Adrianne Wadewitz, Anne Ellen Geller, Jon Beasley-Murray

“ Yet, in reality, most academics surround themselves with previously published texts, embrace conversations with their colleagues, and take part in academic peer review, which often means that their ideas are questioned and shaped by external reader-reviewers. Helping students to see the connection between these processes and the processes of developing articles on Wikipedia, particularly the constant review and revision that they undergo, helps to correct the faulty conception of knowledge construction as a solitary endeavor. ”

“ We three have welcomed Wikipedia into our teaching in structured ways, as have other teachers and academics referenced below. What we all share is the belief that incorporating Wikipedia into our teaching is a form of hacking the academy, giving those who contribute to Wikipedia—Wikipedians—a mechanism by which to bypass the typical, hierarchical routes of knowledge construction and to become knowledge-makers themselves. ”

“ The extent to which Wikipedia is a credible source is one of many conversations about Wikipedia we can enter into with our students — but it is not the most interesting. Such discussions are already a de rigeur part of any research assignment, since we raise the same questions regarding other online sources such as blogs and other self-published websites. The deeper, more interesting conversations we want to foster with our students are about how and by whom knowledge is created and gate-kept. ”

“ Teaching Writing in the Age of Wikipedia, Cummings emphasizes the benefits of "commons-based peer production", which allows students to take control of their writing in groups and de-emphasizes the authority of the instructor. Wikipedia is an excellent environment for exploring this approach, as teacher and student are editors working together to produce a better encyclopedia article. Wikipedia not only breaks down the authority of the classroom in helpful ways, but it also introduces student writers to a readership. ”

“ Most of us find it a very convenient resource. Above all, students use Wikipedia, openly or otherwise; over half of US undergraduates use it "always" or "frequently" in their research. [3] However, these students do so without necessarily knowing how the information is written and revised. They are often told not to use Wikipedia because it is "bad"—but they are not told why.
We do not want to debate whether or not Wikipedia is a reliable source for research. We agree that it is not. [4] However, many academics use Wikipedia as a first source on a topic with which they are unfamiliar. ”

“ Chinua Achebe is the only African writer to have a featured article on Wikipedia. Highlighting what is missing from Wikipedia (and why) encourages students to critique the production of knowledge. As we know, textbooks, curricula and whole disciplines benefit from such critique. Students who recognize what is missing from Wikipedia may also learn to ask what is missing from their own educations; and they may come to realize that valuable contributions to others' learning—via Wikipedia or other means—can and should come from their own experiences and studies across the curriculum. ”

“ Many instructors who design Wikipedia assignments encourage their students to draft their articles away from the public gaze, and to upload them to the encyclopedia's public pages only after they are ready for general scrutiny. ”

“ Although Wikipedia boasts thousands of detailed, well-researched, well-referenced articles on scholarly subjects, such as its Featured Articles, entries on fictional locations such as Middle-earth may be much more detailed than entries on real locations, such as countries in Africa. ”

“ Constructing knowledge Students who analyze Wikipedia articles and participate in their development are made aware of the construction of knowledge and the ends towards which it is put. Most students utilize Wikipedia only to find information, and therefore have little understanding of how the articles are developed, who develops them, or the oftentimes extensive discussion and review that goes into making an article. ”

“ Newly-minted Ph.D.’s are foregoing the tenure track for alternative academic careers that blur the lines between research, teaching, and service. Graduate students are looking beyond the categories of the traditional C.V. and building expansive professional identities and popular followings through social media. Educational technologists are 'punking' established technology vendors by rolling their own open source infrastructure." [1] We believe that the form, content, and process of our efforts to teach with—and participate in—the Wikipedia community embody this new ethos. ”

“ The debate continued with variations of these basic arguments. These editors have a fundamentally different understanding of what a film article should contain. Such debates about how to organize and present knowledge occur every day on Wikipedia.
Perhaps the most popular type of assignment using Wikipedia is one that involves article development. In the spring of 2008, Jon Beaseley-Murray required his students in an upper-division Latin American literature class to research and write entire articles (see WikiProject Murder Madness and Mayhem) . ”

