Teaching in the Age of Wikipedia

Dr Henry Potts has reviewed Robert Cummings’ Lazy Virtues: Teaching in the Age of Wikipedia for The Wikipedia Signpost, Wikipedia’s own community-written newspaper. (Cite as Potts HWW (2009). Review of Lazy Virtues: Teaching Writing in the Age of Wikipedia. The Wikipedia Signpost, 5(17).)

In the book, Cummings explores using Wikipedia for class assignments. He stresses the value of students writing for a real audience and presents a theoretical model for the process based on Benkler’s idea of commons-based peer production (CBPP). While welcoming Cummings’ contribution to this rapidly developing field, Potts also argues that Cummings’ book overlooks other useful theoretical models for understanding Wikipedia and student use of Wikipedia, in particular Lave & Wenger’s legitimate peripheral participation. Potts calls for an “integrative” socio-technical theory of Wikipedia, using a terminology introduced by de Vaujany (2005, Journal of Information Technology Impact, 5(1): 39-58).