use and loaded with features that make assessment easy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Before I started class today, this article popped up in my aggregator.\u00a0 Ironically, we had just finished an assignment that was closely related. Martha Groom presented “Using Wikipedia to Reenvision the Term Paper” at Educause last week (link includes her … Continue reading ![\"wikicopyright1.png\"](\"http:\/\/www.trustyetc.com\/trustyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/wikicopyright1.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"wikicopyright2.png\"](\"http:\/\/www.trustyetc.com\/trustyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/wikicopyright2.png\")
<\/p>\n