ARTICLE pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc
Using Wikipedia To Develop Students’ Critical Analysis Skills in the Undergraduate Chemistry Curriculum Eric Martineau* and Louise Boisvert College Jean-de-Brebeuf, 3200 Chemin de la C^ ote Ste-Catherine, Montreal, Quebec H3T 1C1 Canada ABSTRACT: Wikipedia represents a revolution in the way knowledge is communicated and a potential threat to traditional encyclopedias. Wikipedia is widely used as a reference in academic assignments. Unfortunately, for the neophyte, it may be hard to assess the completeness and the accuracy of a contribution to Wikipedia. In this article, we describe an assignment to show students how to read a Wikipedia scientific article critically and how to correct it appropriately, if necessary. The assignment has proven to be beneficial to the students while demonstrating how to analyze, understand, and write a contribution to Wikipedia. KEYWORDS: First-Year Undergraduate/General, Interdisciplinary/Multidisciplinary, Communication/Writing, Internet/ Web-Based Learning, Enrichment/Review Materials, Nonmajor Courses, Student-Centered Learning
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in both the online version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and Wikipedia. Overall, the study showed that the surveyed content of both encyclopedias was of similar quality and accuracy.8 10 Nevertheless, even the best reference work or peer-reviewed articles written by experts in their fields may include errors of fact or omission in their content. If this situation occurs with reference books, what about an article written by several anonymous contributors (not necessarily experts)? Usually, most comments are reviewed and either accepted or rejected by the editors, normally within a short time (whereas those in a printed encyclopedia are still present until the next edition). Nevertheless, even with the large number of volunteer editors reviewing changes of the Wikipedia content, there may be mistakes being inserted and published online temporarily. This is without taking into consideration that the non-English content of Wikipedia may be less accurate than the English version because the editors and readers are not as numerous. As chemistry professors, we think that it is necessary to warn students about the potential dangers of using Wikipedia solely as a reference. All resources, whether traditional or online, should be treated with caution. Nonetheless, because Wikipedia is here to stay, we should use this innovative tool while being aware of its strengths and weaknesses.
ince its inception, the World Wide Web has significantly altered our methods of retrieving and publishing information. On one hand, information has become more readily accessible for everyone; however, on the other hand, its reliability has to be constantly questioned and verified. Among the new features on the Web 2.0, the use of wikis (an application allowing anyone to freely edit its content) has grown in importance and popularity. Inevitably, the use of the wiki in science classes has been implemented to stimulate student collaboration online.1 In 2001, a “Web-based, free-content encyclopaedia project”2 named Wikipedia was created. Unlike traditional printed encyclopedias, the articles, based on cited references, are written by volunteers around the world willing to contribute to this democratic collective project.3 The primary objective of the project is to “distribute the world’s knowledge to every human being on the planet, in the language of its choice, using a free license which allows modifying, adapting, re-using, and re-distributing this knowledge”.4 In 2009, Wikipedia was the fourth most visited Web site worldwide with up to 65 million visitors every month.2
’ THE IMPACT OF WIKIPEDIA ON TEACHING AND LEARNING Although this Web site represents a revolution on the Internet, it began to raise concerns for professors and teachers. For many students, the openly editable content of Wikipedia became a primary source of information for assignments and research.5 Often without further verification, articles on Wikipedia were cited and cases of plagiarism were reported. The situation came to a critical juncture when certain U.S. universities forbade their students to cite Wikipedia as a reference in their work.6,7 For students this restriction may be frustrating, thus it is the professor’s responsibility to explain the reasons behind this decision. Social science topics are often vigorously debated on Wikipedia and have a considerable history of modifications. To a lesser extent, exact sciences such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology are also being debated and modified. This phenomenon was examined thoroughly when the journal Nature published a study comparing the content of 42 science articles Copyright r 2011 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
’ PURPOSE Most students born during or after the 1980s grew up with computers. These “net generation” students11 are used to surf the Internet to retrieve information. It is the educator’s role to help the students develop a critical assessment about the information provided on the Internet. The main objective of this assignment was to have students read and analyze general chemistry articles from the English or the French versions of Wikipedia, to find reliable sources of information to verify their content, and to revise or write on the topic in a rigorous and Published: May 10, 2011 769
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Table 1. Students’ Responses on the Wikipedia Assignment Anonymous Survey questionsa
strongly agree
agree
1
Did this assignment help you to better understand the topic covered?
