Skip to Main Content

Meredith's Mega Guide

This guide contains block of information that I commonly use in my guides. Please feel free to use them as well!

Using Encyclopedias in your Research

Wikipedia

As the world's largest encyclopedia, Wikipedia's coverage is vast. You are more likely to find articles on obscure topics in Wikipedia than you would anywhere else. But is Wikipedia accurate? While Wikipedia can be edited by anyone in the world (including you!), scholarly encyclopedias like Encyclopedia Britannica are written and edited by experts in their fields. However, 2005 study in the journal Nature weighed the accuracy of science articles on Wikipedia against the more scholarly  Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia was found to be nearly as accurate in the 42 articles investigated. Encyclopedia Britannica refuted these claims. When using Wikipedia, or any encyclopedia for that matter, it is wise to verify what you find.

Strengths of Wikipedia

  • Wikipedia is updated frequently. New information can be, and often is, added to the site within minutes. Due to editorial limitations, scholarly encyclopedias are usually updated annually. 
  • Because Wikipedia crowd sourced, there is the potential for a broader authorship than is found in academic publications. 
  • Citations in Wikipedia offer a wider array of materials, including articles and resources that are available for free and online.

Weaknesses of Wikipedia

  • Editors on Wikipedia are not necessarily experts. Authorship on Wikipedia is often anonymous or obscured.
  • Articles are always changing, making them difficult to cite in your research. An article you read today, may look quite different tomorrow.
  • Articles can be vandalized, providing wildly inaccurate information.

Ways to use Wikipedia

  • Use Wikipedia to get a general idea about a topic you are interested in.
  • Wikipedia is great for generating keywords for further searching in CLIO and elsewhere.

  • Check the citations, recommended resources and external links to guide you to more scholarly work.

Scholarly Encyclopedias

Similar to Wikipedia, these resources provide an overview on a given topic, but the authors are experts in the fields they are covering. Below you will find a few general encyclopedia collections with coverage across a wide variety of fields. 

 

[image] Suze Meyers, Feminist Wikipedia, 2016.

Teach with Wikipedia

Basics of Teaching with Wikipedia


The basic premise of teaching with Wikipedia is rather than having students do assignments that only you see, they edit or create articles in Wikipedia around topics that you select to support the learning objectives of your class.

  An assignment could be: 

  • Creating or expanding articles in Wikipedia
  • Translating existing articles in other languages (or into English)
  • Creating media materials to supplement existing articles and posting them to Wikimedia Commons
  • Why is this better than traditional research paper assignments?

Why is this better than traditional research paper assignments?
 

When students select Wikipedia articles to author or edit, they are identifying areas where their research can have real-world impact. Students also learn to distill complex academic research for a general audience. In order for their edits to stick, students are required by Wikipedia’s rigorous citation standards to provide reliable sources that support their research. Working with Wikipedia also improves digital literacy skills; including finding and evaluating quality online content, structuring information for a wide audience on a digital platform, and offering an introduction to the concept of coding language.
 

How do you manage a Wikipedia Classroom?

Wikipedia Education Foundation offers a lot of high quality, and freely available resources to support teachers who are using Wikipedia in their classrooms. These resources include:

  • Customizable  assignment templates and printable resources
  • Training modules that you can assign to students to teach them how to edit
  • Training modules to guide educators in their teaching with Wikipedia
  • Wikipedia Dashboard, which helps you structure the assignment and track classroom progress
  • Wikipedia staff support

For more information, contact me at mwisner@barnard.edu, or head to Wikimedia Education Foundation