PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Wikipedia improves students' work

Students become much more concerned with accuracy when their research is posted online

2011-06-01
(Press-News.org) May 30 – Fredericton, NB – A student writing an essay for their teacher may be tempted to plagiarize or leave facts unchecked. A new study shows that if you ask that same student to write something that will be posted on Wikipedia, he or she suddenly becomes determined to make the work as accurate as possible, and may actually do better research.

Brenna Gray, an instructor at Douglas College in New Westminster, B.C., was presenting the results of the study at the 2011 Congress of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton.

She became interested in why students seem to adopt some technological innovations (Wikipedia, for example) and reject things their schools would like them to use, such as the student-teacher interface Blackboard. Gray says it's easy to criticize Wikipedia because of the unstructured way it is set up.

She says despite its faults, it does promote solid values for its writers, including precise citations, accurate research, editing and revision.

"Those ideals are the ones we espouse as English instructors," she said.

She decided to get first-year students in an English class to write short biographies of Canadian writers that would then be posted on Wikipedia.

What she found was that the moment the students realized their work was going public in a forum over which they had no control, they took the work a lot more seriously. They became concerned, for example, with the accuracy of facts.

Gray says it's not only the fact that their work was going public that stimulated the students, it was the realization that in producing the Wikipedia entries they were acquiring skills that were transferable to other parts of their lives.

Gray says students, like most of the rest of us, are more time-crunched than ever. They have to prioritize, and are therefore reluctant to spend time learning skills that aren't useful outside school. That includes online tools like Blackboard, which they perceive as having no relevance to other parts of their life.

Because the Wikipedia skills are perceived as transferable, students became interested in acquiring them. And they were willing to work to Wikipedia's standards.

Gray says teachers need to talk about Wikipedia and how it can be used.

"The purpose of my paper is to start a discussion about it," she said.

INFORMATION:

Get more from the 2011 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences

Organized by the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, the annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences brings together scholars, graduate students, practitioners, and policy-makers to share groundbreaking research and examine the most important social and cultural issues of the day. This year's Congress is co-hosted by the University of New Brunswick and St. Thomas University and runs from May 28 to June 4.

The Congress program includes original research from across disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, providing a great collection of expert sources and innovative story leads. If you are interested in accessing the latest research in the social sciences and humanities, please contact us to be added to our mailing list.

www.congress 2011.ca

For more information or interview requests
Ryan Saxby Hill
rsaxbyhill@fedcan.ca
506-447-3176 (media room)
613-894-7635 (mobile)

END



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

History shows that all-boy classrooms might actually benefit girls

2011-06-01
May 30, 2011 – Fredericton, N.B. – In recent years, the apparent decline in boys' academic success rates has troubled politicians, researchers, and educators. It has been described as an educational crisis and a failure of the traditional school setting. The decline has spurred scores of potential solutions to the problem, including the adoption of same-sex classrooms as a way to better address boys' educational needs. New research that will be presented at the 2011 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Fredericton, New Brunswick, indicates that the picture ...

Parental conflict in plants: Maternal factors silence paternal genes

Parental conflict in plants: Maternal factors silence paternal genes
2011-06-01
In flowering plants, the beginning of embryogenesis is almost exclusively governed by maternal gene activity. Maternal factors regulate the development of the embryo and silence paternal genes during early stages of development. This finding – obtained using next generation sequencing technology – was reported by an international team of researchers including plant geneticists from the University of Zurich. This newly uncovered mechanism may be involved in the maintenance of species boundaries and could play an important role in the development of novel crop varieties. ...

Mutated muscle protein causes deafness

Mutated muscle protein causes deafness
2011-06-01
Excessive noise is not the only thing that causes damage to hearing. In many cases, genetic factors are responsible for the loss of hearing at a young age. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin together with colleagues from Nijmegen have discovered a previously unknown genetic cause of progressive hearing impairment: the disease is caused by mutations of the SMPX (small muscle protein) gene, which is located on the X chromosome. It was not previously known that this gene, which is active in the skeletal muscle and heart, also plays a role ...

Providers Seek Specific Strengths When Contracting With an IT Advisory Services Firm

2011-06-01
Information technology is now a huge part of the administration of healthcare facilities in the United States. Keeping up with new regulations, payment paradigms, and care delivery models is a daunting but necessary responsibility; providers need help to accomplish this, and there are plenty of IT advisory firms willing to offer assistance. Providers must consider ARRA funds, Meaningful Use, and the rest of the litany of technology advancements the healthcare industry will demand of them over the next few years. The new KLAS report, "Advisory Services: Navigating ...

Climate change is analyzed from the perspective of the social sciences

Climate change is analyzed from the perspective of the social sciences
2011-06-01
The researchers base their work the fact that climate change has become one of the main problems of the 21st Century, as is demonstrated by numerous studies that confirm the seriousness of its effects. In this sense, similar to what occurs in the area of energy, the issues that are raised regarding its characteristics, extent, and consequences have a decisive effect on public policy and, therefore, on the Law, which is the means of formalizing and enforcing those policies. "In this way, the Law, which has always been called upon to generate confidence and certainty by adequately ...

