A brief overview of some of the research about Wikipedia and the benefits of teaching with Wikipedia

1. WIKIPEDIA:
THE SCHOLAR’S
PERSPECTIVE
Dr. Adrianne Wadewitz
Mellon Digital Scholarship Postdoctoral
Fellow
Occidental College

2. WIKI + PEDIA

3. GENDER GAP RESEARCH
• Women interact with a more positive tone on Wikipedia
• Women disproportionately edit arts topics
• Women participate on more community pages
• Women’s edits are reverted more often
• Of highly active Wikipedians, women tend to make more substantial
additions

4. HISTORY RESEARCH
• Wikipedia’s biographies are as accurate as Britannica’s
• Wikipedia’s writing style lacks persuasiveness and coherence
• Wikipedia covers more historical figures than traditional encyclopedias

5. JOURNALIS
M
Tow Center for Digital
Journalism

6. ARTS AND CULTURE
• Profitability of a movie can be predicted based on how active its
Wikipedia article is before the movie’s release
• Postcolonial critiques - #dhpoco and Rewriting Wikipedia

8. WIKI + PEDIA

9. TEACHING WITH
WIKIPEDIA:
WHY?

10. Wikipedia is the most
popular reference work
in the world.
Ever.

11. Wikipedia has
3,000 active editors.

12. TEACHING WITH
WIKIPEDIA:
WHAT?

13. VISUAL LITERACY

14. CRITICAL
THINKING
“Let's call this a matter of
perspective. I am a woman. If
anyone ever shows up in a delivery
room where I am giving birth and
attempts to use "she's lying down" as
a pretext to take photographs without
my permission, I will leap from the
gurney, tackle the SOB, and eat the
camera.” – User:Durova

15. CONSTRUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE

16. xkcd
RESEARCH AND WRITING SKILLS