lappel at eagle.wesleyan.edu (Laurel F. Appel) writes:
>I agree with Viancour's suggestion about finding a way to flag or separate
>student questions [...]
>ANYTHING that would encourage schoolchildren to get involved in science should
>be promoted, we just need a way to keep it from getting in our way.
*I agree, and to which I'll add another point. As individuals, or
as members of our professional societies, we could participate in efforts to
strengthen science curricula at all pre-college levels. At the local level
we can volunteer at an elementary school, as Dr. Appel seems to have done.
At the local, state and regional levels we can work with school boards &
publishers on textbook content. As biologists, I think we have a powerful
interest in making sure that the fundamentals of our discipline, including
evolution, are given proper presentation in primary & secondary school
science courses, unfettered by unconstitutional attempts to impose
religious beliefs.
>Personally, I have been asked to be computer pen-pal to a couple of
>first-graders -- a great way to get them to try writing letters and asking
>about science, but I would not inflict ther riting stile on them who had'nt
>choosed it. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^ *ROTFL. Not to mention inflicting adults' writing styles on
children. :)
>should Netiquette require a "Student Post" flag for the undegree-d
>(or not-enough-degreed), or should there be a separate group, with regular
>reminders posted in this group sending both junior questioners and senior
>voluntary answerers to the junior version?
*In other newsgroups, issues such as this are addressed in a
FAQ document that is regularly updated and reposted. To whom should this
responsibility fall? Any suggestions or volunteers? "Request for
discussion" seems appropriate.
>It could also help to have
>guidelines about schoolwork-related questions that look very much like someone
>asking us to do their homework for them.
*It's not just bionet.general in which this misuse arises, but in
other bionet.* groups too.
The solution is difficult to arrive at because Usenet is, by
definition, anarchic. Having a moderator would filter out the more egregious
cases, at the expense of that person's time. The use of a moderator would
also slow down the rate at which articles appear. Given the number of bionet
groups and the traffic they bear, moderators are not the solution, in my
opinion.
A second part of the problem is that we are implicitly talking
about honor code violations when a student improperly (?) asks the net for
help with an assignment. How do we, the net readers, deal with the fact that
thousands of academic institutions have Internet access and they don't all
have comparable honor codes? Not only is there diversity among universities,
but between universities and high schools. In addition, a student might ask
an improper question using Internet access separate from an academic
institution's networking facility. This part of the problem seems
insurmountable, until we realize that the reader can look to his/her own
academic code for guidance. When a student posts a verbatim copy of his/her
midterm it's usually pretty obvious. The reader can ignore the post by
hitting "n," or can express concern about a possible honor code violation
by sending carefully worded e-mail to the student, or can suggest an
investigation of potential misuse of net facilities by sending e-mail
addressed to postmaster@ or root at . The procedures one could follow
regarding documentation of an alleged honor code violation using the net
are probably the same as for documenting harrassing or abusive use of the
net. The problem with going to postmaster@ is that net administrators are
usually concerned with patterns of repeated misuse, not with isolated
occurences.
--
Mark D. Garfinkel
e-mail: garfinkl at iitmax.acc.iit.edu
