The prevailing long-term trend in university history instruction--especially when one considers the rise of the historical seminar in the nineteenth century and the source-method of teaching in the twentieth--has been towards teaching methods of analysis. That is to say, by reading documents and sources, students can learn a way of looking at the…

Internet users worldwide turn to Wikipedia, the web-based, open-content encyclopedia, for basic information on all subjects. There is much to concern an academic audience in the encyclopedia's prominence: bases for evidence are different from those used by scholars; no expertise is required to edit an article; the site is a target for…

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that is written and edited solely by volunteers who have no qualifying credentials save an internet connection. With over 3.1 million articles in English, Wikipedia is indeed a formidable reference web site. From a research standpoint, Wikipedia is both the sinner and the saint: because anyone can make…

Many history professors have been reluctant to authorize students to use Wikipedia in their classwork because they do not fully trust the open source encyclopedia. But as increasing numbers of scholars and teachers work with Wikipedia, its influence becomes undeniable. In this article, the author describes how Wikipedia works and how she made…

Wikiality, Wikimania, WikiGnomes, Wikitrolls, Wikibots, Wikipediaholism... all these neologisms have been coined in recent years to talk about Wikipedia, the online, open-source encyclopedia. In this article, the author describes a project that aims to craft a pedagogical approach that incorporated student-contribution to Wikipedia in order to…