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Students contribute their research to Wikipedia, thereby improving their ability to evaluate online sources and revise their writing for different purposes and audiences.
Whenever I teach English 102,a research-focused,second-semester composition course,at least one studentasks me whether or not I"allow"Wikipedia. The question has always bothered me, not because I love or hate Wikipedia, but because questions about using Wikipedia are only the surface manifestation of a deeper issue-the need for students to learn greater information literacy. Specifically, while the student asking the question is willing to not use Wikipedia for my class, he or she is not asking me why the site should not be used, when it might be appropriate, or how to evaluate the information.The question and answer end inquiry,problem solving,and critical thinking.So I stopped answering it.Instead,I redesigned my course to leverageWikipedia as a source of inquiry.In other words,I "allow"Wikipedia,but through theWikipedia project,which is designed to address the deeperissue ofstudents needingbetter information literacy,whilealsoresolving the surface question (whether or not I "allow" it) that would otherwise continue to confuse students.The Wikipedia project requires students to contribute their researchtoWikipedia,building off a recently publishedInstructional Notein Teaching English in the Two-Year College that had students rhetorically analyze Wikipedia (Patch).By contributing to Wikipedia,students switch from consumers to producers and subsequently change their relationship with Wikipedia, thereby increasing their information literacy and enhancing their multimedia composing processes.
In the semesters before I started the project, I faced a dilemma that perhaps other teachers have as well: students would use Wikipedia for their academic research (whether or not I "allowed" it), and occasionally the source created some significant issues of accuracy in their papers. Written collaboratively by online volunteers, Wikipedia allows anybody to revise, edit, or create entries, and that person does not need credentials to do so.As a result,errors can exist on Wikipedia pages, errors that can then be transferred to students' papers during the research process when those students fail to evaluate the sources.Teachers have responded to this issue in various ways.Some teachers banned Wikipedia,hence the question from students as to whether or not I "allow" it (Waters). Others created class wikis (Davidson). Class wikis offer the benefits of collaborative writing and collective knowledge gathering,while also allowing the teacher to control content for errors. Even though class wikis...