Homework Hand-In

Students are assigned homework which results in text or other computerbased documents that can be shared on the Wiki. There are several interesting aspects to this idea:

• It lets everyone see what everyone else is doing.
• It helps to generate activity in the Wiki.
• It creates material for discussion and later linking.

There is a potential ethical problem, though. As teachers, we are not allowed to post grades. By requiring posting of homework, we are requiring students to make public what we are about to grade. It’s a gray area whether this is an invasion of student privacy. Worse yet, on the Wiki, it’s publically available to the entire Internet! Can a future employer go back and see how badly a student did in a particular class this way? On the other hand, students generally like handing-in assignments this way. We get a lot of feedback from students saying that they find this convenient, useful, and even fun.

Some solutions:

• Let students hand-in things on-line, but give them the option to delete the material

later.

• Place a username/password lock on the Wiki so that only students can get into it.
• Provide an optional way of handing-in things not on-line.