Wikipedia in the College Classroom (Module 7)

The technology I have selected for my Module 7 blog is Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. Unlike print encyclopedias, contributors, known as Wikipedians, create and edit Wikipedia articles (Wikipedia, 2016). Also unlike print medium, the articles are tagged as to their reliability. Although Wikipedia has been vilified by many in education (Comer, 2013), it does have its usefulness in the college classroom. First, students can use Wikipedia to gain background knowledge on a topic and use the article’s reference list, usually hyperlinked to those items on the Internet, to jump-start their research. Second, since the articles are written by Wikipedia’s readers, this site allows students to write for an authentic audience. This second point is what I want to write about in this blog entry.

Instructors have used Wikipedia to further students’ writing skills. Matthew Vetter has written about a collaboration between students and librarians that result in writing and posting Wikipedia entries. I might use this teaching and learning strategy by joining forces with my university’s reference and special collections librarians to instruct students in doing original research in Special Collections on university topics to create corresponding Wikipedia articles or edit already published articles. I know that my university’s site could use some help as it is primarily about the football team.

Ethical considerations. The ethical considerations related to using Wikipedia as a writing venue for students are few. However, plagiarism (Mozgovoy, Kakkonen, Cosma, 2010) and accuracy do come to my mind as possible ethical problems. By helping students guard against plagiarism, both the instructor and the librarians will help students to understand and navigate this potentially dangerous issue. The other possible ethical consideration is accuracy. Again, by having students collaborate with their instructor and librarians, students will learn the various ways to prevent inaccuracy such as citing sources and careful editing.

Positive social change. This technology might be used for positive social change (making life better for individuals) by promoting public awareness of the university library resources and contributing to public knowledge. This technology also promotes positive social change by increasing students’ knowledge in writing for an audience and motivation for learning (Vetter, 2014). These skills are necessary for students who want to complete their college degrees. In addition, using Wikipedia promotes positive social change by helping students to analyze and evaluate Internet sources in general (Traphagan, Traphagan, Neavel-Dickens, & Resta, 2014). This last item is especially important during this time of elections.

Next semester, I plan to add this activity to my course curriculum.

References

• Comer, A. (2013). Should university students use Wikipedia? The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/may/13/should-university-students-use-wikipedia
• Mozgovoy, M., Kakkonen, T., & Cosma, G. (2010). Automatic student plagiarism detection: Future perspectives. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 43(4), 511–531. Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.
• Traphagan, T., Traphagan, J., Neavel Dickens, L., & Resta, P. (2014). Changes in college students' perceptions of use of web-based resources for academic tasks with Wikipedia projects: a preliminary exploration. Interactive Learning Environments, 22(3), 253-270. doi:10.1080/10494820.2011.641685 
• Vetter, M. A. (2014). Archive 2.0: What composition students and academic libraries can gain from digital-collaborative pedagogies. Composition Studies, 42(1), 35-53.
• Wikipedia. (2016). Who writes Wikipedia? Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Who_writes_Wikipedia%3F