Wikipedia vs. Academia: An Investigation into the Role of the Internet in Education, with a Special Focus on Wikipedia

Abstract

This paper addresses the issue in a rather hands-on and down-to-earth approach that will allow us to draw some interesting conclusions about the role of open Internet knowledge (such as that which can be found on Wikipedia) for learning and knowledge creation. We will be placing a special focus on academia: for instance, how should universities of applied sciences define "competency based learning" at a time when so many answers can be readily found on Wikipedia? Here the paper does not strive to come to generalized conclusions, but it does strive to find some modest, surprising and -last but not least -also practical answers. The current paper is based on library research, an online analysis of the current Wikipedia website, and interviews with Swiss Wikipedia activists.

Relative Quality and Popularity Evaluation of Multilingual Wikipedia Articles

“…These platforms allow Internet users to create content without special technical skills. Despite the fact that even anonymous users can participate in content addition, information in these knowledge bases can be not only abundant but also trustworthy [1].…”

La Wikipedia en las facultades de educación españolas. Diseño y validación de herramientas diagnósticas cuantitativas y cualitativas

“…Existen pocos estudios realizados desde un punto de vista cualitativo, principalmente utilizando focus group (Brailas, 2011), entrevistas estructuradas (Öztürk, 2012) y semi-estructuradas (Staub y Hodel, 2016) y muestreo teórico (Brailas, Koskinas, Dafermos y Alexias, 2015). En pocos casos encontramos la utilización de ambos métodos en una investigación, tanto cualitativos como cuantitativos (Selwyn y Gorard, 2016;Stvilia, Twidale, Gasser y Smith, 2008), o utilizando los cuestionarios para aplicar ambas técnicas (Eijkman, 2010).…”

Disciplines and the Categorization of Scientific Truth

“…The establishment of Wikipedia is regarded as a challenge to traditional hierarchies of knowledge (Yam 2012). Unlike traditional encyclopedias, initially anyone, regardless of credentials, could contribute knowledge to it by writing and editing articles (later, this policy was slightly changed, restricting certain users and applying some sort of hierarchy, see for example Staub & Hodel 2016). This led to the creation of the largest and most popular encyclopedia that ever existed but it also led to concerns in respect to the accuracy and importance of the knowledge available in Wikipedia.…”