Professors should learn how to utilize Wikipedia

Even though professors might not like it or let students use it, Wikipedia is making a comeback in some university classrooms - but not as a source. Instead, some professors are having their students write articles for the popular encyclopedia Web site as a replacement for term papers or other traditional assignments.

An article from Agence France-Presse said that teachers in the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, have started requiring their students to write well-researched articles as graded assignments in their courses.

Overall, this seems like an excellent program. Wikipedia, whether professors like it or not, has become one of the largest repositories of knowledge in the world, with more than 10 million articles in 253 languages hosted on the site. Unfortunately, it also has a reputation as an inaccurate and academically unsuitable means for acquiring information, especially as a source for papers and other projects.

Programs like the one at UBC could help to change that paradigm and make the site a resource not only for research but also for encouraging students to contribute to the aggregate knowledge of the Internet-based community.

Studies conducted by the science journal "Nature" found Wikipedia to be about as accurate as the Encyclopedia Britannica on most issues, and the site's creators have said that Wikipedia has always strived for greater accuracy. Programs such as the one at the UBC could help Wikipedia reach these goals.

That does not mean that Wikipedia is, or ever will be, an acceptable academic source. Most professors bar traditional encyclopedias from research reports as well, and tales of large-scale errors on Wikipedia pages have sparked controversy in the past.

There are also some issues with the content itself: When a student writes a paper, she writes it entirely by herself. Wikipedia offers the possibility of group writing, as well as the fact that errors or erroneous information could be added to the page over time, things that could not happen with a traditional paper.

Given the rates of vandalism and the fact that many controversial pages on Wikipedia are often restricted to administrators only, it could be that this type of assignment is not right for issues that might run into problems with controversy.

Additionally, some students have had their work deleted by Wikipedia's administrators because their articles do not meet with the site's notability guidelines, something that could be a problem if a student chooses to write about a topic that might not be covered extensively in the media or isn't as well known as other issues.

Despite the problems, these assignments seem to be right in principle. Wikipedia has already proven itself to be a valuable resource in terms of a collection of general knowledge and interest pieces.

These programs seem to be pushing this further, though, and trying to take the site from a general-use encyclopedia to a valuable tool for academics and teachers. And while the site might never reach the level of academic notability it strives for, these professor-assigned articles are pushing it in the right direction.