Wikis in Contemporary Society
A Wiki is an online web site that can be edited by any user, of which its contents are generally meant to educate readers. The popular online encyclopaedia website, Wikipedia.org, took advantage of this and created a website composed entirely of Wikis. Wikipedia has become a central resource for Internet users since its entries do not have to be approved and they can be edited by any reader (Lundin, 2008), therefore it is a popular website for researching topics. However, for the very same reason that they are user-edited, many people question the validity of Wikis as a source of information because they can easily be abused and can supply the reader with false information.
In the article, “Wikis and Constructivism in Secondary Social Studies: Fostering a Deeper Understanding”, Heafner and Friedman (2008) suggest that Wikis have the potential to give students the ability to become active contributors to the Internet, and in turn, reform traditional learning environments. The study evaluated the effects of student-created Wikis through the measures of student learning in the long and short term, student engagement, and cognitive benefits. It studied the effects between students that used Wikis and students who had learned the same content through a teacher’s direction. The data that resulted from the study suggests that the use of Wikis made possible the shift from traditional teacher instructional approaches to student-oriented learning. The authors also found that this resulted in an increase in student self-efficiency and motivation. Several months after the study, interviews with the students that used Wikis found that they had greater content reservation and understanding than the students who had learned from a teacher. In short, the study found that the long-term value of Wikis had a positive impact on student understanding by helping them link content and develop a deeper understanding through visualization of the chronology of events.
I personally feel that Wikis, for the most part, have a positive effect on our society. When writing a school paper, Wikipedia or any other Wiki websites for that matter, would not be my first choice in researching topics and it is most likely not the first choice of others as well. In fact, I do not believe I have ever used a Wiki for writing a paper, and it is unlikely that I will ever do so for this purpose. Some have even gone as far as banning Wikis from being cited, such as institutions like Middlebury College, whose history department did just that (Lundin, 2008). However, Wikis are a good way to look up fast facts since you get exactly what you are looking for, so long as the information is taken in with discretion.
One possible way that Wikis may be overcome is by an advanced type of search engine, one that collects the most relevant data from only credible sources and puts them nicely together on a webpage for the user. This idea may be possible but it would be extremely difficult to implement because of the sheer amount of information that is available on the Internet. In terms of education, Wikis may be reversed in that all major post-secondary institutions or even secondary schools could ban any Wiki sites from being used, just like some institutions have already done. If Wikis cannot be used for educational purposes, then there will be little reason to maintain these websites.
Better yet, Wikis can be improved upon, specifically Wikipedia. As it stands, users are able to go on a Wikipedia page and edit it with just a click. If there were some sort of system in place to ensure that a page can only be saved when the changes made to it are approved, then we would have a web page that is created for the community, by the community, and the authenticity of its ideas hold true. Who will the people that approve these changes be you might ask? These people must be trusted experts from the specific field of study, so each expert may manage multiple Wikis, of subjects of their expertise. This means that there must be a board of editors that have to maintain all Wikis, and therein lies the problem. They must take the time, and an emphasis on time, to maintain these Wikis. It’s not likely that they will do it for free either, but who knows, maybe this type of service will be available in the future. Until then, the amount of Wikis will continue to grow, and will do so for a long time.
References:
Heafner, T., & Friedman, A. (2008, September). Wikis and Constructivism in Secondary Social Studies: Fostering a Deeper Understanding. Computers in the Schools, 25(3/4), 288-302. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier Database.
Lundin, R. (2008, December). Teaching with Wikis: Toward a Networked Pedagogy. Computers & Composition, 25(4), 432-448. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier Database.
Matias, M. (2003, November). What is a Wiki? Retrieved from http://www.sitepoint.com/article/what-is-a-wiki/
