Finals are coming up. The majority of students on this campus will suffer from a anxiety, lack of sleep, and extreme stress. We've all know that occasional, (or not so occasional) feeling of, "oh my god, I'm actually going to fail this test". The title of the VT article is "Collective Intelligence in Disaster", which at a less extreme scale, can be applied to this situation as well.
A googlegroup of class members, and a googledoc of a collaborative review sheet could help solve this problem. A few class concepts come into play here: reciprocity, credibility, and accuracy.
In order to gain access to the review sheet, you must contribute to it by either answering a question, summarizing a reading, highlighting what questions you think will be on the test, ect. Otherwise people would take advantage of the review sheet without contributing.
Credibility is also another factor. In the VT efforts, the severity of the situation and grave circumstances left very little room for deceit. No one was motivated to lie or mislead any of their peers, unless of course, it was the shooter himself or someone on his side. In the class group, there is more room for deceit, as some malicious individuals might be motivated to mislead his or her classmates in order to make the mean lower, potentially giving him or her a higher grade. This possibility is disheartening, however I'm confident that Cornell students are trustworthy individuals that value their peers academic achievements. In the VT posts, they use social capital to attain credibility. Instead of social capital, students could list when the professor went over the specific material, or cite his or her reasoning using a class book or posted reading.
In order to maintain accurate information, student's would not be able to delete others' work, but rather offer suggestions or corrections on the side. You could 'tag' the comment or answer inaccurate, and offer your answer in a space provided.
This teamwork and collaboration, would not only benefit the class for exams, but blog posts throughout the year could help students stay on track.
Although somewhat abstract, I feel that this exchange of shared knowledge would enhance the bond between the students in the classroom. If the blog posts are consistent and strong, the interaction would lead to a more comfortable classroom- one in which students feel like they know each other, one in which students feel like they can talk without sounding stupid. This collaboration of knowledge, or collective intelligence would be extremely beneficial to the students on many levels.
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I really like this idea! Its really good that you thought of a way to make sure that people contributed instead of just using the knowledge base to help themselves.
ReplyDeleteMy only issue is credibility. Even with a system which allows you to flag what you think is inaccurate and offer your own answer, I'd be a little concerned that the information wasn't very accurate. Therefore, I think that this would work best if contributors had to use their real names instead of a handle.
I'm gonna go ahead and assume you're not an engineer :). I really liked your idea, and you quickly answered my skepticisms by requiring people to contribute to receive the review sheet. However, while I wouldn't worry about student's having malicious intent and providing false information, I've found in engineering that if a student understands something, they keep it to themselves. What with the mean always being your constant competitor, it would make no sense for a student to help out others when they already understand it. In a class that isn't curved however, you're idea would work wonderfully. Good post!
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