Instructor: Andy Jones, University Writing Program, College of Letters and Science
Description: Taken from the name of the shuttle bus at the Honolulu International Airport, a wiki offers anyone a speedy opportunity to create a collaborative document or project, whether that project is a single page created by members of a small writing class on a SmartSite wiki, a collection of restaurant facts and reviews for a page on DavisWiki, or an entry in the largest ever encyclopedia of knowledge, Wikipedia, home of more than 9.25 million articles in 253 languages.
For this class students will share, critique, revise and submit pages to be published on personal, local and international wikis. As a class we will write a document on the appropriate and inappropriate use of Wikipedia articles as support for work submitted for credit in college courses. We will then research, write and publish articles on Davis Wiki. Finally we will write responses to the Wikipedia submission and notability policies before each writing and submitting a new article to be included in Wikipedia. Students will provide context for these writing tasks by presenting position papers on academic articles covering academic uses of wikis and Wikipedia.
Class participants will gain a better understanding of conducting and presenting academic research, writing collaboratively and independently in a densely networked world, and publishing original work on the web.
Format: The seminar will meet Friday mornings from 9-11:30 in 27 Olson. Class time will be divided among the following activities: short lectures by the instructor, presentation of position papers by class participants, work on collaborative documents, review of student work, composition and revision of student work, and discussion of academic use of wikis. In week six of the quarter we will discuss some of these topics and our wiki-related accomplishments on the radio (Wednesday at 5pm on KDVS). Grading: Course grade will be based on:
| In-Class Writing Exercises | 20% |
Contribution to group-written policy sheet on appropriate useof Wikipedia |
20% |
| Two submissions to DavisWiki (biography page and one other) | 20% |
| Wikipedia submission | 20% |
| Oral Exam | 20% |
About the Instructor: Andy Jones has taught for the UC Davis Department of English and the University Writing Program since 1990. In addition to teaching classes on poetry, film theory, science fiction, literary criticism, and writing in the professions, Andy has also taught Writing Across Media for the UC Davis Technocultural Studies Program. As the Faculty Liaison to Academic Technology Services and the Teaching Resources Center, Andy researches and teaches with many forms of instructional technology. Always interested in cross-disciplinary thinking and studies, Andy interviews many authors, performers and pundits as host of “Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour” on radio station KDVS. In 2006 the Associated Student of UC Davis named Andy “Educator of the Year.”