Photo Illustration: Sam Brooks

Increased use of Wikipedia as a teaching tool in classrooms

Wikipedia gives student writing larger readership

A handful of University of Alberta classes have introduced Wikipedia to their classrooms as a teaching resource this past semester, despite criticisms about the website’s credibility in educational institutions.

The initiative to integrate Wikipedia into classes began in the United States with the Wikimedia Foundation’s Wikipedia Education Program, but has expanded globally to include classes in Canada and India. Professors use the website by replacing traditional writing or research assignments with students writing Wikipedia articles or improving pre-existing pages.

“In addition to getting all the benefits from a traditional research assignment, (students) are also learning new media literacy skills. They’re being exposed to a growing Wiki culture, and they’re being exposed to a very real and very relevant social media phenomenon,” said Jonathan Obar, Wikipedia’s educations co-ordinator for Canada.

Obar is responsible for reaching out to Canadian universities and encouraging schools to use Wikipedia. Originally the program’s goal was to improve the poor quality of many Wikipedia articles on social sciences. Instead of hiring content experts to fix the problem, the idea of giving students the experience to rewrite them was implemented instead.

“The real goal is to promote Wikipedia as a tool for innovative e-pedagogy,” Obar said. “That’s the main thrust of the initiative at this point. There are other goals that go along with that, like bridging divides between the university community and Wikipedia, and teaching students new media literacy skills.”

Paula Marentette is one U of A professor who uses Wikipedia for her classes. The cognitive psychology professor listed her class on the program’s Canadian Education portal, but has no affiliation with the program.

Marentette, who had never used Wikipedia before the start of this term, sees the benefits in the program, but is measured with her praise.

“From my perspective, this will make (students’) writing more meaningful to them. In a discipline like psychology, students think of an essay as something they write for me, and really that’s very true,” Marentette said. “Few other people will read that work they do in a typical class essay. Here, students were thrilled and scared to hear that other people will read this.

“Until it’s happened a few times and people get some expertise in it, I don’t know if we really know what its potential is,” Marentette added. “I don’t really need another flaming hoop for students. If they’re not benefiting from it, then I don’t need to do it.”

Jennifer Branch-Mueller, a professor in the U of A’s teacher-librarianship by distance learning program, sees another possible benefit from students using Wikipedia. Besides presenting their writing to a broader audience, digital evidence of these contributions also prepares students for pursuing careers after graduation.

“Having something on Wikipedia, having an e-portfolio, contributing to discussion and blogging, whatever it is, is good for a positive digital presence,” Branch-Mueller explained. “We always talk about digital citizenship, and it’s really important that students think about if their employers are going to Google you, what are they going to see about you online.”

The Wikimedia Foundation also sees this program as beneficial not just for students, as their contributions can help to inform a global audience.
“There’s this student at Georgetown University that, in the first semester of the public policy initiative about a year and a half ago, completely re-did an article about the democratic party in Egypt,” Obar said. 

“While the article was being edited and afterwards, a revolution happened in Egypt. So that student’s article, the term paper that he did for his class, has received more than 100,000 hits since the article was finished.” 

Results like this have swayed professors formerly skeptical of Wikipedia to see its use in the classroom. Marentette says she’ll use Wikipedia again next term, but plans to evaluate it afterward to determine whether to continue with the initiative.

“I would not use this in every course I teach forever, but I think that there’s a place where this works,” Marentette said.

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