Article Sidebar

Submitted
Aug 3, 2020
Accepted
Dec 18, 2020
Published
Dec 21, 2020
Download
PDF
Statistic
Read Counter : 7887 Download : 813

Main Article Content

Abstract

The paper presents the results of the “Learning with Wikipedia” project which involved 1200 students and 30 faculty members at the University of Padova in creating and expanding encyclopedia articles on various subject-specific topics. Teaching activities were developed which considered Wikipedia not so much as a container for Open Educational Resources, but as a true learning environment, well organized with precise rules that can stimulate instructors to adopt Open Educational Practices. Students attended workshops where they were introduced to the project’s aims, the competences expected of them, and the procedures for contributing to the encyclopedia. One of the most significant points that emerged during the project was the importance of stimulating the full set of digital competences (for example finding and evaluating information). Gaining these competences is essential for the activities’ success and for participating, now and in the future in an extended community based on OER. That's why we investigated students’ and instructors’ perceptions regarding a set of digital competences gained by working with Wikipedia. The project was also able to make students and instructors understand that writing encyclopedia articles is not a mere academic exercise, but is a Service Learning activity that benefits the entire community, and that Wikipedia should be considered as a participatory social process and not just as a means of learning subject-specific content.

Keywords

Wikipedia OER OEP University Teaching Strategies

Article Details

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

The author declares that the submitted to Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society (Je-LKS) is original and that is has neither been published previously nor is currently being considered for publication elsewhere.
The author agrees that SIe-L (Italian Society of e-Learning) has the right to publish the material sent for inclusion in the journal Je-LKS.
The author agree that articles may be published in digital format (on the Internet or on any digital support and media) and in printed format, including future re-editions, in any language and in any license including proprietary licenses, creative commons license or open access license. SIe-L may also use parts of the work to advertise and promote the publication.
The author declares s/he has all the necessary rights to authorize the editor and SIe-L to publish the work.
The author assures that the publication of the work in no way infringes the rights of third parties, nor violates any penal norms and absolves SIe-L from all damages and costs which may result from publication.

The author declares further s/he has received written permission without limits of time, territory, or language from the rights holders for the free use of all images and parts of works still covered by copyright, without any cost or expenses to SIe-L.

For all the information please check the Ethical Code of Je-LKS, available at http://www.je-lks.org/index.php/ethical-code

How to Cite
Petrucco, C., & Ferranti, C. (2020). Wikipedia as OER: the “Learning with Wikipedia” project. Journal of E-Learning and Knowledge Society, 16(4), 38-45. https://doi.org/10.20368/1971-8829/1135322

