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Students Don’t Fear the Wiki: Encouraging Student Engagement and Responsible Student Scholarship Through Wikis
Paula Patch and Bill Wisser
From Paula Patch (one of the presenters from the last session)
- Discussion of what is Wikipedia, better for popular or timely topics, etc
- Most in the room discourage the use of Wikipedia in their courses by providing resources to use and requiring the use of databases
- When students feel the need to go to Wikipedia for their final exam study (etc), we have to consider what is it about the culture of our classroom that makes students think they have to go beyond the course materials?
- From Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, “The site is a wonderful starting point for research. But it’s only a starting point because there’s always a chance that there’s something wrong, and you should check your sources if you are writing a paper.”
- Students will use Wikipedia; therefore, we should teach them how to use it responsibly
- Very accessible to students, not threatening
- Accessible to young students as readers and consumers of knowledge; not part of their sphere of research
- Best Wikipedia pages are between 10th and 12th grade reading level! I had no idea!
- The use of links within a Wikipedia entry allow non-linear reading and learning; they’re also used to this
- May high schools with small library budgets do require the use of Wikipedia; students from these schools are used to it
- How successful can a ban on Wikipedia be? They’ll still use it, just won’t cite it or tell you
- A quote from one of Paula’s colleages: “Our students are not deficient; they are raw.” They’re not dumb, they’re just unskilled. We need to teach the skills.
- Our job is to create thoughtful assignments and teaching methods to teach them about the conventions of academic inquiry
- “Why are we telling our students not to use Wikipedia rather than educating them about how Wikipedia works?”
- Explained Wikipedia project described in last post
- Read about Wikipedia, understand how the site works, analyze the accuracy of a Wikipedia entry, discuss and reflect on the analysis in an argumentative essay
- Her class is about writing, not Wikipedia; our class is actually about the analysis of sources…
- 3/5 students deemed their entries unreliable
- Process led students to question the accuracy and reliability of unreferenced, anonymously composed source material
- During the project, students were exposed to “good” (scholarly) sources
- Compelled by project to follow up and verify information
- Final step is an essay discussing their analysis, pointed out that non-writing classes could turn the final step into a presentation (discuss sections of article for the class)
- Toying with idea to create semester long project with same goals, but fleshing out a Wikipedia entry
From Bill Wisser
- Encouraging student engagement through wikis
- Discussed the basic whats and whys of wikis
- Pointed out benefits of wiki over blackboard: no individual ownership, collaborative, visible progress I would say simpler, too
- No longer about the product, it’s about the process
- Pointed out drawbacks: don’t want technology to get in way of pedagogy, vandalism
- Demoed two of his wikis: History of Genocide and Modern World History
- Central question: Does the use of wikis in the classroom enhance, supplement, replace, or provide something new?