Would something like this be welcome in this newsgroup?

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

As a teacher, always looking for ways to improve the quality of
learning for my students, I'm thinking of giving them, as an
assignment for an introductory hardware course, the task of
posting an essay on some subject related to the newsgroup and
trigger a discussion where they (the student) should be actively
involved; both in the receptive end, reading and learning from
the advice/comments/criticisms from the experts in the newsgroup,
and posting comments and information from what they found from
their preliminary research on the subject.

I think didactically, the idea is sound -- students like to be
challenged into engaging and appealing activities (after all,
they're studying in technology-related areas!). Being actively
involved in a discussion with lots of people that have greater
knowledge and experience is definitely benefitial for them.

What I'm not sure is if such posts would be adequate and if
this newsgroup would be receptive to such thing.

What I have in mind is that they should begin their post stating
up front that the post is an academic exercise and invite people
to read and offer criticism or additional information; and they
should explicitly invite everyone to challenge whatever information
they're posting.

Would you consider such activity an abuse of newsgroups bandwidth?

I know that it seems even silly to ask this -- in my mind, the
answer is too obvious; but I fear that I may be biased by the
enthusiasm and by the fact that since I came up with the idea,
then there can not be anything wrong with it in my mind.

I'll appreciate any comments on this! (and hope that you all
find it appropriate)

Thanks,

Carlos
--

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

Carlos Moreno wrote:
> As a teacher, always looking for ways to improve the quality of
> learning for my students, I'm thinking of giving them, as an
> assignment for an introductory hardware course, the task of
> posting an essay on some subject related to the newsgroup and
> trigger a discussion where they (the student) should be actively
> involved; both in the receptive end, reading and learning from
> the advice/comments/criticisms from the experts in the newsgroup,
> and posting comments and information from what they found from
> their preliminary research on the subject.
>
<snip>
>
> What I'm not sure is if such posts would be adequate and if
> this newsgroup would be receptive to such thing.
>
> What I have in mind is that they should begin their post stating
> up front that the post is an academic exercise and invite people
> to read and offer criticism or additional information; and they
> should explicitly invite everyone to challenge whatever information
> they're posting.
>
> Would you consider such activity an abuse of newsgroups bandwidth?
>

The bandwidth argument never seemed especially compelling to me.

*Long* posts to this group, no matter how on-topic or how well-crafted,
tend to get a more negative reception than shorter posts that may be
pointless, off-topic, or wrong.

The more polite thing to do, IMHO, would be to post the essay somewhere
else on the internet, provide a brief summary and a link to the essay
here, and solicit comment here. That's more likely to get a positive
reception than posting the essay itself to the group. Whatever comment
follows would more naturally follow accepted posting style of the group
than the original essay and could naturally take place here.

RM