Raising the Stakes: Writing About Witchcraft on Wikipedia
Authors | Elizabeth Ann Pollard |
|---|---|
Publication date | 2008 |
Links | Original |
Raising the Stakes: Writing About Witchcraft on Wikipedia - scientific work related to Wikipedia quality published in 2008, written by Elizabeth Ann Pollard.
Overview
WlKIALITY, Wikimania, WikiGnomes, WikiTrolls, Wikibots, Wikipediaholism... all these neologisms have been coined in recent years to talk about Wikipedia, the online, open-source encyclopedia.1 Comedy Central's Steven Colbert, in a recent interview with Wikipedia's founder Jimmy Wales, quipped, "Wikipedia is the first place Author go for knowledge, or when Author want to create it."2 As professors, authors have all encountered this resource, either in student footnotes or as the first hit in own "googling." While the knee-jerk reaction among many educators is to discourage sharply student use of Wikipedia, the goal of the project described in this article was to craft a pedagogical approach that incorporated student-contribution to Wikipedia in order to teach History methods students how to be historians. In this project, History 400W students contributed to or created new Wikipedia entries on witchcraft and magic accusations from the Greco-Roman period through Colonial America.3 Student learning goals included researching and writing about a specific historical topic, recognizing the relative value of various resources for historical research (including Wikipedia), contributing to high-stakes historical discourse, understanding and constructing historiography, and sharing the process of that discourse with peers. My rubric-based assessment and student survey responses demonstrated that supervised student participation on
