Wikipedia is now unquestionably the world’s most used repository of historical knowledge, heavily relied on by students, print and broadcast media, members of the public and indeed academics.
Yet university History departments still tend to teach as if it didn’t exist. In this session- Charles West from the Department of History at The University of Sheffield offers his reflections on an MA module set up to bridge the divide by integrating live-editing of Wikipedia pages on particular topics into the course assessment.
This session discusses the pitfalls, challenges and advantages that such hybrid courses bring with them - ranging from dealing with Wikipedia’s ‘neutrality’ policy, global copyright restrictions, the defensiveness of long-standing anonymous Wikipedia editors, and the risk to student confidence posed by potential page reversion, as well as the rewards of seeing their work make a global impact.