How may we teach students to use Wikipedia in an efficient
way?
CHRISTOPHE PREMAT(Pedagogisk ambassadör - 2018)
Romanska och klassiska institutionen
Source for the images● https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Michel_Serres_
-_Espace_des_sciences_-_15-02-2011.JPG (Retrieved on 21 January 2018) (First picture)
● https://www.editions-lepommier.fr/petite-poucette#anchor2 (Retrieved on 21 January 2018) (Second Picture)
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Who is Poucette?● Serres M. (2012). Petite Poucette. Paris: Le Pommier.
● Poucette is a digital native, she/he does not need to make so many efforts to have access to information
● Poucette is impatient, she/he does not necessarily analyze the information (the sources) she/he gets
● She/he can copyedit / paste information but needs help to use the sources. ✄✄✄✍✍
● She/he can sometimes suspected of plagiarism. She/he needs to know what is true/false (Karl Popper/ falsifiability)
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Background● Difficulties for students to produce an academic text
(standard), it is even more difficult to do that in a foreignlanguage
● Too much information on the net and difficulties to produce a personal text
● Students use ”google-translate”● They paraphrase without reporting the source, they go
through Wikipedia
● They do not know what it means to think critically
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Plagiarism
● Plagiarism: stealing the others´ production● It breaks scientific trust● It has juridical consequences● It is a question of ethics as it is easier
nowadays to act as a plagiator with the available information on Internet
● Plagiarism is a consequence of scientificmisuse (pedagogical problem). How do I use resources in an appropriate way to avoid plagiarism?
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Case-study: the relation between Wikipediaand scientific knowledge
● Analyzing the sources is necessary. Wikipedia is a strong platform
guided by a community of anonymous users (Hoeres, 2015: 18)
(horizontal and sharing governance) Non profit organization
(different from YouTube). The content will always be available
● Wikipedia was created in 2001 by people working with free
softwares. Empowerment of local communities (idealistic narrative,
Lund 2017)
● Creative Common Licence (the content can be used as much as
possible without paying any fees…). Pedagogical problem: how to
guarantee a quotation principle which is fundamental in the
academic world (Tkacz, 2015)
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Using Wikipedia in class as a possible and concrete pedagogical resource
● It might be interesting to select short notices that could be reused in other contexts. A
good wikipedia notice that indicates different sources is a material. Difficulty for the
teacher: the text can be updated at any time, but the teacher can take part in the
sharing process.
● Some international students can compare the text in the mother tongue (available
resources)
● The teacher can have a discussion on the validity of the Wikipedia texts that can be
compared with other sources.
● Wikipedia is a path, it is a learning tool and could be completed depending on the level
of the course and the expected study resultat.
● Sometimes, it can be possible to design specific Wikipedia exercices (Source criticism…)
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Is Wikipedia a real open knowledgecommunity?
● The analysis of the content can be interesting (rhetorics..). Can we
help students to identify scientific information from ideological
promotion? (bargaining system?) (O´Sullivan 2009)
● Some scientific debates could be presented as big controversies.
How can we face that problem? (risk for fake news)
● Anonymous writers / copyright (Burke, 2012)
● What kind of interference with the open world? (Can we guarantee
that students can have access to knowledge without being
influenced too much?)
● Need to calibrate the information (the pedagogical role is here)
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Wiki sources: conclusions● Necessity to present source criticism in the relation between Wikipedia
and Academic discourse.
● A difference between the Wikipedia community / Academic community
● A learning tool that needs to be calibrated (struggle agains fake news).
● An instrument to increase the relation to the society and the students´
influence (increasing the feedback, Hattie, Timperley, 2007)
● Beginners can imitate without doing plagiarism (it is really important to
explain this difference).
● The illusion of immediate availability of knowledge should be
questioned.
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References● Burke, P. (2012). A social history of knowledge II: from
the encyclopédie to Wikipedia. Cambridge: Polity.
● Hattie, J., Timperley, H. (2007). ”The Power of Feedback”. Review of Educational Research, vol. 77, n. 1: 81-112.
● Hoeres, P. (2015). Hierarchien in der Schwarmintelligenz. Geschichtsvermittlung auf Wikipedia. In: Thomas Wozniak, Jürgen Nemitz, Uwe Rohwedder(Hrsg.): Wikipedia und Geschichtswissenschaft. De Gruyter/Oldenbourg: 15-32.
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References● Lund, A. (2017). Wikipedia, Work and Capitalism. Cham:
Springer International Publishing
● O´Sullivan, D. (2009). Wikipedia: a new community ofpractice? Farnham: Ashgate.
● Serres, M. (2012). Petite Poucette. Paris: Le Pommier.● Tkacz, N. (2015). Wikipedia and the politics of openness.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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