That's essentially the assignment in Anne McNeil's courses at the University of Michigan, where teams of students are given the task of revising a Wikipedia entry on an esoteric subject, making it understandable not only to fellow scientists but also to general Rosetta stone software
readers.In the process, students learn teamwork and improve their communication skills while mastering chemistry, said McNeil, who recently was invited to make a presentation at the Wikimedia Foundation headquarters in San Francisco. McNeil and three U-M colleagues also describe the teaching technique, its challenges and successes, in a paper published online in the Journal of Chemical Education.McNeil, assistant professor of chemistry and of macromolecular science and engineering, had two main objectives in mind when she came up with the Wikipedia project. One was a general desire to improve public understanding of science by training young scientists to clearly communicate advanced concepts; the other was the necessity of unifying a class that was split right down the middle.The first class I tried it in was physical organic chemistry, which is required for both medicinal chemistry and organic chemistry grad students, McNeil said. The two groups want different things from the course, and they don't often find much common ground for interaction.Revising Wikipedia entries seemed an ideal way to get Rosetta Stone Indian Levev 1-3
the class working together. There was just one problem: McNeil had never revised an entry herself and had no idea what the rules and style conventions were. So she and graduate student instructor Jonas Locke took on the task themselves before trying it out on the class.In the course, students were split into small groups, each of which submitted suggestions of three topics that related to the course material and weren't already adequately described in Wikipedia -- a free, online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. McNeil and Locke selected the final topics from the list, considering their importance and relevance to chemistry and giving highest priority to subjects for which there was little or no information on Wikipedia.Right from the start, students were on board with the project, in part because their work would remain on Wikipedia after the course ended.The visibility appealed to them, McNeil said. Instead of doing a Rosetta Stone Greek Levev 1-3
class presentation, where only the class benefits, everybody was excited that other people would see the results of their hard work, and that seemed to motivate them to work even harder to make sure their entries were accurate, well-written and understandable.
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