Regional Ambassador/Resources/Professors' Concerns
On this page, you'll find common concerns that are proffered by professors in the experience of Wikimedia Staff and Regional Ambassadors, and the responses and information that are helpful in answering and addressing these concerns.
Credibility[edit]
The Concern: Wikipedia is sometimes seen as an unreliable source due to such things as lack of citation, vandalism, and edit conflicts. This can translate into skepticism about participation with Wikipedia.
Response: The Wikipedia Education Program has partnered with institutions such as Harvard, Georgetown, UC-Berkeley, and others to create a program that engages University students to create and improve articles in a direct effort to eliminate the problems that would otherwise harm the quality of Wikipedia. By being involved in editing and working with Wikipedia, students will actually gain a better insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the project, and the proper ways in which the project can be used in the academic setting. (See also Reliability of Wikipedia for additional aspects of this issue.)
Time Commitment[edit]
The Concern: Some professors feel like if a student's work is being published to the world, it's their responsibility to review it thoroughly. Multiply this by 20 or more students and you have an impossible time commitment.
Response: While input from professors is very helpful, readers of Wikipedia are aware that not all editors are experts and that they should not trust everything they read there. Even an article containing errors is an excellent starting point - any interested topic area expert can review the article later on and fix it. Some classes have been successful in improving article quality while pursuing pedagogical objectives by enforcing peer review of articles by other students in the same class, which is a more scalable solution.