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This month: March 2010 Individual focus and knowledge contribution Before contributing new knowledge, individuals must attain requisite background knowledge or skills through schooling, training, practice, and experience. Given limited time, many often choose either to focus on few areas, where they build deep expertise, or to delve less deeply and distribute their attention and efforts across several areas. This paper measures the relationship between narrowness of focus and quality of contributions across a range of both traditional and recent knowledge–sharing media, including scholarly articles, patents, Wikipedia, and online question and answer forums. |
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Also this month! How today’s college students use Wikipedia for course–related research This paper provides insights into how and why students (enrolled at six different U.S. colleges) use Wikipedia during course–related research. A majority of respondents frequently use Wikipedia for background information, but less often than they used other common resources, such as course readings and Google. Architecture, engineering, and science majors were more likely to use Wikipedia for course–related research than respondents in other majors. The findings suggest Wikipedia is used in combination with other information resources. Wikipedia meets the needs of college students because it offers a mixture of coverage, currency, convenience, and comprehensibility in a world where credibility is less of a given or an expectation from today’s students. |
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Podcasts Eduardo Villanueva joins us for Part 2 of our ongoing series, entitled Openness 2.0, to discuss the economic, educational, and lingustic challenges of establishing openness in developing nations. |
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