Communications in Information Literacy - Volume 16 - Issue 1 - Article 2 - Meet Students Where They Are - Centering Wikipedia in the Classroom

Oct 15, 2026

A classroom norm discourages students from using Wikipedia as unreliable, yet this dismissal limits critical engagement with how Wikipedia knowledge is constructed and shared. The article highlights Wikipedia’s global reach and free, well-sourced information alongside uneven representation, notable gaps involving women and sexual identity, and the dominance of editors from white, Western, male backgrounds. It reports on a two-credit course, Wikipedia and Information Equity, developed in 2019 to examine Wikipedia as both an information source and an editor community for co-creating public knowledge.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages21

Reading Time53 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Course Development and Rationale

Teaching Approach and Student Engagement

Background and Evidence from Research

Communications in Information Literacy | Volume 16 Issue 1 | Article 2 | | --- | --- | | 6-1-2022
Meet Students Where They Are: Centering Wikipedia in the Classroom
Diana E. Park
Oregon State University, [diana.park@oregonstate.edu](diana.park@oregonstate.edu)
Laurie M. Bridges
Oregon State University, [Laurie.Bridges@oregonstate.edu](Laurie.Bridges@oregonstate.edu)
Follow this and additional works at: [https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/comminfolit](https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/comminfolit)
Part of the Higher Education Commons, and the Information Literacy Commons
Let us know how access to this document benefits you. | | Recommended Citation Park, D. E., & Bridges, L. M. (2022) . Meet Students Where They Are: Centering Wikipedia in the Classroom. Communications in Information Literacy, 16 (1), 4–23 . [https://doi.org/10.15760/comminfolit.2022.16.1.2](https://doi.org/10.15760/comminfolit.2022.16.1.2) This open access Innovative Practice is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4 .0) . All documents in PDXScholar should meet accessibility standards. If we can make this document more accessible to you, contact our team. Meet Students Where They Are: Centering Wikipedia in the Classroom Diana E. Park, Oregon State University Laurie M. Bridges,Oregon State University Abstract There is a common classroom refrain,“Don’t use Wikipedia; it’s unreliable.” Unfortunately, this simple dismissal of the world’s largest repository of information fails to engage students in a critical conversation about how knowledge within Wikipedia is constructed and shared. Wikipedia is available in almost 300 languages, it is the top result in most Google searches, and it provides free, well-sourced, information to millions of people every day. However, despite these positives, there is uneven geographic, historical, and cultural representation; there are well-known information gaps related to women, gender, and sexual identity; and the majority of Wikipedia editors are white, Western, men. Engaging students in complex conversations about this information source is one way to improve students’ information literacy skills. In 2019 we decided to meet students where they are by developing a twocredit course, Wikipedia and Information Equity, at Oregon State University that centers and critically examines Wikipedia as an information source and as a community of editors cocreating public knowledge. This article shares our experience teaching this two-credit course three times, with the ultimate goal of providing a template and starting point from which other instructors can develop similar courses and curricula about information equity through the lens of Wikipedia. Keywords: Wikipedia, information equity, information literacy instruction, open pedagogy Innovative Practices edited by Andrea Baer, Carolyn Gamtso, and Merinda McLure Park, D. E., & Bridges, L. M. (2022). Meet students where they are: Centering Wikipedia in the classroom. Communications in Information Literacy, 16(1), 4–23. Meet Students Where They Are: Centering Wikipedia in the Classroom I remember that in almost every class in elementary, middle, and some of high school, I was told that, “Wikipedia is not a reliable source,” and I treated it as such.—Student I always heard it was not to be trusted and that it was a bad source. But I use Wikipedia almost daily now…. I never outright cite a wiki page, but I use it as a sort of starting point.—Student Even though people make Wikipedia into a joke or advise that we don't use the site as a credible source, it's almost always the first link to click on when searching something on the Internet. For me, this makes me want to click on it because it's right there.—Student The popularity of Wikipedia is well-known, yet in the United States teachers, instructorsand professors rarely have in-depth disc

FAQs

Why do the authors argue that dismissing Wikipedia is insufficient for students?

The article explains that simply labeling Wikipedia as unreliable prevents students from having critical conversations about how Wikipedia knowledge is built and shared.

What issues about Wikipedia does the article emphasize?

It points to uneven geographic, historical, and cultural representation, information gaps related to women and gender/sexual identity, and an editor demographic concentrated among white, Western men.

What is the course developed in 2019, and what does it ask students to do?

The course, Wikipedia and Information Equity, critically examines Wikipedia as an information source and as a community of editors co-creating public knowledge; students select and create a Wikipedia article to participate in that process.

Oct 15, 2026

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