Wikipedia and the post-secondary classroom: collaboration, objectivity and analysis
Presenter: Amy Severson
Wikipedia is an online and editable encyclopedia that has inspired debates, questions and collaborations. How do ideas of authorship, consensus and truth work in a user-edited encyclopedia? If it doesn't look or act like an encyclopedia, then what do we call it? This presentation will start by describing what Wikipedia is and how it works. We will discuss the scope, use, value and boundaries of Wikipedia and how it can fit in the post-secondary institution in both research and teaching. This should result in some ideas on developing good practices when reading, editing or assigning Wikipedia in the classroom.
Amy Severson is an Instructional Designer at the Learning and Instructional Development Centre at Simon Fraser University. She works mostly with LMSs, wikis and online synchronous tools.