Follow us on Instagram
Try our daily mini crossword
Play our latest news quiz
Download our new app on iOS/Android!

Principedia, wiki of courses offered at U., launches

Principedia, a community-sourced wiki of courses offered at the University, was launched at a hackathon event called Hackademics on Saturday.

ADVERTISEMENT

Principedia gathers knowledge by inviting contributions from the community, similar to Wikipedia, Associate Director of the Undergraduate Learning Program Nic Voge said. He added that this method of gathering knowledge is useful because the community has more knowledge than each individual, and so can contribute more information.

Voge said that students at the University are continuously building layers of knowledge and accumulating knowledge about how to be effective students. Principedia is a way to capture this knowledge, collect it, organize, build upon and circulate it to students, he added.

The results will be compiled in articles that are also called “course analys[es]”, which is a technical term for an analysis of the pedagogical content of a course, co-chair of the Principedia Editorial Board Nathan Agmon ’17 explained. He added that this “course analysis” would consist of articles on University courses that students are constantly updating.

Nicole Wang ’17, another co-chair, said that this course analysis will go beyond what students will find in course evaluations on the registrar’s page.

“What Principedia is really asking you is to think about what made you successful in the class you took,” she said. “Be reflective and objective. We encourage students to write about courses they’ve enjoyed or have had a big impact on their academic experience. Reflect on the learning process.”

Wang said that a student’s netID is attached to the articles they write and is accessible to University students. Only students with a valid University netID, he said, can contribute to the website.

ADVERTISEMENT

Agmon noted that people may initially doubt Principedia’s efficacy because it is crowdsourced.

Reflection and introspection play a crucial role in how people learn and become effective learners, Voge said. He said he has observed this pattern in his work with the McGraw Center and conversations with students on how they learn.

“Seven or eight years ago, at UC Berkeley, a writing tutor held a consultation right outside of my door. Listening to her, I was blown away by how much she knew and what she was bringing to the consultation," he said, noting that many of the things the tutor said were not part of her training. “She was a senior that was leaving and I thought to myself, 'Where is all the knowledge going to go to?' ”

Voge also said that the University offers many challenges through the difficult nature of its curriculum, and the value of Principedia comes through allowing students to figure out how to learn for a particular course.

Subscribe
Get the best of ‘the Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

He added that he hopes that the next generation of Principedia will get more faculty and administrators involved and feature dialogue between administrators and students.

“Princeton students want to contribute to the quality of their Princeton experience. There is a sense of possibility; such as ‘Wow, there is much to learn here,’ ” he said. “I think Princeton students think very hard about learning. They are expert learners. That is why they were picked to come here.”

The event was held in the Mathey College Common Room.