Publish at June 12 2017 Updated July 21 2026
Although often disparaged by higher education instructors, Wikipedia remains a popular source of information among their students. Rather than adopting a strictly critical stance, some instructors have decided to improve the quality of articles in the famous collaborative encyclopedia.
They have even incorporated this practice into their teaching. Here is a statement from Marcello Vitali-Rosati, Associate Professor in the Department of French Literature at the University of Montreal.
Thot Cursus: When did you start this initiative?
Marcello Vitali-Rosati: For the past two or three years, I have been evaluating students in my courses in the Department of French Literature—courses on digital publishing or digital literature and culture—basedon their contributions to Wikipedia. Exams have been replaced by a series of assignments to be completed on the online encyclopedia.
Thot Cursus: How do you go about this?
Mr. Vitali-Rosati: Until this year, I asked students to contribute to pages related to the course’s theme and to provide me with their usernames. Students had a fair amount of freedom: they chose which pages to work on and decided on the format of their contributions.
I simply recommended that they not limit themselves to writing new content, but rather devote part of their work to discussion as well as to editing and “wikifying” existing content. I let the students figure out how to find the relevant material on their own. It’s important to encourage them to search for information online, as this kind of research is fundamental to any activity today. Finding relevant material was part of their assignment.
Thot Cursus: How were they evaluated?
Mr. Vitali-Rosati: I’ve noticed that for a large number of users—including students—the processes for creating and validating content on Wikipedia are completely unfamiliar. Almost no student had ever contributed, not even through minor edits, such as correcting a spelling mistake. So the majority of students were starting from scratch.
I assessed:
Thot Cursus: Did you introduce something new in 2017?
Mr. Vitali-Rosati: Yes, as part of my course “Digital Publishing Practices,” I asked the students to work together to create the digital publishing portal. The result is more than satisfactory. The students, without any prior training on the subject (which was part of the challenge), were able to master writing on Wikipedia as well as complex tasks such as creating a portal, managing tasks, and so on. They also created the portal project, led a group discussion on the topics to be covered, improved several related articles, and got involved in the Wikipedia community by proposing new projects. Notably, they proposed a project to create a Wikichat to give users the opportunity to discuss a shared project in real time (see here).
The students’ work sparked the community’s interest, and it was featured in the Wikimedia newsletter. I also asked the students to post a report on their experience on their user pages, which helped them develop a critical reflection on their practices. You can find the testimonials from Jane, EminYou, and Roche4 (my students’ usernames). This makes it easy to verify each user’s activity by looking at their history. Grades were assigned individually.
Thot Cursus: Do you think your assessment approach could be more widely adopted in higher education?
Mr. Vitali-Rosati: Yes, I am convinced that this assessment model should be adopted more widely, for several reasons:
Our relationship with Wikipedia is, in fact, ambivalent. On the one hand, it is the platform on which most of our research practices are based. When we look for information, our first instinct (statistics put it at 90%) is to go to Google. However, Google very often displays Wikipedia as the top result. Wikipedia is therefore, in effect, our primary source of information. On the other hand, official academic discourse shows nothing but contempt for this encyclopedia. Why not replace this snobbery with active participation in building this tool?
Thot Cursus: Were all your students able to participate?
Mr. Vitali-Rosati: A small group led the project. This group formed naturally (I hadn’t assigned anyone in particular). Some students were more active than others and helped their peers. The idea was also to encourage them to find solutions on their own—and thus to seek out and read the relevant documentation. I was surprised by how thoroughly several students mastered Wikipedia’s tools and made the best use of them. Admittedly, a few students lagged behind a bit, but no more so in this case than in a traditional assessment setting.
Thot Cursus: In your approach, student participation in Wikipedia is not only educational; it also allows them to engage with the realm of knowledge as a common good.
Mr. Vitali-Rosati: The university has a responsibility to produce content that is useful to society. People often complain that traditional institutions are no longer the main players in knowledge production and that commercial companies like Google or Amazon are replacing them. Instead of complaining, I believe we have a responsibility to adopt new models. Wikipedia offers this possibility.
If we as academics do not engage in this arena, other actors will. It is not the fault of GAFAM [an acronym for Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft] that the web is increasingly becoming a private space driven by commercial interests. It is our own fault for not getting involved. Simple practices, such as making the use of Wikipedia standard in university courses, can be a first step toward reclaiming a space like the web, which must necessarily be, first and foremost, a public space.
Original source of the interview: https://theconversation.com/les-contributions-sur-wikipedia-repenser-levaluation-de-nos-etudiants-76922
Contact: [email protected]
Other Experiences
Illustration: Infographic on digital publishing statistics
, Saloua Aissami — CC BY-SA 4.0
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