More on Wikis and WIkipedia
Inside Higher Ed has a piece on educators who are using wikis in class. For the most part the article simply rehashes the “Wikipedia is good, Wikipedia is bad” argument, but this time with a pro-wikipedia spin. The article discusses several instructors who use Wikipedia in their classes, either as source material or editing Wikipedia as an assignment. The problem with the article is that it does little to separate out the idea of a wiki, from Wikipedia. To be sure Wikipedia is the most prominent example of a wiki, but wikis are used in various contexts above and beyond authoring encyclopedia articles (academic job wiki anyone?). In fairness the article mention other wikis at the end of the article, like Scholarpedia and Citizendium. The problem here is that this limits the argument to a “wikis as legitimate encyclopedia” argument. Never mind that wikis are used in a variety of other contexts, or that Wikipedia has already passed the “is it accurate test,” this just plays into the red herring argument of whether or not students should use Wikipedia as a source for their papers (this is a false criteria, one shouldn’t use Wikipedia not because it is a wiki but because it is a secondary source). The more important issue here is that wikis constitute a different type of writing and archive structure, one which students need to learn to read and write in . . . oh well at least several of those who commented on the article picked up on this. Maybe the debate is shifting.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:34 pm
This is so true. I remember commenting on the first “College bans wikipedia” article at Inside Higher Ed about confusing the wiki technology with Wikipedia. It just shows a lack of understanding of the tool and how it can be used. One faculty member I’m working with scoffed at the idea of using a wiki in her class - she had objectives that would be met incredibly well with a student-centered wiki assignment. I mentioned it and she said, “NO! I hate Wikipedia! Students actually cite it in academic papers!” Of course, I went on to explain the difference between Wikipedia and wikis in general and she came around, BUT, she doesn’t even want to call it a “wiki.” She said, can’t we call it something else? I’ll work on that one…
May 8th, 2008 at 12:52 am
Hey there, I’m Bryan. Fun site, I just found it while tooling about these internets doing outreach for the Intel ISEF… (it’s kind of awesome, hit me up for details)
Anyway I had an incredible English prof who taught History of Film, and half the class took place on a wiki. He’d post a couple questions or conversation generators into it per week, and it was everyone’s assignment to post links to research that pertained to the topic. This was in the earlier days of YouTube so it was really a blast (and very educational) to embed, share, and view several visual clips per day all centered around a common subject of interest. His lecture basically wrote itself.