From Wikipedia to the Classroom

Wikipedia represents an intriguing new publishing paradigm—can it be used to engage students in authentic collaborative writing activities? How can we design wiki publishing tools and curricula to support learning among student authors? We suggest that wiki publishing environments can create learning opportunities that address four dimensions of authenticity: personal, real world, disciplinary, and assessment. We have begun a series of design studies to investigate links between wiki publishing experiences and writing-to-learn. The results of an initial study in an undergraduate government course indicate that perceived audience plays an important role in helping students monitor the quality of writing; however, students’ perception of audience on the Internet is not straightforward. This preliminary iteration resulted in several guidelines that are shaping efforts to design and implement new wiki publishing tools and curricula for students and teachers. Wikipedia: This Just Doesn’t Make Sense A perplexing phenomenon has emerged online. Thousands of individuals have come together in one online community with the goal of building an encyclopedia of all human knowledge. This community relies on the work of volunteers, does not solicit contributions from experts, employs no formal review process, and allows people to change the content of the encyclopedia at any time without even identifying themselves. The reaction of most individuals is that it simply should not work. Yet, astonishingly, it seems to be working reasonably well. Wikipedia is a collaboratively written, freely editable online encyclopedia built on a wiki. The first wikis were introduced by Ward Cunningham in the mid 1990s as a platform for supporting fast, productive collaboration online (Leuf & Cunningham, 2001). Each page on a wiki website has an edit button that allows readers to edit its content. Wikipedia’s authority rests in the ongoing, collective review of anyone with an Internet connection. In earlier studies, we found that Wikipedia contributors generally begin as seekers of information, but gradually adopt the practices of proofreading, fact checking, and eventually of authoring new content (Bryant, Forte & Bruckman, 2005). The low barrier to participation on Wikipedia has mobilized thousands of volunteer editors since the project began in January 2001. As of March 2006, it has produced over 980,000 articles. Stylistically, these articles closely resemble those in a traditional, print encyclopedia (Emigh & Herring, 2005) and are generally factually accurate (Giles, 2005). The flexible, relatively lightweight wiki medium has allowed for social norms and rituals to emerge that regulate characteristics of writing on the site. Many studies of Wikipedia have focused on the quality of its content and the processes that sustain content production and surveillance (Viegas, Wattenberg & Dave, 2004; Lih, 2004). These are important concerns if Wikipedia is to serve as a reliable information resource. For the learning sciences, Wikipedia represents something potentially more exciting than an online resource. In Wikipedia, a kind of global learning community has emerged; individuals from around the world are mutually engaged in constructing knowledge. It has been observed that resources like textbooks often conceal from students the disciplinary practices, passion and effort that authors invest in producing texts (Linn, Davis & Bell, 2004); in Wikipedia, the process is both visible and open to new collaborators. In our earlier work, we learned through interviews that some Wikipedians explicitly treat participation in Wikipedia as a learning experience: I look up and read books about the subject and I’ll look something up. It’s not that I’m doing all of this in order to develop an encyclopedia, although I am, it’s more that I’m doing this because I want to learn and you have to learn in order to contribute knowledgeably to Wikipedia. These interviews further suggested that the process for negotiating content includes features of knowledge building discourse (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1996) such as proposing new ideas, requesting evidence, and synthesizing divergent points of view: What happens is each side starts insisting that the other have clear citations for everything they’re saying and you can end up with some really strengthened articles out of these disputes. The process is really messy. It means there’s a lot of conflict—some interpersonal conflicts, some conflicts over content, a lot of conflict over emphasis. But in the process it means that people are exposed to ideas and information that they wouldn’t be otherwise. Collaborative publishing on Wikipedia offers an interesting model for creating authentic classroom writing activities. Writing can be a powerful tool for constructing knowledge. Researchers of writing-to-learn have long suggested that the process of written composition can empower students to reflect on what they know and integrate existing knowledge with new knowledge (Emig, 1977; Britton et.al., 1975). Research also suggests that authentic activities can impact motivation and learning outcomes (Harel & Papert, 1991). Shaffer and Resnick (1999) propose that a thick description of “authentic” activities includes four different dimensions: • personal (students care about it), • disciplinary (aligned with the intellectual tools and practices of the domain), • real world (connected to the world outside the classroom), and • assessment (assessment aligned with learning activities). Writing assignments often address personal authenticity well—students are generally encouraged to write about aspects of a domain they find interesting. Unfortunately, such assignments frequently neglect other dimensions of authenticity. Disciplinary authenticity suffers because the traditional writing assignment is often a contrived literate act. The purpose, content, and form of written artifacts emerge from students’ understanding of teachers’ instructions rather than from a natural need to communicate a message well in a particular discipline (Edelsky & Smith, 1984). Moreover, such assignments often maintain only tenuous connections to the real world, since they are often irrelevant beyond the classroom setting. Finally, although process is a critical feature of writingto-learn (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987), assessment of the writing process is difficult and teachers often grade only the final product. Researchers and educators who have grappled with the problem of inauthentic classroom writing have proposed publication as a solution. Efforts to integrate student publication with school curricula have succeeded in motivating student writers and sustaining engagement over time (Wigginton, 1986). When the Internet became a subject of educational research, student publication was a natural analog. Early research suggested that Internet publication could increase student motivation and even lead to better writing (Cohen & Riel, 1989). Internet publication has been used as a way of breaking down the classroom walls and providing students with a diverse readership (Bos & Krajcik, 1998). To create authentic writing experiences for students, we have begun a project that leverages the Wikipedia model of collaborative authorship with added support for disciplinary practice and authentic assessment. Students write about topics that interest them and publish their work in an online information resource, thereby creating a real world venue for writing. Moreover, assignments are structured to encourage disciplinary practices like citation and evaluation of information sources. Finally, teachers are encouraged to not only assess students’ final product, but to also consider collaboration and revision as critical features of high-quality work. This project is in its early stages. Will students respond to our innovation with as much enthusiasm as Wikipedia volunteers around the world? How will a real world audience and purpose impact students’ writing-to-learn experiences? Will the kind of social moderation that governs writing quality on Wikipedia similarly provide social support for student writing?