“ And we know too well that we do not yet teach and learn in an academy in which those bodies will pay attention first and foremost to what we have created together rather than searching out our individual names and percentage of contributions. So, we are trying to satisfy ourselves and others even though we worry that in doing so we undermine the very project we take on here. ”

“ Yet the coverage on Wikipedia has huge gaps, partly because of the interests and knowledge of those who have hitherto been most drawn to contributing: "more than 80 percent male, more than 65 percent single, more than 85 percent without children, around 70 percent under the age of 30." ”

“ We represent three different points in an academic career: a graduate student about to go on the job market, a faculty member pursuing tenure at the associate level, and a tenured faculty member. Our discussions about attribution are less open to public scrutiny than anything else related to this article and largely took place over email and IM, revealing the anxiety that this topic raises. ”

“ Whereas most assignments in a university setting are written solely for the instructor, on Wikipedia they are written for a global audience. Wikipedia editors must struggle with making their language accessible to the entire community of English speakers, many of whom will write back to them. Students are engaging in a real-world project on Wikipedia, with tangible and public dialogue. ”

“ But we have future hiring committees and tenure and promotion committees to doubly educate—first about the value and complications of collaborative work and then, on top of that, about the value and complications of collaborative work in the digital humanities. ”

“ Even working as a copyeditor within a large discourse community such as Wikipedia helps students to see how important it is to write clearly and coherently. Copyediting assignments, which help improve the intelligibility of Wikipedia articles, highlight the relationship among writer, readers, content and ideology. ”

“ Wikipedians claimed that most webcomics did not meet internal guidelines for notability, whereas webcomic authors claimed that those guidelines were too stringent for such media. [12] Students benefit from exploring and participating in such debates over what should be covered in an encyclopedia, what constitutes a reliable source on the internet, and examining who makes these decisions and how. ”

“ In addition to disputes over article content, meta-discussions about articles in Wikipedia can allow students to see that editors may reasonably, if passionately, disagree how to represent and structure knowledge throughout the encyclopedia. ”

“ We say we want to educate our students for the 21st century and beyond, and we say we want students and faculty in the humanities, in particular, to be flexible, forward thinking, relevant scholars, who will make important contributions via all forms of text. ”

“ Such contributions are often deleted because they do not follow Wikipedia's guidelines. More importantly, we feel that this approach misses one of the greatest benefits of a Wikipedia assignment: engaging with a community of writers and readers. Having students edit Wikipedia in real time teaches them how to negotiate with an entire community of fellow readers and editors. ”

“ The project had three aims: 1) to improve Wikipedia's coverage of selected articles on Latin American literature, particularly those related to dictator novels; 2) to submit those articles to Wikipedia review processes; 3) to increase the number of featured articles in this area. (Featured articles are considered the best articles of Wikipedia; they are vetted rigorously according to a stringent set of criteria.) ”

“ In often amazing ways, Wikipedia articles continue to grow even after the semester is over. Before Geller's students began working on The Woman Warrior, the article offered one paragraph of plot summary, two references to secondary literature sources, and a loosely related section on Chinese parenting styles. ”

“ For example, asking students to analyze the threads on discussion pages shows them that there are often multiple narratives about a particular historical event or person, and that these competing narratives have important political valences. ”

“ Online Information Review 32.1 (2008) : 73–88. Butler, Declan. "Publish in Wikipedia or Perish: Journal to Require Authors to Post in the Free Online Encyclopaedia." Nature News (December 16, 2008) . Callisa, Kristine L., et al. "Improving Wikipedia: Educational Opportunity and Professional Responsibility." Trends in Ecology & Evolution 24.4 (2009) : 177-179. Campbell, Charles. "Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia." TDR: The Drama Review 53.4 (2009) : 185-187. Chandler, Cullen J. and Alison S. Gregory. "Sleeping with the Enemy: Wikipedia in the College Classroom." ”