Level: Grades 7 to 9
Duration: 2 hours (excluding assessment and evaluation tasks)
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Overview
Students are introduced to Wikipedia, the user-edited online encyclopedia, and given an overview of its strengths and weaknesses as a research source. They are taught how to evaluate the reliability of a Wikipedia article and then attempt to improve an existing article.
Learning Outcomes
Students will:
- learn how to evaluate a Wikipedia article for reliability
- learn how to effectively use Wikipedia as a research source
- assess the reliability of sources
- state and defend an opinion
- research a topic and publish their research
- contribute to a public debate
Preparation and Materials
Photocopy the following handouts:
Procedure
Background: What is Wikipedia?
Begin by asking students where they to look for sources when they're assigned a research project. List students' answers on the board, and use follow-up questions to get them to give more specific answers (for instance, if they say "library," ask them to specify which library they mean; if they say "Internet," ask them which sites or services they use).
Once you have assembled a list of sources, ask students which of them they use most often. Most likely you will find that Internet sources, and particularly Wikipedia, are the most popular with students. (Should this not be the case, you can tell the class that according to the Media Awareness Network study Young Canadians in a Wired World, Wikipedia is the favourite research source of Canadian students nationwide.)
Ask students what they know about Wikipedia. How is it like, and unlike, other encyclopedias? (Similar: it collects articles about a wide variety of sources, is written by multiple authors, and is often used as a research source for people looking for general information. Dissimilar: it is only available online [some other encyclopedias are available online, but most originated in print], it is available for free, and anyone can edit an article.)
Make sure that the last point in that list –anyone can edit an article –is included in your list.
Reliable Sources
Ask students what they think it means to say that a source is reliable. With the class, develop a definition of the term reliableas it relates to information sources. Make sure that it includes the following ideas:
- Accurate: the information it gives you is correct.
- Complete: it gives you a full picture of the subject, not just one part or one side of the story.
- Transparent: it's not trying to convince you of a point of view (or if it is, it's open about it).
- Trustworthy: you can expect the above to be true for each article and each time you use it.
Distribute the handout Knowing What's What and What's Not: The 5 Ws (and 1 "H") of Cyberspace and go through it with the students.
Using the Knowing What's What and What's Not: The 5 Ws (and 1 "H") of Cyberspace handout, have the class evaluate Wikipedia for reliability. (If possible, do this with a live Internet connection; if not you can rely on your students' knowledge of Wikipedia.) The site will do well for "Why" (it's a very efficient way of getting information) and neutrally for "Where" (its address ends in .org, which says little or nothing). Evaluating it for "Who," "What," and "When," however, will be difficult: it should be quickly obvious to students that each article needs to be evaluated independently, and even in that case the three questions are problematic because Wikipedia articles have multiple authors and are constantly changing.
Wikipedia as a Research Source
Explain to students that this is why many teachers are reluctant to let students use Wikipedia as a source: it's difficult to judge an article by traditional standards, since each article has many authors and may have been altered any number of times by people who may or may not be experts in the topic.
Ask students if they think this means that Wikipedia is a generally unreliable source. (Most will likely say no –they still see it as being reliable overall.) Tell them that because of the issues around Wikipedia, they need to do a bit of work if they're going to use a Wikipedia article as a source –they need to show that each article they use is reliable.
Distribute the handout Wikipedia 101 and go through it with the class:
Wikipedia Principles
Discuss the section on Wikipedia principles. What does Wikipedia mean when it calls itself an encyclopedia? What is meant by keeping a "neutral point of view," and how does it affect Wikipedia's reliability? How are the principles that Wikipedia is free content and that users should assume good faith relevant to the question of reliability?
Cleanup Banners
What issues do the cleanup banners generally deal with? Are cleanup banners a reliable guide to an article's accuracy? If there are no cleanup banners, does that mean you can assume the article is accurate?
References
Why would the references in a Wikipedia article be assumed to be more accurate than the article itself? Which is better to use in a research project, the Wikipedia article or the sources it refers to? (Remind students that the sources themselves have to be assessed for reliability using the 5Ws.)
Rating Scale
What criteria does the rating scale use for evaluating an article? Is the rating scale enough to judge if an article is reliable?
Discussion Page
What information about the reliability of a Wikipedia article can be obtained from the Discussion page?
Edit Page
What information about the reliability of a Wikipedia article can be obtained from the Edit page?
Assessment Task: Evaluating a Wikipedia Article
Have students:
Evaluation Task: Improving a Wikipedia Article
This task may be completed solo or in groups, at your discretion. In order to complete it, students will need a Wikipedia login; they may do this at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin. If you prefer, you may create a single login for the entire class to use (an e-mail address is required to create a user account).
Have students select a Wikipedia article. It must not be an A or FA-class article. It should be on a topic with which they are already familiar.
Using the Wikipedia Reliability Worksheet and Wikipedia 101 handouts, have students identify what problems the article may have.
Have students research the topic of the article (using sources other than Wikipedia!) to try to improve it. Remind students to keep track of where they found their information so they can provide sources.
Have students make edits to the article to improve it.
Have students submit to you:
- The original article
- Their research on the topic
- The article with their revisions
- A paragraph or two identifying the changes they made and explaining why they made them.
Optional: Have students return to their article a week or a month later and see what the reaction to their changes has been: Have they been reverted? Have they been altered? Have they been added to?
Optional: Have students submit their article to a relevant Assessment Team (a list is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:
WikiProject_assessments) to see if it has been improved enough to increase its status.
