Archive:Eduzendium

Eduzendium is a program in which the Citizendium partners with university programs throughout the world to create high-quality, English language entries for the Citizendium.

If you have registered with Citizendium, you can start a page for your Eduzendium course here. Just type the title of your course in this inputbox (it has to start with "CZ:", which we have filled in already), and a suite of course pages will be prepared automagically when you press the button and follow the instructions.

What does Eduzendium do?

The Citizendium invites university instructors to include the crafting of a Citizendium article as an assignment.

We encourage faculty to use the Citizendium as a platform for their students to write original articles. There are few rules - all authors must abide by the key rules for all articles, most importantly that the content should not contain offensive or derogatory, and that they should not violate copyright law, including especially in the uploading of images.

The students register under their real names as Citizendium authors, and must abide by the rules of Citizendium.

The collaborative process

The Eduzendium program is designed to be extremely flexible and adaptable.

The course leader must

1. ask students to register as Citizendium authors
2. Place a description of the set task on an Eduzendium course page.
3. Name a number of articles to be reserved for students on that course
4. Start those articles and place an Eduzendium template on the main page, closing the article for editing by anyone except those involved in the course
5. Specify an 'end date' after which the article(s) may be opened for general editing

It will be up to the course leader to set whatever specific guidance for the students is appropriate for that particular course. (For example, they may set a word limit, or require inclusion of figures, or specify a particular article structure, or number of references.) The task may either be formative (an exercise in developing skills in team work, literature research and presentation) or summative (for formal assessment). The page history will provide a record of every student's individual contribution. The talk page may be used for discussion amongst students and for feedback from the instructors.

What are the educational benefits?

Writing a high-quality encyclopedia article about a specific topic requires, and trains, a specific sort of effort or discipline. Simply producing a suitably informative, but neutral, definition of a concept can require a great deal of thought. Crafting a jumble of facts into a coherent narrative, which the Citizendium requires, is a difficult, but rewarding and educational task. Furthermore, it practices a very useful scholarly skill to investigate and decide on what the most reliable bibliography items for an article are.

Some Citizendium articles that were started in Eduzendium

University of Edinburgh; articles on the theme of Appetite and Obesity that were originally written by undergraduate students, working in groups of about 4 students.

•  Circadian rhythms and appetite: Daily variations in the regulation of food intake. ^[e]
•  Energy balance in pregnancy and lactation: Adaptations in the control of food intake and energy expenditure in different reproductive states. ^[e]
•  Evolution of appetite regulating systems: Comparisons of the mechanisms regulating food intake and energy expenditure between species. ^[e]
•  Glucostatic theory of appetite control: The theory that changes in blood glucose concentrations or arteriovenous glucose differences are detected by glucoreceptors that affect energy intake. ^[e]
•  Melanocortins and appetite: The regulation of food intake through neuropeptides related to adrenocorticotropic hormone. ^[e]
•  Stress and appetite: The interactions between the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal axis and the regulation of food intake. ^[e]
•  Food reward: The brain mechanisms involved in reinforcing feeding behaviour. ^[e]
•  Gut-brain signalling: The interaction between the gastrointestinal tract and the brain. ^[e]
•  Diabesity: A term referring to the intricate relationship between type 2 diabetes and obesity. ^[e]
•  Genetics of obesity: The evidence for a genetic component to obesity in humans. ^[e]
•  Bariatric surgery: The surgical removal of body fat. ^[e]
•  Drug treatments for obesity: Treatments of obesity that are based on drugs. ^[e]
•  Exercise and body weight: Correlation between physical activity and the body mass index. ^[e]
•  Health consequences of obesity: Long-term effects of obesity on health. ^[e]

Other examples

•  Music perception: The study of the neural mechanisms involved in people perceiving rhythms, melodies, harmonies and other musical features. ^[e]
•  Speech Recognition: The ability to recognize and understand human speech, especially when done by computers. ^[e]
•  Mashup: A data visualization created by combining data with multiple computer applications. ^[e]

See also

• A list of courses already integrated in Citizendium

• Eduzendium Testimonials — Eduzendium instructors discuss their experiences here.

• Eduzendium press release - January 24, 2008

References

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