Liberal Education Today

Middlebury College's library hosted a debate about the Wikipedia and teaching between professors Amy Morsman and Jason Mittell.

Morsman began by showing a Stephen Colbert clip, then lauding Wikipedia as remarkable for technology, community facilitation, information development, and accessibiity. However, she saw its pedagogical applicability to the discipline of history as limited. Morsman's major problems concerned students seeing Wikipedia as either a sole source, or as the most highly valued source. One point: Middlebury history does not allow students to cite encyclopedias. Another point: Morsman values "signed" work, while Wikipedia entries are not. Third: history prefers scholarly sources, rather than popular ones. Fourth, while most errors are corrected, some are not. Fifth, Middlebury history agrees with the Wikipedia's own recommendation of not citing its articles as paper sources.

Jason Mittell began by pointing to the Wikiality site, a Stephen Colbert fan/parody site. He then explored the nature of the Wikipedia and objections to it. First, Mittell argued for the limited utility of encyclopedias, as introductory places, but not college-level work. However, Mittell was surprised that the Middlebury history department was not opposed to the encyclopedia nature of the Wikipedia. Second, Mittell focused on the wiki software and culture, arguing for their positive features: collaborative oversight, communication and reflection mechanisms, transparent and reviewed standards, readily updated to reflect current events and thinking, and error protections. Mittell went on to argue for the Wikipedia's pedagogical utility, in part for the way it makes debates over knowledge transparent. Moreover, the Wikipedia is part of a much larger movement, where media consumers increasingly become participants and co-producers. Students could, for instance, be required to improve Wikipedia entries, demystifying writing and research, contributing to a shared body of knowledge.

Discussion followed. One point concerned accountability for entry contribution, with participants distinguishing between the importance of tracking personal agendas, and the ability to create (and track) a Wikipedia persona. A second point concerned error rates, and how Wikipedia compares with the rest of the internet.