Link between influenza vaccination in pregnancy and reduced risk of premature birth

2011-06-01
A study published in this week's PLoS Medicine suggests that there might be an association between maternal immunization with inactivated influenza vaccine during pregnancy and reduced likelihood of prematurity and the baby being small for gestational age. The study, led by Saad B. Omer from the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta, Georgia, used a large surveillance dataset (the Georgia Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System) to analyze the relationship between receipt of inactivated influenza vaccine during any trimester of pregnancy by mothers ...

Threshold hemoglobin and mortality in people with stable coronary disease

2011-06-01
In this week's PLoS Medicine, Anoop Shah of University College London and colleagues report that, in people with stable coronary disease, there were threshold haemoglobin values below which mortality increased in a graded, continuous fashion. As well as a systematic review and statistical analysis of previous studies, the researchers conducted a retrospective analysis of patients from a prospective observational cohort. Their findings suggest that there are thresholds of haemoglobin that are associated with increased risk of mortality in patients with angina or myocardial ...

Provision of subsidized malaria drugs in shops improves uptake

2011-06-01
Reporting the findings of a cluster randomized trial carried out in rural Kenya, Beth Kangwana and colleagues find that provision of packs of the malaria therapy artemether-lumefantrine in shops at a subsidized price more than doubled the proportion of children with fever who received drugs promptly. Importantly, whilst enabling cheap and easy purchase of malaria treatment in shops enabled treatment of about 44% of children with fever, this is still much lower than the target of treating 80% of children with fever set by the Roll Back Malaria Partnership. So in addition ...

The alcohol industry needs more scrutiny

2011-06-01
The influence of "Big Alcohol" in the health arena deserves as much scrutiny as Big Pharma and Big Tobacco, especially in light of evidence of bias in funded research, unsupported claims of benefit, and inappropriate promotion and marketing by the alcohol industry, says a new editorial in this week's PLoS Medicine. The PLoS Medicine editors argue that the statistics about problem drinking are troubling enough, but what also demands more attention and research is the influence of the alcohol industry on health research, government policy, and public perceptions of the harms ...

Study finds increases in rain, temperature could signal cholera outbreaks months ahead

2011-06-01
Deerfield, IL (May 31, 2011) With recent deadly cholera outbreaks in Haiti and Cameroon providing the latest indication of a menacingly resurgent disease, scientists have discovered rain and temperature fluctuations in at-risk areas could predict epidemics months in advance, according to a new study published today in the June 2011 issue of the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. After analyzing several years of disease and environmental data from cholera-endemic areas of Zanzibar, Tanzania, scientists from the International Vaccine Institute in Seoul, ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Did lead limit brain and language development in Neanderthals and other extinct hominids?

New study reveals alarming mental health and substance use disparities among LGBTQ+ youth

U.K. food insecurity is associated with mental health conditions

At least eight bat species commute or forage over pig farms in Northern Italy

Ancient teeth reveal mammalian responses to climate change in Southeast Asia

Targeting young adults beginning university may be especially effective for encouraging pro-environmental behaviors

This robotic skin allows tiny robots to navigate complex, fragile environments

‘Metabots’ shapeshift from flat sheets into hundreds of structures

Starting university boosts recycling and greener travel, a University of Bath study finds

How cilia choreograph their “Mexican wave”, enabling marine creatures to swim

Why women's brains face higher risk: scientists pinpoint X-chromosome gene behind MS and Alzheimer's

Ancient lead exposure shaped evolution of human brain

How the uplift of East Africa shaped its ecosystems: Climate model simulations reveal Miocene landscape transformation

Human Organ Chip technology sets stage for pan-influenza A CRISPR RNA therapies

Research alert: Bacterial chatter slows wound healing

American Society of Anesthesiologists names Patrick Giam, M.D., FASA, new president

High-entropy alloy nanozyme ROS biocatalyst treating tendinopathy via up-regulation of PGAM5/FUNDC1/GPX4 pathway

SwRI’s Dr. Pablo Bueno named AIAA Associate Fellow

Astronomers detect radio signals from a black hole tearing apart a star – outside a galactic center

Locking carbon in trees and soils could help ‘stabilize climate for centuries’ – but only if combined with underground storage

New research shows a tiny, regenerative worm could change our understanding of healing

Australia’s rainforests first to switch from carbon sink to source

First-trimester mRNA COVID-19 vaccination and risk of major congenital anomalies

Glucose-lowering medication classes and cardiovascular outcomes in patients with type 2 diabetes

Rising seas and sinking cities signal a coastal crisis in China

Discovery of hundreds of new human gut viruses provides a new approach to studying the gut microbiome

Study indicates dramatic increase in percentage of US adults who meet new definition of obesity

Astrocytes are superstars in the game of long-term memory

WSU study finds positive framing can steer shoppers toward premium products

Study finds ending universal free school meals linked to rising student meal debt and stigma

[Press-News.org] Wikipedia improves students' work
Students become much more concerned with accuracy when their research is posted online