Abstract
Abstract:
Turning undergraduates into Wikipedia editors has proven to be a highly engaging and effective learning experience for students in evaluation, attribution, and documentation of sources. The result of a faculty/librarian collaboration, this project combined student engagement with the alignment of learning objectives, learning experiences, and outcomes assessment, all of which played important roles in its success. Tips and resources for using Wikipedia as a teaching tool will enable participants to adapt and construct their own Wikipedia learning experiences.
Presentation Content:
Summary Statement: This presentation describes the curriculum, instruction, and assessment methodology, and suggests pitfalls and benefits of using Wikipedia as an assignment to teach students about citing sources.
Description of activity: How can information literacy be effectively taught? In addressing this question as a librarian at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), I engaged several professors of technical writing to turn college students into Wikipedia authors with surprisingly positive results. Most librarians agree Wikipedia can be a good place to gain background for a research project, although faculty and librarians usually suggest that it should not be cited in a college term paper. I thought that inviting students to edit Wikipedia might provide a motivation and awareness of the process of evaluating and attributing information to specific sources. This thought led to an exploration of Wikipedia that provided the basis for an assignment for a third year undergraduate technical communication course.
Outcome: The assignment positively affected student motivation and resulted in a successful learning experience, one that integrated research, writing, critical thinking, and presentation skills. All in all, it suggested a new approach to the incorporation of Web technology into instruction in writing and research. The Wikipedia writing assignment employed active learning and fostered student engagement. Learning was largely the result of students discovering the parameters and protocols of a community of authors on their own. The assignment motivated students at first because it seemed "cool" and later because they realized their entry, if well done, might remain out on the web for all to see. It heightened their awareness of the difference between fact and opinion. The purpose and point of citations became clear. It changed their perceptions of the purpose of writing from a static class-assigned exercise to a dynamic source, rich writing activity that used a topic about which they cared deeply, and on which they could publicly contribute to an authoritative article. A rubric was used to evaluate the student work and a statistical analysis of a pre and posttest showed significant gains in information literacy.
Importance: Turning students into active writers on the open web transformed the role of the teacher from judge to coach. It embodied in an authentic way for students to learn the concepts of the accuracy of information, documentation of sources, and peer-review.
About the speaker:
Davida Scharf has been Director of Reference and Instruction at the New Jersey Institute of Technology since 2004. She has a B.A. from Barnard College in Art and Architectural History, an M.L.S. from Columbia University, and a PhD from Rutgers University Graduate School of Communication and Information where she worked on educational assessment of information literacy. She has worked as a corporate strategic planner, a librarian, and an information management consultant in a variety of settings. Her research interests include critical thinking, information literacy instruction and assessment, program evaluation, knowledge management, and the scholarship of teaching and learning.
Turning undergraduates into Wikipedia editors has proven to be a highly engaging and effective learning experience for students in evaluation, attribution, and documentation of sources. The result of a faculty/librarian collaboration, this project combined student engagement with the alignment of learning objectives, learning experiences, and outcomes assessment, all of which played important roles in its success. Tips and resources for using Wikipedia as a teaching tool will enable participants to adapt and construct their own Wikipedia learning experiences.
Presentation Content:
Summary Statement: This presentation describes the curriculum, instruction, and assessment methodology, and suggests pitfalls and benefits of using Wikipedia as an assignment to teach students about citing sources.
Description of activity: How can information literacy be effectively taught? In addressing this question as a librarian at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), I engaged several professors of technical writing to turn college students into Wikipedia authors with surprisingly positive results. Most librarians agree Wikipedia can be a good place to gain background for a research project, although faculty and librarians usually suggest that it should not be cited in a college term paper. I thought that inviting students to edit Wikipedia might provide a motivation and awareness of the process of evaluating and attributing information to specific sources. This thought led to an exploration of Wikipedia that provided the basis for an assignment for a third year undergraduate technical communication course.
Outcome: The assignment positively affected student motivation and resulted in a successful learning experience, one that integrated research, writing, critical thinking, and presentation skills. All in all, it suggested a new approach to the incorporation of Web technology into instruction in writing and research. The Wikipedia writing assignment employed active learning and fostered student engagement. Learning was largely the result of students discovering the parameters and protocols of a community of authors on their own. The assignment motivated students at first because it seemed "cool" and later because they realized their entry, if well done, might remain out on the web for all to see. It heightened their awareness of the difference between fact and opinion. The purpose and point of citations became clear. It changed their perceptions of the purpose of writing from a static class-assigned exercise to a dynamic source, rich writing activity that used a topic about which they cared deeply, and on which they could publicly contribute to an authoritative article. A rubric was used to evaluate the student work and a statistical analysis of a pre and posttest showed significant gains in information literacy.
Importance: Turning students into active writers on the open web transformed the role of the teacher from judge to coach. It embodied in an authentic way for students to learn the concepts of the accuracy of information, documentation of sources, and peer-review.
About the speaker:
Davida Scharf has been Director of Reference and Instruction at the New Jersey Institute of Technology since 2004. She has a B.A. from Barnard College in Art and Architectural History, an M.L.S. from Columbia University, and a PhD from Rutgers University Graduate School of Communication and Information where she worked on educational assessment of information literacy. She has worked as a corporate strategic planner, a librarian, and an information management consultant in a variety of settings. Her research interests include critical thinking, information literacy instruction and assessment, program evaluation, knowledge management, and the scholarship of teaching and learning.
Collection
Subject
Contributors
Duration
00:32:57 (HH:MM:SS)
Language:
English
Target or Intended Audience
adult/continuing education, higher education, college, educator
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Copyright Date
2014-03-28
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