Do academics, both directly and indirectly involved with healthcare, have a moral mandate to ensure that Wikipedia has the most accurate, up-to-date and understandable information? From the perspective of a physician who is also a long-time Wikipedia editor, the ethical, moral, and power dynamics of the medical community's interaction with…

The paper assesses the political credibility of three encyclopaedias (Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopedia of Marxism and Wikipedia) in relation to three chosen topics (Friedrich Engels's biography; the political philosophy of fascism; and, the discipline of social psychology). I was interested in discerning how entries are represented and…

Based on a study of observable changes author-users made to three Wikipedia articles, this article contends that Wikipedia supports notions of revision, collaboration, and authority that writing studies purports to value, while also extending our understanding of the production of knowledge in public spaces. It argues that Wikipedia asks us to…

As students move from writing personal essays to writing formal academic texts in English, they face several new challenges. Writing tasks in higher education often require students to draw upon outside sources and to adopt the styles and genres of academic discourse. They must conduct research, summarize and paraphrase, cite sources, adopt genre…

Drawing on experiences in his social studies classroom, Houman Harouni evaluates both the challenges and possibilities of helping high school students develop critical research skills. The author describes how he used Wikipedia to design classroom activities that address issues of authorship, neutrality, and reliability in information gathering.…