This sounds more like what we do in the parts of the education where we teach practical skills, however at a MUCH smaller scale. Volda College has 2000 students, department of media studies have 2-300 of these - sounds like a different world.

Students constantly work in groups and in workshops, presenting their material for each other, comenting on eachother’s material, sharing responsibilities and doing the final editing in groups. They all have responsibility for the quality of the finished work, and we don’t put a name or a grade on it, as long as 1) they worked and 2) they documented the process towards the finished work.

For my students that is a very different process from that of the journalism students. This is mainly because journalists work on their seperate little items and rather monotonous tasks, while public relations groups work for their employer on large, complex tasks. Where journalists become experts of writing articles, public relations students are supposed to be multi-geniouses in the area of communication. And since they can’t exell at all, from research to presentation, a very important part of our trtaining is for them to understand the process of cooperation as much as the process of creation.

This way of working is however, in my case, developed from the demands of the complex task at hand. It is very hard to transfer this to different types of work. The same students, when faced with publishing within the same rules as the journalists, are as teritorial as the journalists. They are a little more easygoing about it, not so driven when it comes to profiling their own name. They know, after all, that for them having a “name” might be more of a problem than a help, and that being versatile and cooperative is more appreciated.

What I understood the original proposal to involve would be some several of us trying to use some of this web technology to collaborate on a new approach to the teaching of composition in colleges. The approach would challenge conventional boundaries and see the production of texts as inherently worthy and authorless (in conventional terms).

While a wiki sounds like a good environment to work in, I still need more texture for “far beyond.” Or do you want to wait until you have the environment for the discussion created before we all get engaged in “purpose and audience” colloquy?

I’d love to help with the wiki, but I know nothing. I don’t even know the etymology of wiki. Is it at all related to “wikiup”?

I’ve actually been working on a couple of things that are sort-of related to this project. I’ve adapted a Wiki project into a more general content management systems. The core functionality is there, but it needs some detail and polishing. You should also check out Lessig’s Creative Commons organization and their licenses. I also have some notes on a paper I’m starting to work on comparing licensing schemes for sharing code vs. text, etc. I’ll forward you a copy.

Let me know what else I can contribute to your project.