Guidelines for Public, Student Class Blogs: Ethics, Legalities, FERPA and More | HASTAC - 0 views
-
Cris Crissman on 20 Jan 13"Assignments that matter From 2004 to 2008, Duke (and other) Marine Invertebrate Zoology students that took a semester in Bermuda were asked to pick any species and write an online report on it (http://www.thecephalopodpage.org/MarineInvertebrateZoology/index.html). I believe that this was one of the first online student projects. Over the years more species were added and coverage eventually included most of the more common and interesting species in eight different phyla. Today I had the pleasure of discovering that one of my former students is now an accomplished teacher herself and is using online assignments for her students. I think it is incredibly important to give students; especially university aged students, a chance to create something that matters in the real world and to have the opportunity (but not the requirement) to put their real name on it. Many of them took a lot of pride in their writing. For many students, this was the first time they had ever published something in their name. After the class, many put their work on their CVs. I think it is also important to expose students to new technology; in this case I made it as easy as I could by creating an html template with sections that they could drop content into. I also asked the students that knew html to help those that didn't when they had formatting issues. Some discovered that they could write html and developed in that direction. James B. Wood"