8
3
2
Did the reviewing process help to understand the importance writing a structured text and
5
5
disagree
strongly disagree
1
using a proper terminology in chemistry? 3
Did the reviewing process help to improve the overall scientific quality of your texts?
11
4
Did you learn something new about Wikipedia (organization, rules, author’s rights, etc)?
9
5
Are you proud of the contribution you made to the collaborative knowledge?
8
6
Would you recommend this assignment to the future cohorts of students?
11
7
After completing this assignment and in the context of your topic, do you trust the content of Wikipedia?
1
2 3 8
2
a Eleven out of the 14 students in the class took the survey. b Response categories for question 7 were “yes, totally”, “yes, but I would verify with another reference”, “more or less”, and “not at all”.
systematic fashion while respecting the editing boundaries and style of Wikipedia.
’ ASSIGNMENT The professor selects a series of articles published on Wikipedia appropriate for topics covered in an introductory-level undergraduate general chemistry course. A student assignment is given to read the Wikipedia articles and to find errors or missing information based on their knowledge and reference books. From their findings, the students write an essay to improve the published content and to contribute to the improvement of Wikipedia. To do the assignment, a group of four students choose four Wikipedia articles selected by the professor. There are two possibilities for each article: (i) writing an entire article on a given topic if none existed or (ii) correcting the errors found in a published article or adding content to an incomplete article. All student reports are required to draw upon at least three reference books or scientific papers. Web sites are allowed, but only if they are reliable sources of information (e.g., a university research group Web site). As a guide for students, the assignment is divided into five steps: • A search to answer questions pertaining to different aspects of the Wikipedia Web site, namely, the purpose and the rules of Wikipedia, how to determine reliable sources of information,12 the verifiability rule of added content,13 authors’ rights with respect to text and images included in an article,14 and the style15 required for a publishable text. • A written outline for each topic including the identification of errors in a published text, a proposed contribution, and a list of preliminary references to support their texts. • Upon approval of their outline, a draft is submitted to the professor for a preliminary round of corrections. At this point, most corrections are about the quality of scientific content, the clarity and structure of the text, and writing style (including grammar and orthography). Their text had to be submitted through the Turnitin Web site16 to avoid plagiarism. • When returned to the student, the text is corrected according to the comments provided. The second version of the text is then returned to the professor who decides whether the article is publishable. • Upon approval of their revised texts, students import them onto the Wikipedia Web site.
’ OVERALL BENEFITS The main objective of this assignment was to encourage the student to find reliable sources of information and use them to write on a topic related to chemistry in a rigorous and clear fashion. We hoped that this assignment would be a source of motivation for the students as their work would not only be rewarded by an appropriate grade but would also contribute to the worldwide knowledge through the application of the skills they acquired. The benefits of this assignment to the students were • Developing their analytical skills in identifying errors in an article. • Developing their abilities to write a scientific text on chemistry, other than the traditional laboratory reports. • Learning how to search for literary references in traditional ways, not only on the Internet. • Allowing students to realize the importance of choosing a proper terminology and writing their essays in a systematic fashion. • Respecting authors’ rights on images published on the Internet. In certain instances, the students had to create their own images. • Giving students an opportunity to read more thoroughly about a general chemistry topic presented in the classroom (and discovering there is much more to it). • Providing an opportunity to publish an article in a medium with its own restrictions (the professor serving as intermediary to improve their essays throughout the “submission process”). ’ RESULTS The class of 14 students produced 17 essays. Out of these 17 essays, 12 were publication worthy on Wikipedia. Upon completion of this assignment, an anonymous survey was distributed to the students. From the results shown in Table 1, this assignment was perceived as a positive and enriching experience in which the students learned more than just writing a scientific essay. It is clear from the answers to questions 1 3 that the students understood that the overall process from reading an article to writing or correcting one takes several steps. The students learned from the procedure but also learned about the topic they wrote on. Even if the topic was covered in the general chemistry course, this assignment led the students to explore it in more depth. From answers to question 4, most students learned something about Wikipedia. This was a surprise because these 770
