[WikiEN-l] Dartmouth class project now on VFD

Tue Aug 24 14:05:52 UTC 2004

On Aug 24, 2004, at 8:01 AM, Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>> An interesting assignment, but the teacher made a major error by 
>> requiring
>> this: "Choose two topics that are appropriate", requiring a NEW 
>> article.
>> That might have worked 2 years ago when for example the article,
>> [[Colorado]] was a new article. But now the experience is much more 
>> about
>> making existing articles better.
>
> I can understand why the teacher would make this a rule, though.  It's 
> much
> easier to grade.

As someone intending to give his students a Wikipedia writing 
assignment in the spring, I would say that ease of grading is not 
really the most important point here.

> I think in the future a better assignment might be to pick an article 
> from
> the list of requested articles.  Or maybe even just pick a red link.

My intended assignment is "Add 1000 words to Wikipedia."

> Of course, I would question the ethics of a professor forcing his 
> students
> to release their assignments under the GFDL in the first place.  Is 
> this
> even allowed under school policy?

Probably demanding that student work be released under the GFDL in 
general is not allowed. However, a single assignment to contribute to a 
specific project is very different. A lot of schools are big on having 
classes, particularly first year writing classes, apply the writing 
skills to a project other than a paper that will only ever be read by 
the professor. Wikipedia is a great choice for this.

Furthermore, it probably depends on the context. I'll be assigning the 
Wikipedia writing assignment in the course of a first year writing 
course focusing on intellectual property and copyleft. What was the 
Dartmouth professor assigning Wikipedia for?

-Snowspinner