Archive for April, 2009

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The module pages are done!

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

I’m happy to report that my goal for April, namely completing all the Unisa module pages, has been achieved: I’ve gone through all the old content, re-wrote some of it, organised it into the new headings, updated each subject’s prescribed textbook, and assigned categories to each page.

Here’s what the page listing all categories on the wiki looks like:
categories

This category list is hidden in the MediaWiki “Special pages”. Now what I want to do is display these categories on the home page, in a tag-cloud format. The category names with the most members will be in a large font (e.g. Law, Computer science) and the ones with only one member (e.g Anthropology, Statistics) will appear the smallest.

What’s nice & useful is that some pages are assigned to several categories. So, “Software Project Management” falls under both “Information systems” and “Management”.

I got stuck with a few module codes and wonder if anyone can help:

I can’t find anything on PMM301 or ENN104. Perhaps these modules don’t exist (anymore)? Also, TXN211 seems to be replaced with TXN201, and TXN213 seems to be replaced with TXN203. Please correct me if I’m wrong!

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Posted in Unisa Modules | 2 Comments »

How the new site is going to work

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

Just so that everyone is clear about what to expect, let me give you some facts about how the new WikiStudent is going to work:

  1. There will be no discussion forums or areas where you can ask for help. Nobody needs to ask for anything. Look for it on the site. If it is not up there, well, then it’s not there. Yet.
  2. There will be no Unisa exam papers or assignments for download. This is my (our?) website, not Unisa’s. Upload your own assignments and your own study notes, and give your own opinions on the exam papers you wrote.
  3. There will be no email notifications about changes to pages on the site. Partly because students’ email addresses change, resulting in extra admin when bounced addresses need to be deleted, and also because people should rather subscribe to RSS feeds which have been around for ages now!

Well, there are actually many more things that could be mentioned here, but these ones came to mind. (Note to myself: do not write a massive guide explaining how the site works – make the website as self-explanatory as possible!)

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Things that drive me nuts (and my dream)

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

I hate getting emails from people I don’t know, especially emails demanding help, past papers and study notes. Why do people think that I, personally, can help anybody? I’m just providing a website.

The annoying emails are still coming in, but at least a lot fewer than before! Here’s one I received this morning:

HI I WOULD LIKE ASSISTANCE ON THIS QUESTION. DISCUSS THE ADVANTAGES OF INTER GOVERNMENTAL FISCAL RELATIONS AS AN ORGANISATION AND FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENT

Huh? How am I supposed to reply to this? Maybe I should simply reply with a question of my own: “Can a Turing Machine with an infinite number of symbols on its semi-infinite tape accept only a finite number of words?” but in all caps, of course ;-)

I do not want people posting this sort of stuff on the new WikiStudent. In fact, I do not want people to ask anything at all, but search for what they are looking for, and if it is not there, make use of the feed to be notified as soon as it is.

To accomplish this, I need to change people’s mentality. Many students want to be spoon-fed, it seems. They ask for help and expect some kind soul to give it to them. Umm, what happened to the traditional way of studying by doing all the hard work yourself?

Here’s what my ultimate dream would be: I want to change students’ way of thinking.

I want students to come to the site and think “what questions do I remember from the last exam I wrote? let me put them on the wiki, and let me see what someone else wrote about another exam”. I want people to realise that this is not a website where you just get help or ask for help if you can’t find it. It is a place to give. And there are so many ways, e.g. everyone knows what their prescribed textbook is and what the prerequisites are for the course they’re taking. They just need to realise that they should be putting it on the wiki, and not expect the info to magically appear out of nowhere (or from me!)

This may sound impossible to achieve but I’m going to give it a go! It will give the WikiStudent site a whole new purpose for me. And I need a good purpose, else why devote so much time to it?

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The email marketing kit

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

One thing I haven’t yet factored into my schedule is email marketing. Oops… But that’s OK, it can wait till after the site’s gone live. Here’s a brilliant email marketing kit I bought recently, to help me with mass mailers, newsletter design, viral marketing, etc:

Sitepoint's email marketing kit
I’m glad I own this (rather huge) file with CD, as it answered almost all my questions on email marketing.

The new WikiStudent, like the old site, will have newsletters you can subscribe to, and I’ve reached the point where my mailing list (or future mailing list, I should rather say) will be so large, that I have to do things properly. E.g. If I send out zillions of emails all at once there is a good chance that I’ll be seen as a spammer, even though the recipients chose to be on the list. This email marketing kit has a whole chapter on spam, and gives anti-spam laws by country even. It also has email design guidelines, tips for optimising delivery, tracking and reporting, developing an effective email strategy… Vital stuff to know!

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An idea for the assignments section

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

A few days ago I mentioned introducing an “assignments” heading into all the module pages. It seemed like a good idea, but I hadn’t actually thought of what would go there specifically.

Now I have! How about letting students upload their assignment solutions to the site? After they’ve been marked, of course, and only if you’ve done well! You can fill in the year, assignment number, link to your file, and the mark it got, and students in future years will find it useful. (And I’m sure that assignment questions, like exam questions, get repeated from year to year.)

I think it will work because:

  1. Hardly anybody makes study notes, but everyone does assignments, so there will be many contributions
  2. It can be helpful to see another student’s correct solutions, which may be different to your own

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Posted in Unisa Assignments | No Comments »

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