I am a Purdue Instructor. How can I use Kiwi in my class?
There are many ways to use the kiwi as part of a course. Here are a few ideas:
- Student teams can work together to type lecture notes. They can then use these notes as a skeleton on which to add comments, questions, relevant links, etc. For example, in the spring of 2008, students in ECE662 typed all the course notes online, and a few of students added animations (e.g., here) to better illustrate the material.
- Students can write pages that summarize the material they learned "in their own words". Click here for an example. They can also discussion extensions of the material, as in here.
- Individual students can write pages summarizing relevant background material. Click here or here for an example. While this helps them to brush up on the material, it also helps other students. Other students can then use the discussion page to point out mistakes or discuss the relevance of the material.
- Individual students can write pages of practice exercises for certain computations/concepts along with their answers. (See here for example.) The rest of the class can then use the discussion page to point out mistakes, ask questions, etc.
- Student teams or individual students can type homework solutions on kiwi, along with questions/comments. For example, they may have two solutions with two different answers, and want to know which one is correct, or they may get to a different answer that what is given in the solutions and may want to know if their answer is correct. Ways to "go from my answer to the books answer" can be shared. Click here for an example.
- Students can use the discussion pages to grade (and discuss) each others homework. A formal double-blind peer review system can also be set up. For example, the third homework assignment of ECE662 in Spring 08 consisted in a peer review of the second homework assignment. Click here to see the results.
- Students can write pages that compare different solutions to a problem.
- Students can list and discuss some "common mistakes" to a given type of problem. See for example here.
- Students can propose numerical methods (e.g. Matlab code) to check their answers. You would be surprised what kind of tricks them can come up with, as this for example.
- Students can share code and datasets.
- Students can build a glossary of useful terms for the course. Click here for an example.
- Students can build a table of useful formulas (e.g., here) or share mathematical "tricks" (e.g., here or here).
- Students can work in groups to write solutions of the midterm after the midterm has been graded and handed back.
- Before a midterm, students can post their solution to some old exam, and the instructor can grade these solutions for everybody's benefit. Click here for an example.
- When handing back a midterm containing a question that was not successfully answered by the majority of the students, ask the students to post their solutions and discuss them, then ask that question again in a quiz or on the final exam. This was done with an exam question that asked the students to "state the sampling theorem in their own words". See the students answers here
- Invite your own students to become managers of the class kiwi, and let them come up with new features ideas, discuss them, and implement them. See for example this discussion.
- Invite your own students to suggest new ways to use the kiwi in your classroom.
Should I reward the students?
Rewarding the students with either bonus points or homework points is a good way to stimulate contributions and make your class kiwi quickly gain momentum. But whether or not this is necessary is debatable.
