The day before, 18 March, two university instructors from the University of Washington at Bothell gave a presentation at the 2008 Educause Learning Initiative conference detailing their experiences in having students prepare term papers intended for publication in Wikipedia. The slides of the presentation and an audio accompaniment are available on the web; the 50-minute audio with slides can be consulted via Adobe Connect. As a pedagogical exercise, I think using Wikipedia in this manner has much value, and that aspect, as well as several difficulties encountered during two classes across a two-year period, is elaborated in clear detail in the slides and audio.
The presentation is important for us in Ljubljana for another reason: it is an illustration of a quality presentation and is, at the same time, an excellent application of Adobe Connect. The presentation inspired me to try this form of use of Adobe for a subsequent seminar presentation, and it may be a suitable way for seminar paper presentations to also be prepared and delivered. The presentation is long, but viewing the first ten is sufficient to get a 'feel' for the technique employed. And the slides can be viewed with the audio and skimmed in a matter of a few minutes.
Other material on the site of the Educause conference – see program – is also worth examining; most is accessible online. By the way, the manner in which this event has been organized and how material has been archived seems illustrative of excellent conference practice.
The initiative was also described in an article, 'When Wikipedia is the Assignment' in Inside Higher Ed, October 29, 2007; it has been discussed on several blogs, including eng516.
No comments:
Post a Comment