Wikis As Environments For Mitigating/Reducing Plagiarism?

Friends/

In a report of a presentation on "Using Wikipedia to Reenvision the Term Paper" by Andreas Brockhau and Martha Groom of University of Washington Bothell, mention is made of many benefits that arise as a result of writing for/in Wikipedia.

Among these are the following:

Groom’s first attempt at incorporating Wikipedia into a class came in the fall of 2006, when she required her students to make a major revision required her students to make a major revision to an existing article or to create one of their own, with a minimum of 1,500 words, for 60 percent of the grade. The assignment, for her course on environmental history and globalization, encompassed an initial proposal, a first draft, revisions and [internal] peer review ...

"The shift to thinking about placing the term paper as a Wikipedia encyclopedia entry allows for another level of peer review," Groom said. Such entries have references and citations; allow for a process of repeated, continual editing; and encourage collaborations between authors.

They also reach a much wider audience, through the Wikipedia site and search engines. "How do you motivate students to do their best work?" she asked — implying that the answer lies in the possibility of others viewing it. The public nature of Wikipedia content also means that, in theory, students would be less likely to reuse others’ material as their own.

"[The Wikipedia guidelines] very clearly state that ... the onus is on you, not on them, so you’ll be the one who catches anything if you [post] any copyrighted material," said Andreas Brockhaus, the manager of learning technologies at the university.

There was another positive effect on her students’ work, Groom said: their assignments were generally better written.

[http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/29/wikipedia]

Question Of The Day: To What Degree and By What Means Can Wiki-Based Writing Mitigate/Reduce PLAGIARISM in the Writing of Students / Researchers / Scholars?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism]

>>I'm Particularly Interested in **Non-Wikipedia** Wiki-Writing Environments<<

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki]

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Thanks!

/Gerry