Gleb Tsipursky, assistant professor at Ohio State University’s Newark Campus, has been trying out something new with the students in his history classes. Instead of assigning research papers, Tsipursky assigns class-sourcing projects where students create “publicly accessible online digital artifacts, such as wikis websites, blogs, videos, podcasts, and others.” The students work in teams to create a historically accurate database that is available to the online community. Here is a taste of Tsipursky’s class-sourcing strategy from Inside Higher Ed:
Similar to a research paper, students conduct independent research on a specific topic they chose, analyze the information they find, and organize and communicate this data, which strengthens research, writing and critical thinking. However, online digital artifacts provide additional benefits, as they advance our ability to teach students digital literacy skills relevant to professional and civic life in the modern digital age.
The novelty of class-sourced assignments improves student engagement, which enhances comprehension of course content. Additionally, the publicly accessible nature of the online projects, and students’ knowledge that they will be used to teach subsequent classes, results in improved academic performance. Finally, students working in teams on these assignments strengthened teamwork and collaboration abilities.
Thanks to Megan Piette for contributing this post.
I did something like this at Geneva College. Instead of doing separate archives we built one together.
This looks really well done. I'd be interested to hear if others find this as a positive move in the right direction, or more regression into the “job credentialing” of an academic discipline.
Glad you found this article useful and interesting! Regarding others doing something like this, I'm in conversation with a number of people who are trying out something similar to what I am doing, here is one example: http://blogs.dickinson.edu/teachinghistory/2013/10/07/class-sourcing-first-step-initial-thoughts/
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.