MiscellanyISSUE 3 (MAY 2015)

Wikipedia in universities: a guide to good practice

Abstract

Although Wikipedia is an information source used extensively by students at all academic levels, it is hard to find higher education courses in which Wikipedia has a formal role in the learning process. Using the principal results of the Wiki4HE project as its foundation, this article briefly describes key factors that influence the decisions of academic staff regarding the use of Wikipedia in their teaching. In addition to technological factors relating to the user-friendliness and utility of the work platform this encyclopaedia provides, it also examines the academic and professional factors that have a greater influence: the perceived quality of Wikipedia, its social image, the 2.0 profile of academic staff and their collaborative attitudes, and institutional recognition of this resource.

The article has two main objectives: the first is to highlight the importance of the opinions academic colleagues have of Wikipedia, and the influence this has on decisions to use the encyclopaedia actively in teaching; the second is to show how this decision could be affected by access to a guide to good practice, one that systematically brought together the experiences of other academic staff and enabled an improvement in Wikipedia's social image.

Wikipedia;  higher education;  teaching;  competences;  good practice;  quality;  quality education; 

ODS

ODS ODS 4

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