This fall term, Pepperdine international law professor Roger Alford made sure his students gave something back (my take, not his), as he explains at Opinio Juris:
This semester I took Peter Spiro’s suggestion to heart and assigned my international law students to write a Wikipedia entry as a small part of their class requirements. The only limits I put on the students was to pick a topic that was relevant to international law and that was not currently included in Wikipedia (or at most was a stub). The results were quite impressive. I will not give you the details of each entry to avoid compromising the next phase of the experiment. But essentially they wrote on topics ranging from prominent international law professors and judges, several major decisions of international courts, two Supreme Court decisions, a key aspect of a major environmental law treaty, principles of international law jurisdiction, an undeveloped topic relating to the use of force, a major international investment arbitration issue, and an issue relating to corporate conduct and core labor standards. They wrote the entries in Wikipedia format to maximize the chances that the entries will be accepted by the Wikipedia editors.
First, this is a terrific idea for a course assignment — I wish there had been a Wikipedia when I was in school. Second, this is great news for Wikipedia itself. I’d like to see media outlets that picked up the John Seiganthaler controversy last year run a small feature on this development. Third, this makes a lot more sense than a whole class about Second Life.
Content hat tip: ExMo. Headline hat tip: zefrank.
C ? Personally, I grade harder than that.