Remember when professors began telling us we couldn’t use Wikipedia as a source for research? How many times has your class collectively groaned when someone asked if it was a legitimate source?

The folks over at Wikipedia have heard our cries, it seems, and they’re reaching out to institutions of higher learning.

Nine professors, including two from Georgetown, have agreed to make creating, expanding, and editing Wikipedia pages a part of the work for the courses they teach. The idea come out of Wikipedia’s Public Policy Initiative, launched to improve the free encyclopedia’s coverage of U.S. public policy.

Rochelle Davis, an assistant professor in the SFS, is helping to pioneer the program. Davis plans to have students post literature summaries on Wikipedia, and then use those summaries as “jumping-off point[s]” for future research papers.

According to University Registrar, Davis is teaching two courses this semester: “Introduction to the Arab World” and “Theorizing Culture and Politics“.

“I’m tired of my grad students saying, ‘All we ever do is critique and discuss and deconstruct,’” she said in regards to the changes. “So, I’m going to make them create something that’s not just a thing for me to read; it’s going to go out into the community.”

Does this mean you can use Wikipedia in your footnotes in the near future? Not a chance. But thankfully, it’s a step towards making the site more accurate and informative.

h/t Inside Higher Ed

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 9th, 2010 at 4:00 pm and is filed under News, Vox Populi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.