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Each student created or substantially edited a Wikipedia entry, recorded the changes made by others, and then produced a paper and presentation. The class also collaborated on a local landmark controversy entry. Readings on Wikipedia’s procedures and critical interpretations shaped reflections. Results suggested students found Wikipedia mostly reliable and useful and remained at an intermediate level of personal epistemology.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/volume-8-issue-1-wikipedia-and-the-wisdom-of-crowds-a-student-project/598794/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/volume-8-issue-1-wikipedia-and-the-wisdom-of-crowds-a-student-project/598794.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"awa","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-11-03","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":19},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"How did students test Wikipedia’s reliability in the course project?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"Students either created new Wikipedia entries or made significant edits to existing ones, tracked others’ changes, and then wrote papers and delivered presentations reflecting on what they learned.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"What was the instructor’s initial expectation about Wikipedia?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"The instructor expected students to begin with an uncritical view of Wikipedia’s reliability and later recognize Wikipedia’s fundamental untrustworthiness.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What did the study find about students’ judgments of Wikipedia?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"Student work showed skepticism at the start and indicated that Wikipedia was mostly reliable and useful, with students feeling more confident about its usefulness after learning how editing and crowd management work.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},598794,1792087611,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":19,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":129,"read_time":144},3985747858093,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_3d24733baf745e90a7e4bdd5f77d97b2","Volume 8, Issue 1, 2014  \n[ARTICLE]  \nWIKIPEDIA AND THE WISDOM OF CROWDS  \nA student project  \nGreg Barnhisel Duquesne University  \nMarcia Rapchak Duquesne University  \nABSTRACT  \nStudents in a senior English class examined the question of whether the ‘wisdom of experts’ or‘the wisdom of crowds’ is more reliable and useful in a writing course by engaging in a parallel Wikipedia project. Each student either created a new entry or made significant changes to an existing Wikipedia entry, tracked changes to their contributions, and then wrote a paper and gave a presentation reflecting on what they learned; simultaneously, the class as a whole collaborated on a Wikipedia entry about a local landmark’s controversy. Background readings familiarizing students with Wikipedia's procedures, as well as critical and philosophical interpretations of Wikipedia's significance, provided students perspective on Wikipedia’s utility. While the instructor expected students to enter with an uncritical understanding of Wikipedia's reliability and then to see Wikipedia's fundamental untrustworthiness, students’work demonstrated that they entered the class skeptical about Wikipedia and that their projects showed them that Wikipedia was mostly reliable and useful. In this experiment, students showed that they were at an intermediate stage of “personal epistemology” and still had not achieved the level of reflective judgment sought by the school’s information-literacy competency goals.  \nBarnhisel & Rapchak, Wikipedia & the Wisdom of Crowds  \nINTRODUCTION  \nEncouraging students to evaluate information sources not only for their content but also for the context in and for which they are created (author, purpose, audience, etc.) requires advanced critical thinking skills that can only be mastered with time and practice. At Duquesne University, a senior-level writing course taught by the first author, a tenured faculty member in the English Department, attempted to facilitate  \nsuch evaluation skills through a project in which students  \ncreated or modified a Wikipedia entry and tracked the  \nmodifications made by others to the entry, while they also  \nexplored the concept of the ‘wisdom of crowds’ in contrast to the ‘wisdom of experts’ through the course readings and discussions. The goal of this assignment was for students to see that, given the crowd-sourced and biased information provided for mass consumption in Wikipedia, expertcreated materials would be superior to use for research purposes. However, in student writings, reflections, and interviews about the course designed and conducted by the first author and the second author (a university librarian specializing in information literacy), students indicated that the ease with which Wikipedia satisfices their information needs and their own new understanding of the editing and crowd management of the site made them feel more confident about the usefulness of Wikipedia. The students’ responses, particularly their comfort with the contingent nature of Wikipedia and their willingness to dismiss “expert” information, surprised the researchers who expected  \nCommunications in Information Literacy 8(1), 2014  \nadvanced undergraduate students to identify expert information as superior in most cases. Two possible explanations arise. The students may still be at an intermediate stage of what researchers call “personal epistemology” (Swanson, 2006) and thus the information-literacy curriculum of the university and the English Department should be assessed and improved. Alternately, the researchers themselves, both steeped in an academic epistemology that values credentialed expertise above all, fail to see that  \nWikipedia’s reliance on the “wisdom of crowds” is indeed superior in many respects and that students appreciate that contingency and contextuality better than their instructors.  \nLITERATURE REVIEW  \nFor many instructors, particularly composition instructors, students' use of Wikipedia in class assig","cbCainMy5aj4rChF","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCainMy5aj4rChF","pdf",430283,15,"English","# Introduction\n# Literature Review","[{\"question\":\"How did students test Wikipedia’s reliability in the course project?\",\"answer\":\"Students either created new Wikipedia entries or made significant edits to existing ones, tracked others’ changes, and then wrote papers and delivered presentations reflecting on what they learned.\"},{\"question\":\"What was the instructor’s initial expectation about Wikipedia?\",\"answer\":\"The instructor expected students to begin with an uncritical view of Wikipedia’s reliability and later recognize Wikipedia’s fundamental untrustworthiness.\"},{\"question\":\"What did the study find about students’ judgments of Wikipedia?\",\"answer\":\"Student work showed skepticism at the start and indicated that Wikipedia was mostly reliable and useful, with students feeling more confident about its usefulness after learning how editing and crowd management work.\"}]","Volume 8 - Issue 1 - WIKIPEDIA AND THE WISDOM OF CROWDS - A student project | PDF",38]