New study measures student learning outcomes from Wikipedia assignments

Author: LiAnna Davis, Wiki Education Foundation

Summary: The Wiki Education Foundation (Wiki Ed) released the results from the most comprehensive study ever undertaken to evaluate student learning outcomes from Wikipedia assignments. The study concludes that Wikipedia assignments provide students valuable digital/information literacy, critical research, teamwork, and technology skills, and students are more motivated by these assignments than they are by traditional writing assignments.

Article: In Fall 2016 term, the Wiki Education Foundation (Wiki Ed) ran surveys and focus groups on the students and instructors in the 276 classes writing Wikipedia articles as a course assignment in the United States and Canada. Part of a large research project, the data has been analyzed and offers key insights into what student learning outcomes students get from editing Wikipedia as a class assignment. The research results show that Wikipedia assignments provide students valuable digital/information literacy, critical research, teamwork, and technology skills, and students are more motivated by these assignments than they are by traditional writing assignments.

These results can be helpful for conversations with school administrators and instructors who want to know what pedagogical impacts participating in the Wikipedia Education Program will have for their students. The full research report and all of the data, codebooks, and other documentation from the study are freely licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. We encourage others to conduct additional analysis on the data, and hope to continue to advance our understanding of student learning outcomes from Wikipedia-based assignments with future research.

Tags: Research