On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 1:25 AM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.ayers@gmail.com> wrote:

http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?page_id=15031&PRODUCT_CODE=ELI082/SESS07&bhcp=1

"To enhance the learning experience of a term paper, students were
required to publish their papers in Wikipedia. Publishing for a large
audience provided authentic feedback and encouraged students to do
their best work. Using Wikipedia also allowed students to connect with
a vibrant community and share their knowledge by making their papers
publicly accessible."

I haven't watched the profession, but the sentence "students were
required to publish their papers in Wikipedia" makes me cringe. One
can only hope the professors introduced them to (or understood) the
norms and policies of the site, and didn't require original
research...

Yes, there are clear differences in methodology between a term paper and a Wikipedia article (completely aside from wiki versus non-wiki), as well as in genre of writing style, which is certainly non-trivial. But I still admire people who are taking the initiative in this regard - even if they are making mistakes (provided they/we learn from those mistakes!). There is an interesting ongoing writeup by an educator in the University of British Colombia about his experiences of a similar project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jbmurray/Madness