We have developed some resources to support the creation of assignments for open environments like WordPress, Wikipedia, and Twine. Here’s why:
- Blogging can be great way for students to build community beyond the classroom and position themselves as junior scholars within their disciplines.
- Assignments with public accountability force students to approach their work with a sense of responsibility in how they are representing their information. We know, for example, that when students are accountable for their citations on Wikipedia — and have to answer to an existing community — they attend to those details more carefully.
- (There’s also a public good to having students edit Wikipedia. In addition to improving a shared resource, you can help correct the gender imbalance in the Wikipedia editing community.)
- And developing playable games as a way to demonstrate knowledge helps to mobilize that knowledge — a task increasingly important for upper-level undergraduates (and their instructors!) to be thinking about.
We also have an upcoming workshop on podcasting, which is a useful tool for opening up both classroom assignments and faculty research to a broader audience.
