By Cassidy Villeneuve, originally published on the Wiki Education blog
This term, Dr. David Webster is trying something new. “This year’s textbook [is] written by previous years’ students,” he announced over Twitter, much to the excitement of his followers.
Dr. Webster has taught his students at Bishop University how to contribute to Wikipedia as a classroom assignment for a few terms now. In his Spring 2016 course, Memory, truth and reconciliation in the developing world, students created new Wikipedia articles on a variety of course-related topics, including Truth and Reconciliation in Cambodia and the International Commission of Investigation on Human Rights Violations in Rwanda since October 1, 1990. 16 of these articles, along with 4 from a 2014 course, are included in a new textbook resource for Dr. Webster’s students to utilize this term and beyond.
Dr. Webster wrote about the experience of having students write for their future classmates back in 2017. The experience provided students with research, writing, and digital literacy skills – as well as a new found confidence. “Now that they are content providers,” he writes, “they won’t look at Wikipedia the same way.”
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