Students in Kari Walters’ ISDS 4120 course were surprised to learn they’d be using a well-known but often forbidden research website throughout the semester — Wikipedia.
Walters, a Ph.D. student and instructor in the ISDS Department, is a Wikipedia campus ambassador for the University.
Walters said the main initiative of the project is to encourage faculty and students to re-evaluate their perceptions of Wikipedia.
Walters said students in her class are required to do research and create PowerPoint presentations each year, and this year she’s putting their investigative skills to use.
“This year while they’re researching, they put it into Wikipedia and share their work with others,” she said.
Walters said her students have two options — they can edit articles or create their own. She said if they choose to edit articles, they must make at least 40 changes and use four new resources. If they create a new article, they must write two paragraphs with at least four sources.
Walters said one of Wikipedia’s guidelines is that each sentence in an article has a source, and her students must abide by that rule to receive full credit.
Walters said she thinks her students will enjoy seeing what other people have to say about their research.
She said people from all over the world will edit her students’ articles and comment about them on discussion pages.
“They really watch it come to life,” Walters said.
She said another benefit of the project is that students learn to explain technical topics in simple terms — a skill she thinks is important for everyone to have.
Walters said she understands why most teachers don’t accept Wikipedia as a valid resource, as there’s no way to guarantee the information in any article is correct.
But she said students can use articles as starting points to find more widely accepted sources.
Walters believes Wikipedia will be more credible in the academic world after this project. “It’s neat to see that perception changing a little bit,” Walters said.
Communication Across the Curriculum Assistant Director Rebecca Burdette said she came across an article explaining the project in the Chronicle of Higher Education and reached out to the Wikimedia Foundation.
She said she and other faculty members were hesitant but their perceptions changed after training.
“It’s not a source,” Burdette said. “It’s a collection of sources.”
LiAnna Davis, communications associate for the Wikimedia Foundation’s Public Policy Initiative, said the Wikimedia Foundation — the non-profit organization that runs websites like Wikipedia, Wikinews and Wiktionary — received a year-long grant in June 2010 to create the Public Policy Initiative.
“Once it’s up, we’ll shift away from public policy to a number of different topics,” Davis said. “We’re excited about where this is going.”
Davis said the foundation began implementing the program in 14 classes across the country last fall and are using it in 30 classes this spring.
She said they train ambassadors on campus and on the Internet to help students fulfill their course requirements.
“We trained a number of Communication Across the Curriculum faculty members,” she said.
Online ambassadors help students, too, but not in a classroom.
Davis said online ambassadors are experienced Wikipedians — people who are experienced in adding to and editing Wikipedia articles — who are chosen to mentor students as they complete their work on the Internet.
Davis said each student is assigned his or her own online ambassador.