[Smt-talk] Course (anti)Hero

[kos at panix.com]

On Wed, 7 Jul 2010, Michael Buchler <mbuchler at fsu.edu> warned:

> I was naturally curious and found that Course Hero was selling access to 
> about a dozen documents written by one of my colleagues.

I was curious too, so I quickly registered at Course Hero: 
http://www.coursehero.com

Once I found the music section I had a look, and burst out laughing.  So many 
colleges and universities are represented - and it seems like every student 
for the past 5 years has uploaded every single homework assignment they ever 
had.  There's an amazingly enormous amount of information (i.e. papers 
and notes) here!

I don't feel so bad about my own teaching - not only because my school was not 
represented, but because in addition to musical notations, I insist that every 
student turn in a weekly summary of what went on in the class, not just the 
issues raised (different each year), but the specific ways in which we dealt 
with them (also different each year).  Because every class is different, I feel 
pretty confident that the uniqueness of the discussion pretty much precludes 
the possibility of getting students' work from previous years (although I do 
try to alter the content each time I teach it).

It does suggest that College 2.0 has to be different from what we've being 
previously/currently doing.  Any kind of course where a student could presumably 
pass by obtaining previous years' homework is no longer going to work.  The 
teacher must really think up assignments where the work is unique and the 
student won't benefit by copying previously written work.  Nowadays students 
are much more collaborative - so why not create groups that are graded 
collectively (say a group of 4-5, and everyone has to accept the grade).

Just a few ideas of the top of my head.  I know there are many sites like Course 
Hero.  It seems like there should be more organization among academics to come 
up with ways to counter the networking of homework assignments.


Bob Kosovsky, Ph.D. -- Curator, Rare Books and Manuscripts,
Music Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
blog:  http://www.nypl.org/blog_user/44   Twitter: @kos2
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