when “turn in your drafts” means linking to wikipedia

Posted in First Year Comp, General, Wikis - 12 October 2005 - No comment

Start with the Esquire story dealing with Jacobs posting a bad article to Wikipedia and letting the community clean it up, as reported by CNET.

The article doesn’t seem all that interesting on the surface. More of a gimmick than anything. But Clancy considers what Jacobs’ idea might mean for students:

1. Write a craptacular draft full of factual errors, incredible sources, and grammatical/mechanical mistakes.

2. Post it to Wikipedia.

3. Wait a few days and let the community clean it up for you.

4. Turn it in!

That’s the open source model – in a way.

And echo replies, seeing the pedagogical strength in students engaging the model -

If students do submit papers which are edited by the Wikipedia staff it is as if they are actively authoring history as they see it. Until now, such participation in knowledge creation has been limited to professionals, historians and journalists. If students take the steps to publish their work on Wikipedia (and have it edited), they are to be commended for making real use of their knowledge, research and willingness to share it with others.

The discussion on this one is just starting, but one way to address the situation (tempest: teacup) is in the Wikipedia copyrights (pointed out by echo)

“Wikipedia content can be copied, modified, and redistributed so long as the new version grants the same freedoms to others and acknowledges the authors of the Wikipedia article used (a direct link back to the article satisfies our author credit requirement). Wikipedia articles therefore will remain free forever and can be used by anybody subject to certain restrictions, most of which serve to ensure that freedom.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights

A student submitting an article written in part by the Wikipedia community must acknowledge the other writers. And if we’re suspicious just how the student came to know so much about Australian punk, it’s easy to check. Wikipedia is open to search engines, so a quick google will find the source (no turnitin necessary).

The issue then is how to assign classroom credit for the student’s learning – but that’s another matter.

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