Wikis for teaching: profs using Wikipedia
American professors are increasingly assigning Wikipedia articles as course content, according to InsideHigherEd. Sometimes the purpose is teaching public writing by authoring or editing a Wikipedia article. Other times the pedagogical need is simply for good resources:
A quick glance at the syllabus for Breno de Medeiros’s Advanced Topics in Cryptography and Network Security course at Florida State University, to take one example, reveals reading assignments — in addition to the usual textbook chapters and published papers — that direct students to pages on Wikipedia. Introduction to complexity theory? See the page on P and NP classes. Brush up on probability theory? See Wikipedia’s entry on the Chernoff bound. Far from the amateurish, typo-ridden entries some have come to expect, the articles are straightforward and include definitions, illustrations and explanations that at least match similar content from comparable textbooks.
An additional pedagogical function, unmentioned by the article, is assigning students to read Wikipedia article discussion tabs, in order to better understand the social construction of knowledge.
Comments:
To follow up on that last point, the first episode (http://blogs.vanderbilt.edu/cftpodcast/?p=4) in our teaching center's podcast features an interview with a history professor here who had his history majors read and discuss Wikipedia article discussion tabs as a way to learn how to think and reasons like historians. I think he makes a pretty good case for the pedagogical value of this kind of exercise.
Comment by Derek [Visitor] 
· http://blogs.vanderbilt.edu/cftpodcast/?p=4 04/29/08 @ 18:47
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