Wikis and Wikipedia as a Teaching Tool (original) (raw)
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Wikis and Wikipedia as a teaching tool: Five years later
First Monday, 2012
"Just a few years ago Wikipedia was seen as a barbarian invading the ivory tower. Now, an increasing number of academics recognize that it can be used as an effective teaching tool. The following paper is divided into two parts. It beings with a discussion of the advantages of using Wikipedia as a teaching tool, an activity that goes beyond a simple addition to the teaching repertoire, and allows contributing to our society through service learning and participation in an online community of practice. Contributing to Wikipedia benefits the students, the instructors and the wider community. The second part focuses on practice of teaching with Wikipedia. Building on my five years of experience in teaching with wikis and Wikipedia and holding workshops on the subject, I will discuss the most efficient ways to incorporate Wikipedia into one's teaching curriculum, highlight common problems and their solutions, and describe a number of new tools enhancing the “teaching with Wikipedia” experience."
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences
In 1995, Ward Cunningham created the first Wiki and claimed that it is the “simplest online database that could possibly work”. Six years later, with the birth of Wikipedia, wiki has become more popular. It is now used in business, community networking as well as education. The main feature of a wiki is it allows users to work collaboratively on projects. In the business community, wikis, also known as enterprise wiki, are widely used to disseminate information, exchange opinions on projects and market products. In community network, its usage includes the pursuance of a shared interests and/or aims. Wiki has also been used rather widely in education as a teaching tool. It has been argued that wiki can be effectively used to encourage students’ participation in and outside the classroom. This paper will attempt to discuss the relationship between wiki and various approaches to learning, how a wiki is used and also some problems of using wiki as a teaching tool in a language class.
Wikipedia and wikis as forums of information literacy instruction in schools
In: R. Gwyer, R. Stubbings & G. Walton (Eds.), The Road to Information Literacy: Librarians as Facilitators of Learning. IFLA Publications 157. Berlin: De Gruyter Saur. pp. 310-327. (IFLA 2012 Congress Satellite Meeting, Tampere, 8 – 10 August 2012.)
The City of Tampere and the University of Tampere are cooperating on the ongoing "Tieto haltuun" information literacy (IL) project to develop and study new types of IL learning assignments applying social media tools. The overall goal of the study was to learn how writing articles for Wikipedia (a public wiki) and for the school's own wiki can serve as a learning assignment in information literacy instruction.
Wikipedia in university courses: teaching practices and educational benefits
Research on Education and Media
The academic world initially regarded Wikipedia with misgivings for a number of reasons, including the uncertainty concerning the reliability of its content, its anonymous authorship and the fact that students often use it as an easy way to cut and paste material for their coursework. In recent years, however, university instructors’ perception of Wikipedia has changed significantly: it is seen as a useful teaching resource, as well as a promising environment for learning and collaborative knowledge building. It can be used for teaching purposes by assigning students to create and edit encyclopaedia articles. Such assignments can have many benefits: in addition to improving students’ understanding of content, the assignments have been shown to increase their intrinsic motivation to learn, develop digital competences and build cross-cutting skills in online communication and interaction. Lastly, in connection with universities’ institutional role, editing Wikipedia can be an interest...
Using Wikipedia to enhance student learning: A case study in economics
Education and Information Technologies, 2014
Currently, there is widespread interest in how Web 2.0 tools can be used to improve students' learning experiences. Previous studies have focused either on the advantages of wikis or on concerns over the use of Wikipedia. In this study, we propose to use Wikipedia as a classroom wiki. In doing so, we discuss how students can improve their standard written assignments using Wikipedia instead of a module wiki. Compared to traditional essay assignments, students' submission of articles to Wikipedia can address many of the problems faced by instructors of traditional assignments, such as students' poor writing skills, lack of primary source research, and poorly balanced discussions. Our study was based on our experience in teaching an upper-level economics module at the National University of Singapore over two semesters: 121 students who were enrolled in semester 1 submitted a traditional writing assignment, while 124 students enrolled in semester 2 contributed two short entries to Wikipedia. The results showed a large increase in the number of students checking their assignment feedback. Further, students' writing quality improved noticeably in the Wikipedia assignment, and they were able to put forth more balanced discussions of relevant issues and include a greater number of primary sources. Despite the challenges faced when using Wiki markup language, the students enjoyed the overall experience.
Efficacy of Wikipedia as a pedagogical apparatus in the classroom
2013
The profusion of the information and communication technology has allowed institution of higher education educators and users to experiment variety of apparatus accessible that can be employed as instructive devices in the classrooms. Wikipedia personifies a fascinating and novel concept which can be used to engage students in authentic collaborative writing activities. This paper provides a description of how Wikipedia was incorporated as a pedagogical means in the ESL settings and reports on the students’ attitude and perception on the use of Wikipedia to enhance their L2 proficiency specifically their writing skills. The experience involved the use of wiki technology and the advanced collaborative forms and participative assessment as part of the teaching method. Data was gathered through a survey questionnaire concerning a particular group of transfer students at the tertiary stage. By the means of intended framework and structure, the students carried out several stages of the ...
Wikipedia works and we do not understand how it is possible. If it does, it is thanks to the ants’ nest-like “functional anarchy” of the users who daily correct, contribute, and check its articles. This work focuses on the possible interactions of the triangle students–teacher–Wikipedia, considering that until now the academic world has had mixed feelings towards Wikipedia. From a theoretical point of view, a list of possible means of contribution to Wikipedia by university-level students with real-life examples is given. These include -and are not limited to- writing new articles, proof-reading existing ones, translating from one language version to another, creating audio-visual content, and drawing info-graphics. For a more empirical approach, a project was carried out at Ca’ Foscari University (Venice, Italy), with two cohorts of students who were given the possibility of choosing to contribute to Wikipedia as part of one of their exams. To offer a complete overview, this work deals both with the problems encountered during the preparation and the execution of the activity, as well as the general results.
Avoiding the bleeding edge of Wikis
Essential Teacher, 2007
For teachers using technology to improve teaching and learning, it is hard not to get excited about the possibilities of wiki software. Not only Wikipedia (1), but also smaller, more focused wiki projects such as Wikitravel , Wikibooks (3), or one of the many examples on the Meatball Wiki Tour bus (4), may have teachers thinking that if they can just tap into some of the energy surrounding wikis, their classes will be swept up in a wave of excitement. Wiki enthusiasts think of wikis as an important
Wiki-Librarian: A Project to Train Librarians and Students to Work with Wikipedia
Infoteka, 2021
Wiki-librarian is a multiyear project to train librarians and students of librarianship and information science to use wiki tools, including writing articles on Wikipedia. The project has existed since the beginning of 2015, and the University Library "Svetozar Marković" and is logistically and financially supported by Wikimedia Serbia. The part of the project that deals with the training of librarians is officially accredited. Moreover, the project has expanded its scope to work with students, as well as with librarians outside the training process, through editathons, digitization of content, participation in other wiki activities such as 1Lib1Ref, Wikipedian in Residence. Project activities were presented at several conferences and partially in several publications. On the one hand, better awareness of librarians of wiki software IT capabilities as well as methods for improved presentation of their knowledge in the digital wiki environment are achieved by this project, while on the other hand these activities significantly increase the textual resources of Serbian Wikipedia and their quality.