Yes, sorry, I am posting about Wikipedia again. But I thought I would solicit your thoughts on Alan Liu’s draft policy statement on student use of Wikipedia (via Kairosnews). It has also been picked up by the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus.
What do you think?
The statement is fine, as far as it goes, but it has a huge, glaring hole in it. It sees students only as passive consumers, or audiences of wikipedia. That’s only one side of how it should be (needs to be) used. A comprehensive statement on student use of wikipedia has to include students as *authors* of wikipedia, too.
Hi Joe,
Great point. To only focus on what students need to do to use Wikipedia properly leaves out the possibilities it offers to see students’ roles in a new light.
Kate
I for one am happy to see continued updates on Wikipedia here at Cac.ophony. I think Wikipedia receives such attention, and is the site of so much heated debate, because it challenges how we (academics?) understand knowledge production, transfer, and transmission. We can talk about whether its articles ‘count’ as authoritative knowledge, we can decide whether to ‘allow’ students to cite its information in a research paper. But really, its effects will be quite transformative I think. In the conversation on the Chronicle’s Wired Campus, one response alludes to this. The writer says,
“What I haven’t talked with students about, though, is the fact that, on a different level, this tentative putting forward of views to be challenged is pretty much the same thing that happens with scholarly publication—except that with Wikipedia it happens faster and is open to a larger audience.” — T. Allen Culpepper
He’s right, Wikipedia is far faster than the system of scholarly publication–submit, review, revise, publish. Not to mention, read, critique, write anew, and start the whole thing all over again. This system is how knowledge gets made, which is what universities are about–making and transferring knowledge. But digital technologies are speeding up this process, and I think the quickened pace is threatening the current system. Wikipedia works on feedback that is so fast. Yesterday, when Kenneth Lay’s death was announced, apparently in a period of several hours his Wikipedia entry changed rapidly as people posted information–from highly speculative and inaccurate to conservatively correct.
Wikipedia challenges knowledge production the same way digital storage threatens hard copies, ie. printed books. But even more, it puts us all on the same page, Ph.D or high school graduate. This is just one more way that the world is flat.
For what purpose do universities make and transfer knowledge?
If we have a clear understanding of the desired outcome of this university meta-process, then we can have a better feel for the appropriate set of learning experiences (including tools such as wikis) this process needs to support.
I have argued elsewhere that higher education is about producing people who can survive, thrive, and make a difference in the world outside the university. This, to me, is the desired outcome.
Where do our graduates go when they graduate? How have they fared? What could we have done to better prepare them for this journey?
I ask these questions in a historical sense. They ought to also be asked in a forward looking manner. I suspect that the way we prepared students in the past is not the way we should prepare students in the future. This is perhaps particularly true when it comes to critical thinking and communications skills.
I don’t wish to question the value of wikis, but I do wish to raise the question of how we decide where to put our efforts.