More student impressions of our recent e-Strategy Town Hall gathering. In this issue, Anna Volgina reports on “The Madness of Wikipedia“, presented by Wyeth Wasserman, Jon Beasley-Murray, and Brian Lamb in an afternoon break out session in the Life Sciences Centre:

The common perception is that Wikipedia makes professors shudder; it is supposedly not a credible source, and its use in education is limited. While there is a need to be cautious when using any type of technology, some instructors are out to change Wikipedia’s negative image.

During “The Madness of Wikipedia” seminar, two case studies were given that asked us to reconsider the value of Wikipedia as a tool for both teaching and learning.

Student Assignments

Wyeth Wasserman, a senior scientist and professor at UBC, talked about a project he assigned for students in an advanced fourth-year Medical Genetics course. Each student developed a page on a gene-based cancer in MediaWiki. Students were responsible for conducting preliminary research, ensuring accurate citation, and revising their article. Selected pages were then posted onto Wikipedia, making for entries that were well-researched, proof-read, and properly cited. These pages were then revised by other Wikipedia users, making for even more detailed entries. Although Wasserman plans to make modifications to the way he carried out his project, he is hoping to continue the assignment in successive years.

After this first example, professor Jon Beasley-Murray showed how he used Wikipedia in his Latin American Literature course. As students read and studied selected novels and authors, he split them up into groups so that each was responsible for creating an original Wikipedia entry, or for editing an existing one.

Making the Grade

Remarkably, at the end of the project, Beasley-Murray’s students ended up producing eight “good” articles and three “featured” articles, whose designations recognize them to be the most unbiased, well-written, and accurately cited entries on the site. Before receiving the elusive “featured” title (less than 0.1% of all Wikipedia articles obtain this designation), one of the entries had undergone over 1200 revisions - a number significantly higher than what an average academic article typically receives. Beasley-Murray has garnered an impressive amount of support and media attention to his project, and has remained a passionate advocate for the responsible use of Wikipedia in academia.

Both professors said that students generally found the project to be much more research-intensive that what they are typically assigned. They were also able to work in a learning environment where sharing is an intrinsic and instant component of knowledge. If open content is the future of education, then Wikipedia will become an increasingly engaging tool for students. By participating in the website directly, we interact with it in a whole new way and make it an even better starting point for sharing and discussing information.

Although Wikipedia should still not be cited in academic work, it is fast becoming a valuable resource students and educators alike.

Information about this presentation, and links to both projects, can be found on http://nanton.olt.ubc.ca/Adventures_In_Wikipedia. You’ll find sections on Using Wikipedia at UBC, The Challenge for Educational Technologists, and a discussion about whether Wikipedia is a threat or menace.

Anna Volgina studies Political Science and International Relations at UBC. She became interested in using open content and social media in education while working for UBC’s Office of Learning Technology. Currently, she is on a co-op term in Ottawa, and hopes to one day make a living by traveling the world.

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