From Faculty Academy 2007 Wiki
Dealing with Wikiality: Using Wikipedia To Teach and Learn
- Leanna Giancarlo (Chemistry, UMW)
The past few years have seen an exponential increase in the use of Internet sources in student-generated work at all levels and in all courses. With the information explosion provided on-line comes the responsibility of using these sources reliably and critically. Rather than adopt the standard approach of “Wikipedia -- bad, books – good” that has dominated higher education,1,2 the final project in my interdisciplinary History of Science course took a different front. Students working in teams of three and four developed a Wikipedia entry on a revolutionary, but relatively unknown, scientist. Part of the motivation for this assignment was to make students aware of the authors of such entries and their possible motivations; however, a larger purpose was to teach students that Wikipedia, when well-researched and referenced, can be a wonderful starting point to find reliable, critical and acknowledged sources (primary versus secondary sources). The development of the entry (from stub to annotated bibliography to draft entries to final entries) will be discussed as well as the pedagogical implications (both positive and negative) of this type of assignment.
(1) “Wikipedia Founder Discourages Academic Use of His Creation.” 12 Jun. 2006. The Chronicle of Higher Education. 2 May 2007 <http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/1328/wikipedia-founder-discourages-academic-use-of-his-creation> (2) Grazette, Jacqueline Hicks. “Wikiality in My Classroom.” Washington Post 25 Mar. 2007: B1,4.
