WikiTeach

One interesting feature that emerged from the recent Wikipedia in Higher Education summit was the time required to teach students how to edit. This isn't surprising: like setting up a blog, or learning the etiquette of tweeting, Wikipedia’s code is a novelty to students. Professors, however, were unhappy that they needed to devote one or two class periods to the mechanics of editing, rather than to actual course content. This is where IT departments, university libraries, or learning support centres need to step up. We can’t expect academics to teach these basic digital literacy skills, and as Wikipedia becomes more widely used in the classroom we run the risk of duplicated effort, where students are hearing again and again how to log in, how to create a link, how to stop your article being deleted… A central training resource (and, indeed, mandatory Wikipedia accounts for every student) that all students can access would be the solution: a mixture of links, reading material, workshops, and hand holding.

The Inside Higher Ed article also noted that Wikipedia editing demands a certain amount of personal resilience and negotiation. These are skills not common in university courses; I regularly meet students whose group work falls apart because they don't have the maturity and social skills to deal with freeloaders. It would be fascinating to see how online collaboration that involves editors outside the academy would develop student confidence and ability to justify their research.