References

  1. Aibar, E., Lladós-Masllorens, J., Meseguer-Artola, A., Minguillón, J., & Lerga, M. (2015). Wikipedia at university: what faculty think and do about it. The Electronic Library.
  2. Blikstad-Balas, M. (2016). “You get what you need”: A study of students’ attitudes towards using Wikipedia when doing school assignments. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 60(6), 594-608.
  3. Carretero, G. S., Vuorikari, R., & Punie, Y. (2017). DigComp 2.1: The digital competence framework for citizens with eight proficiency levels and examples of use. EUR–Scientific and Technical Research Report Information Society. Publications Office of the European Union
  4. Cope, B., Kalantzis, M., Abd-El-Khalick, F., & Bagley, E. (2013). Science in Writing: Learning Scientific Argument in Principle and Practice. E-Learning and Digital Media, 10(4), 420-441. doi: 10.2304/elea.2013.10.4.420
  5. Dawe, L., & Robinson, A. (2017). Wikipedia editing and information literacy: A case study. Information and Learning Science, 118(1/2).
  6. Dos Santos, A. I., Punie, Y., & Muñoz, J. C. (2016). Opening up Education: A Support Framework for Higher Education Institutions” online at web https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC101436/jrc101436.pdf
  7. Fallis, D. (2008). Toward an epistemology of Wikipedia. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59(10), 1662-1674.
  8. Fischer, L., Hilton III, J., Robinson, J., & Wiley, D. (2015). A multi-institutional study of the impact of open textbook adoption on the learning outcomes of post-secondary students. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 27(3), 159-172. doi: 10.1007/s12528-015-9101-x
  9. García‐Peñalvo, F. J., De Figuerola, C. G., Merlo, J. A., García‐Peñalvo, F. J., de Figuerola, C. G., & Merlo, J. A. (2010). Open knowledge: Challenges and facts. Online Information Review.
  10. Garrison, J.C. (2018), Instructor and peer influence on college student use and perceptions of Wikipedia, The Electronic Library, 36(2), 237-257. https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-02-2017-0034
  11. Grewe, K., & Davis, W. P. (2017). The impact of enrollment in an OER course on student learning outcomes. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 18(4).
  12. Gutiérrez-Madroñal, L., Collado-Machuca, J. C., Palomo-Duarte, M., & Gómez-Fontanills, D. (2014). Development of free multimedia resources with encyclopedic aim: From the classroom to Wikimedia Commons. In International Congress on Education, Innovation and Learning Technologies (Vol. 37).
  13. Havemann, L. (2016). Open Educational Resources. In M.A. Peters (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory. Springer.
  14. Hazari, S., North, A., & Moreland, D. (2019). Investigating pedagogical value of wiki technology. Journal of Information Systems Education, 20(2), 8.
  15. Head, A.J., & Eisenberg, M.B. (2010a). How today´s college students use Wikipedia for course-related research. First Monday, 15(3). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v15i3.2830
  16. Hilton, J. (2016). Open educational resources and college textbook choices: a review of research on efficacy and perceptions. Educational Technology Research and Development, 64(4), 573-590.
  17. Iiyoshi, T., & Kumar, M. S. V. (2010). Opening up education: The collective advancement of education through open technology, open content, and open knowledge (p. 504). The MIT Press.
  18. Jacobson, Trudi E., "Creating Shareable Knowledge: Exploring the Synergy between Metaliteracy and Open Pedagogy" (2019). University Libraries Faculty Scholarship. 126.
  19. Johinke, R. (2020). Social production as authentic assessment: Wikipedia, digital writing, and hope labour. Studies in Higher Education, 45(5), 1015-1025.
  20. Konieczny, P. (2016). Teaching with Wikipedia in a 21st‐century classroom: Perceptions of Wikipedia and its educational benefits. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 67(7), 1523-1534.
  21. Koseoglu, S., & Bozkurt, A. (2018). An exploratory literature review on open educational practices. Distance Education, 39(4), 441-461.
  22. Leuthold, J., & Gilli, A. (2019, March). Translating Scientific Articles to the Non-scientific Public Using the Wikipedia Encyclopedia. In Frontiers in Education (Vol. 4, p. 15). Frontiers.
  23. Lim, S. (2013). College students’ credibility judgments and heuristics concerning Wikipedia. Information Processing & Management, 49(2), 405-419.
  24. Mesgari, M., Okoli, C., Mehdi, M., Nielsen, F. Å., & Lanamäki, A. (2015). “The sum of all human knowledge”: A systematic review of scholarly research on the content of Wikipedia. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66(2), 219-245.
  25. Minguillón, J., Aibar, E., Lerga, M., Lladós, J., & Meseguer-Artola, A. (2018). Wikipedia in academia as a teaching tool: from averse to proactive faculty profiles. arXiv preprint arXiv:1801.07138.
  26. Nascimbeni, F., Burgos, D., Campbell, L. M., & Tabacco, A. (2018). Institutional mapping of open educational practices beyond use of Open Educational Resources. Distance Education, 39(4), 511-527.
  27. Petrucco, C. (2019). Wikipedia as complementary formative assessment method in University Courses. In EdMedia+ Innovate Learning (pp. 335-338). Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).
  28. Pomerantz, J., & Peek, R. (2016). Fifty shades of open. First Monday.
  29. Premat, C. E. (2020). Wikipedia Practices, Quick Facts, and Plagiarism in Higher Education. In Teaching Academic Writing as a Discipline-Specific Skill in Higher Education (pp. 199-221). IGI Global.
  30. Redecker, C. (2017). European framework for the digital competence of educators: DigCompEdu (No. JRC107466). Joint Research Centre (Seville site).
  31. Sahut, G., & Tricot, A. (2017). Wikipedia: an opportunity to rethink the links between sources’ credibility, trust and authority. First Monday, 22(11).
  32. Selwyn, N., & Gorard, S. (2016). Students' use of Wikipedia as an academic resource—Patterns of use and perceptions of usefulness. The Internet and Higher Education, 28, 28-34.
  33. Soler-Adillon, J., Pavlovic, D., & Freixa, P. (2018). Wikipedia in higher education: Changes in perceived value through content contribution. Comunicar. Media Education Research Journal, 26(1).
  34. Sormunen, E., & Lehtiö, L. (2011). Authoring Wikipedia articles as an information literacy assignment: copy-pasting or expressing new understanding in one’s own words?.
  35. Tennant, J. P., Waldner, F., Jacques, D. C., Masuzzo, P., Collister, L. B., & Hartgerink, C. H. (2016). The academic, economic and societal impacts of Open Access: an evidence-based review. F1000Research, 5.
  36. Thompson, N., & Hanley, D. (2018). Science is shaped by wikipedia: Evidence from a randomized control trial. MIT Sloan Research Paper No. 5238-17, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3039505 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3039505 .
  37. UNESCO and Commonwealth of Learning (2015), Guidelines for Open Educational Resources in Higher Education, https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000213605
  38. Wannemacher, K. (2010). Experiences and perspectives of Wikipedia use in higher education. International Journal of Management in Education, 5(1), 79-92.
  39. Wikipedia (2020). School and University Projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects#Past_projects
  40. Xu, B., & Li, D. (2015). An empirical study of the motivations for content contribution and community participation in Wikipedia. Information & management, 52(3), 275-286.
  41. Yaari, E., Baruchson-Arbib, S., & Bar-Ilan, J. (2011). Information quality assessment of community generated content: A user study of Wikipedia. Journal of Information Science, 37(5), 487-498.