The Student as Producer: How UBC Courses are Transforming Learning by Contributing To and Improving Wikipedia
Patrick Earley and Rose Marie Déchaine
Date & Time: Wednesday, October 29, 11am – 11:50am
Location: Lillooet Room, 3rd Floor, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
Description:
The student as producer pedagogical model emphasizes the role of the student as collaborators in the production of knowledge. In this model, the university’s approaches to learning and research are closer aligned; for example, students, similar to researchers, are asked to share their work with others and not just their immediate instructor or advisor. Some UBC instructors have worked with the Wikimedia Foundation to incorporate projects into their curriculum that are shared potentially with millions of people worldwide. The Wikimedia Foundation’s statement of purpose is to “is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally.”
As part of its mission, it hosts Wikipedia, the open access, free content encyclopedia that contains more than 33 million articles in 287 languages and the Wikimedia Commons, which hosts more than 22 million openly licensed media files. In 2010, it launched the Wikipedia Education Program, aimed at enabling educators and students to “share free knowledge by contributing to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects in an academic setting.” This session will explore how UBC courses are creating authentic learning experiences by contributing and improving Wikipedia. It will feature speakers from both UBC and the Wikimedia Foundation who will share strategies, mistakes, and best practices for creating and delivering such projects.
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