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students are from the net generation. While they were learning about chemistry, they also learned the internal workings of Wikipedia, a tool that most people use but not everyone knows exactly how it works. A satisfying result was that all students were proud of their contribution and found this assignment to be positive and wished that it would be repeated (see the responses to questions 5 and 6) Finally, the students were asked how much they trust the scientific content of their selected topic on Wikipedia. Most of these results correlated with those observed by authors who edited Wikipedia based on graduate-level course content.17 Question 7 shows a careful response of the students: out of the eleven students, the majority trust the content of Wikipedia but in the future, they would further verify with, at least, another reference. These results suggest that Wikipedia is an excellent place to start looking for up-to-date information on a given topic. However, a second source confirming this information seems to be required in some instances (which for a scientist is a good habit to develop, even when it is a published reference or a peer-reviewed article).
(8) Fatally Flawed. Refuting the recent study on encyclopaedic accuracy by the journal Nature. http://corporate.britannica.com/britannica_nature_response.pdf (accessed February 2011). (9) Giles, J. Nature 2005, 438, 900–901. (10) Nature 2006, 440, 582; doi: 10.1038/440582b. (11) Educating the Net Generation; Oblinger, D. G., Oblinger, J. L., Eds.; EDUCAUSE: Washington, DC, 2005; p 264. (12) Main page for identifying reliable sources of information. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources (accessed February 2011). (13) Main page for the Verifiability rule of Wikipedia. http://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability (accessed February 2011). (14) Main page for citing sources on Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources (accessed February 2011). (15) Main page for Manual of style on Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style. (accessed February 2011). (16) Turnitin. www.turnitin.com (accessed December 2009). (17) Moy, C. L.; Locke, J. R.; Coppola, B. P.; McNeil, A. J. J. Chem. Educ. 2010, 87, 1159–1162.
’ CONCLUSION The main objective of this assignment was to have students critically read a scientific article on Wikipedia, add content to it or correct it, if necessary, and write in a style that reflects Wikipedia rules. This assignment was perceived as a positive experience in which the students learned more than just writing on a chemistry topic. The students felt that Wikipedia was, overall, a great source of information; however, its content had to be used with caution sometimes. This assignment also seems to correspond to the interests of the net generation.
’ AUTHOR INFORMATION Corresponding Author
*E-mail:
[email protected].
’ ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors thank Richard Guay for stimulating discussions and group 01 of the General Chemistry course who participated in this assignment during the winter 2009 semester. A special mention goes to Chrisanell Llamas Salazar for her extra efforts in the preparation of Wikipedia texts in both English and French. ’ REFERENCES (1) Elliott, E. W., III; Fraiman, A. J. Chem. Educ. 2010, 87, 54–57. (2) Wikipedia About. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: About (accessed February 2011). (3) Foglia, M. Wikipedia: Media de la connaissance democratique?; ditions: Limoges, 2008. FYP E (4) Wikipedia Foundation. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/ Wikimedia_Quarto/1/Fr-2 (accessed February 2011). (5) Cohen, N. A History Department Bans Citing Wikipedia as a Research Source, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/21/education/ 21wikipedia.html?ex=1189742400&en=6503bd3caf5d4599&ei=5070 (accessed February 2011). (6) Gourdain, P.; O’Kelly, F.; Roman-Amat, B.; Soulas, D.; von Droste zu H€ulshoff, T. La Revolution Wikipedia: Les encyclopedies vontelles mourir? Milles et une Nuits editors, 2007, pp 30 32. (7) 7 things you should know about Wikipedia. http://net.educause. edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7026.pdf (accessed February 2011). 771
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