WIKIPEDIA VS. ACADEMIA AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE ROLE OF THE INTERNET IN EDUCATION, WITH A SPECIAL FOCUS ON COLLABORATIVE EDITING TOOLS SUCH AS WIKIPEDIA

Abstract

Globalization has become a reality: many basic manufacturing tasks went from the Western world to China, and companies which could not cope with the ever quicker innovation pace had to close their doors. Global information, innovation and knowledge exchange have become key factors for success, and the Internet has become a major driving force behind the economical, technological and social changes which we have seen in the past years: if a company has been cut away from the Internet, in most of the cases it simply cannot work. In short, the Internet has changed the way how economies work. And the same goes for people, too: work places look different nowadays, and knowledge workers such as engineers or scientists need both a computer and an open Internet connection. This is relevant because the digital revolution has changed the way how people work, live, and learn: Numerous studies prove that Internet content which can be found on collaborative platforms such as Wikipedia is not only abundant, but also trustworthy. As a result, accurate information about issues such as physics, chemistry, medicine, history and a whole lot of other issues can be found within a matter of seconds, by anybody, anywhere, and anytime. As a consequence, the role of knowledge itself has changed: understanding and research skills have become more important, facts and figures have (probably) become less important because they can be found on the Internet anyway. Universities should be struggling with this new kind of knowledge definition: If we really wanted to focus on competencies rather than factual knowledge, why do we forbid the use of the Internet during our examinations? Even more important, should we not update all our curricula by teaching basic Internet research skills and knowledge, such as relevance feedback or information evaluation? In short, how do we define "knowledge" in a time where ideas, more or less proven concepts and descriptive texts can be found and re-used all over the place? The proposed research paper will address this issue in a rather hands-on and down-to-earth approach: Wikipedia is a typical, well-known and well-established example of a collaborative editing community publishing open knowledge, which can be re-used by anybody, be it within Academia or outside Academia. So the research questions are about Wikipedia, and collaborative editing in general: 1. What is collaborative editing, how can it be used for learning and the creation of knowledge? 2. How does Wikipedia as a collaborative editing tool work, what is the community standing behind it: who publishes on Wikipedia, how do these people collaborate, is there a hierarchy among them? 3. How does the Wikipedia quality control work? Is it efficient, how good is the factual quality of Wikipedia content? Can it even be re-used for academic work - and if so, where and how? 4. How is Wikipedia coping with new research findings, can they be found on the platform or are they rather absent? 5. What influence does Wikipedia have on research and education, how should universities cope with the fact that open knowledge can be found there within a matter of seconds? The research questions will allow us to draw some interesting conclusions about the role of open Internet knowledge (such as the one which can be found on Wikipedia) for the creation of learning and knowledge. This will be done with a special focus on Academia: for instance, how should universities define "knowledge" in a time where so many answers can be readily found on Wikipedia? In this, the paper will not strive to find big conclusions, but rather some small, interesting, surprising and - last but not least - also practical answers. The paper will be based on library research, an online analysis of the current Wikipedia tools and content, and some interviews with Swiss Wikipedia activists. The paper will be well written, and based on qualitative research.