Giving Psychology Away: Implementation of Wikipedia Editing in an Introductory Human Development Course
To test the feasibility of Wikipedia editing in large undergraduate psychology classrooms, we engaged groups of students in a large introductory level Human Development course (N 110) in editing Wikipedia articles to improve psychology related content. Students attended in class workshops and received online support to develop skills. They demonstrated considerable engagement with the assignment, averaging 14.5 posts to Wikipedia over a span of 50 days. Most connected Wikipedia editing with other course materials and reported benefits of peer evaluating classmates' work. Most reported beneficial interactions with Wikipedians in the public domain, who flagged and/or reverted edits of dubious quality, while correcting errors. Students demonstrated improvements in information literacy and Wikipedia knowledge, with gains in locating and evaluating the quality of source materials.