I'm an instructor at a North American university and I've been asked to teach an introductory group theory course online this summer. One of my learning goals emphasizes mathematical communication, and since the course is online, I thought I'd involve digital literacy somehow.
In the spirit of various kinds of "edit Wikipedia"-type projects I've seen in other departments over the years, I think that an "ask/answer StackExchange"-type of project would work well in math. I envision my students asking one good-quality question and/or writing one good-quality answer to a question, all relating to group theory at the level of our course. When they're done, they inform me, and I assess their contributions with an offline rubric.
While I understand that such interactions could also unfold on course-internal platforms like Piazza, I believe the Math.SE medium offers two distinct advantages, namely higher stakes (meaning higher quality, I hope) and helping strangers (as opposed to classmates).
Logistics and pedagogy aside, my main concern is permission. Am I allowed to instruct ~100 students to each create a StackExchange account (if they don't already have one), ask one question, answer one question (possibly their own), and potentially never use the site again (though hopefully they will)? My initial research turned up the following pertinent caveats:
- The Public Network Terms of Service states that users should be over 13 (16 in the EU).
- The Acceptable Use Policy forbids mass registration by a single user.
Please let me know if I'm missing something obvious. Thank you for your time!