Wiki Wiki Redux

Wikipedia, despite its relative newness, has already lived a rather interesting academic life.  For many years scholars and teachers dismissed or belittled it as a potential source of knowledge.  (Well, certainly not all scholars and teachers, but a good number it seems.)  But in recent years–in this era of crowdsourcing, open-source knowledge production, and the continued proliferation and ascendancy of social media tools–a growing number of academics are writing about Wikipedia and other kinds of wikis as incredibly powerful learning tools.  I remember when Professor Gardner Campbell visited our campus back in March 2010 and conducted a workshop on “Wikipedia in Teaching and Learning.”  While his approach and even the title of his workshop encountered some resistance among participants (especially among those uninterested in Wikipedia or even hostile toward it), one valuable pedagogical lesson I learned from this lively session was that instead of simply discouraging students from reading Wikipedia or hastily dismissing it as a forever flawed resource, perhaps a better approach to Wikipedia (and its promise and pitfalls) would be to guide students in how to write, edit, and improve Wikipedia entries.  That is to say, instead of simply criticizing students for their passive, uncritical reception of what they read on Wikipedia, perhaps I should help them not only to develop their critical reading skills but also their writing skills–by guiding them in how to create and improve the knowledge they find in places like Wikipedia. 

"Wiki Wiki Express" sign at Honolulu by miss rogue/tara hunt, 2007 (Creative Commons License)

It is a relatively easy exercise for me to bring up on a classroom projector somewhat flawed, misleading, or incomplete Wikipedia entries on, say, individual U.S. authors or particular literary movements about which I have detailed knowledge.  To be sure, pointing out such flaws and pitfalls has value, as it is essential that students develop these sorts of critical reading and information literacy skills.  But what if I were to challenge a class of 25 American literature students–many of whom are bright, creative, and even intellectually ambitious–to write/rewrite/rethink a set of Wikipedia entries pertaining to subjects they are currently studying?  This allows them to have the experience of creating knowledge for an audience broader than just their course instructor and, if done well, what they produce could have public, communal, civic, and intellectual value.  Instead of lamenting all of the problems of wiki-generated knowledge (problems that are real and have consequences), maybe it would be more constructive to empower students to contribute meaningfully to these bodies of knowledge that, without strict hierarchical or gatekeeping structures, invite their participation. 

Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo Goldberg, in their MacArthur Foundation Report, The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age (2009), go so far as to argue the following: 

“To ban sources such as Wikipedia is to miss the importance of a collaborative, knowledge-making impulse in humans who are willing to contribute, correct, and collect information without remuneration:  by definition, this is education.  To miss how much such collaborative, participatory learning underscores the foundations of learning is defeatist, unimaginative, even self-destructive” (29).

Concerning the rather complex question about the extent to which Wikipedia can or should be used by students as a reference, Davidson and Goldberg refer to Alan Liu’s incredibly helpful “Student Wikipedia Use Policy,” which he developed for his courses at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  I will likely cite this for my classes next term.  If you’re not familiar with this document, it is definitely worth checking out.  You can find it right here.

Re-Tweeting the News

Blogosphere as a network of interconnections, Jenna Greenbaum (Wikimedia Commons)

A colleague recently forwarded to me a thought-provoking article from the Chronicle of Higher Education on the challenge of “news literacy” in this age of the Internet.  This was a piece by Renée Loth, “What’s Black and White and Re-Tweeted All Over?:  Teaching news literacy in a digital age,” and I should also mention that you do need to be a Chronicle subscriber to get full access to the article.  Loth tells us that since 2007 the State University of New York at Stony Brook has been developing its news-literacy curriculum and that it aims to enroll by 2013 a total of 10,000 students (over this stretch of time).  Gen Ed advocates might appreciate knowing that this news-literacy course currently satisfies two undergraduate core requirements for graduation, in the areas of humanities and history.  It seems clear that having such a course count as core credit gives these skills academic recognition and also drives enrollment in these courses. 

Loth explains that Howard Schneider, the key intellectual figure behind this initiative and also the founding dean of their School of Journalism, believes that “the skills traditional journalists learned at the knee of some grizzled veteran editor are required of everyone in today’s media mash-up.”  That is to say, continues Loth, basic journalistic skills are now “the habits citizens need to learn and employ as they navigate the wilderness of new media.”  Quite convincing, I must say!

What I found perhaps most provocative and suggestive in Loth’s piece was her take on the significance of what appear to be simple acts of forwarding, sharing, or re-tweeting news items: 

“As people increasingly share stories, videos, and tips through their networks, they are no longer just news consumers but news producers.  There’s even a neologism coined to describe the shift from passive consumer to active producer:  ‘presumer.’  It confers an added obligation to evaluate what amid the clutter is worth sending on.”

While I’m not terribly enthusiastic about the neologism “presumer,” I can honestly say that when I share a news piece on Facebook or via Twitter–unless it is from a news source that I completely trust–I cross-check it against a couple of other sources.  When the information comes from a blog or another less formal news source, I do verify the story against other sources (e.g., a local newspaper online, a news station’s feed, etc.) before passing it along to others.  So, yes, I do take responsibility for this act of sharing.  Now admittedly I’m a somewhat anxious person who strangely finds pleasure in checking, double checking (and, in the spirit of disclosure, maybe even triple checking!) things that other well-adjusted individuals don’t necessarily worry a whole lot about!  But if we take seriously this notion that, enabled by social media, we are now co-producers (or at the very least active and empowered distributors) and not simply passive consumers of the news, then we all need to recognize the burden of this responsibility.  Stony Brook, through its curricular initiative, is effectively issuing a challenge to Gen Ed programs around the country:  What are we doing to inculcate the critical reading, evaluative, and information fluency skills that have become so essential not only to students, journalists, and researchers, but also to everyday citizens sharing messages on Facebook?  

For more information on Stony Brook’s news-literacy initiatives, visit the website of their Center for News Literacy.