Wikipedia:School and university projects/Vienna 2005-2006


 * For an introduction, see School and university projects/Vienna 2002-2003.

As opposed to 2002-03, this term's mini-project, again with a Language in Use class (16 students), was designed as an exercise in collaboration. Rather than having to write an article each, students were encouraged to write Wikipedia articles together on two fictional texts which had been discussed in class: David Leavitt's novel The Body of Jonah Boyd (2004) and Michael Carson's dystopian short story "The Punishment of Luxury" (1993). Both texts deal with dishonesty of some sort.

The overall topic of the course was "Honesty". First, various text types were analysed&mdash;mainly non-fiction, but also the novel and the short story mentioned above. Texts included the Wikipedia article on "Honesty" as an example of an encyclopaedia entry, a student union's guideline on "Student Misconduct", two fake articles from The Onion, and a video of Jim Broadbent and Mike Leigh's short A Sense of History (1992). In a second phase, students were assigned to (individually) write both formal and informal texts themselves (analyses, newspaper articles, blog posts, essays, narrative texts, etc.). On top of that, the two Wikipedia articles on The Body of Jonah Boyd and "The Punishment of Luxury" were created.

The remainder of the time was dedicated to short oral presentations by individual students of honesty-related topics such as "Hypocrisy", "Deception and Self-deception", "Perjury", "Utilitarianism and Lying: A Philosophical Approach", "Kurt Waldheim and the Art of Forgetting", "The Fatty Arbuckle Case", and "The Clarence Thomas - Anita Hill Controversy".