Engaging with Wikipedia via Article Creation

Abstract

The dichotomy of Wikipedia: many love it, and many others love to hate it. While students may not entirely understand the process behind Wikipedia, they do know that they can get information fast (and generally of high quality). Rather than just discussing Wikipedia quality, students in a three credit-hour digital literacy course were challenged to create Wikipedia articles on topics pertinent to their university. Students engaged in the entire process from Wiki syntax to proper Wikipedia formatting and editorship. After making their articles live, students let them lay for a few weeks (allowing others to edit), and then reflected on the power of peer review, the difficulty of creating an article, and how both of these contribute to the overall quality of the tool. This poster will detail the entire assignment, focusing on process and the learning that resulted.