Putting Student Work Online

A work in progress.

What types of student work might go online?

• Traditional work (such as papers, problem sets, laboratory assignments, etc).
• Contributions to resource webs (collections of resources centered around a particular topic).
  • Papers
  • Links (annotated and unannotated)
  • Smaller blocks of text (a few short paragraphs on a subject)
  • Annotated bibliographies
  • Software, animations, and such (with help of Instructional Multimedia Specialists)
  • Trails of ideas (sequences of pages that form a narrative on a topic)
• Discussions
  • Built directly on the web
  • Taken from a course listserve
• Annotations/glosses

Why put student work online?

• Traditional work
  • As exemplars (anonymously) indicating your expectations
  • As a resource for future classes
  • As a check against plagiarism ("Hmmm ... your paper seems suspiciously similar to one turned in to Mr. X two years ago.")
• Resource webs
  • Goal of sharing information
  • Gives students a sense of purpose in their work (not just doing work because you've assigned it or because it contributes to their own learning, but because it serves a greater scholarly or learning community).
  • Helps students think about the value of sources ("Hmmm ... if people are using my work and treating as correct, what does that say about what I use." "Hmmm ... I'm trying to get this 'fact' for our site. If I look here, I see one number. If I look here, I see another. Which is correct? Why are 'facts' different?"
  • Makes students think about their audience.

How can you put student work online?

• The traditional method: student emails you paper (or drops it in a drop box on the server), you convert to HTML and place on the web.
  • Provides some moderation (so that mediocre or libelous work does not go on the web).
  • May require late nights in the office.
• Students create HTML (perhaps using "Save as HTML" in WordPerfect or Word), you add to web.
  • Less work for you.
• Students create and post HTML, send you link, you add links to pages.
  • Even less work for you.
• Students create and post HTML, fill in form, link is automatically added.
• Hire a student to help with the various tasks.
  • Apply for Mellon II funds
  • Use departmental student assistant funds

Who can help you?

• Instructional multimedia technology specialists in your division or subdivision (funded by Mellon II and Culpepper).
• Computing services (hopefully)
• Librarians (perhaps)
• Sam Rebelsky (or at least his research students)
• Your colleagues who've gone through it already

Warnings

• Students may own copyright in their own works.
• The family privacy act (which also has some other name) may prohibit posting of student work.
• So ...
  • Make it clear that posting of work on the web is one of the requirements of the course.
  • Get signed permission from each student to post the work.