“In Defense of Wikipedia” 2.0: Wikipedia as a Researching/Teaching Resource in College Basic Courses Noriaki Tajima Lecturer Department of International Communication Kanda University of International Studies, Japan tajima-n@kanda.kuis.ac.jp Arata Miyazaki Doctoral Candidate Department of Communication Wayne State University, the United States arata@wayne.edu Abstract: This paper proposes the use of Wikipedia in teaching basic courses at college. The use of Wikipedia in the higher education environment has been still disregarded, if not ignored. By the assignment which asks a frequent visit to and a substantial addition/revision of Wikipedia information, we argue that students can learn information literacy in the so-called “Web 2.0” internet environment. Introduction Despite its growing popularity and visibility to the public, Wikipedia is still limited for scholarly and educational use. In “In Defense of Wikipedia,” Diane Murley (2008) proposed the academic use of Wikipedia, but she argued that its benefit is only for “quick-reference” purpose. While her work advances its thesis from old school teaching that prohibits students from using Wikipedia at all, it still keeps the status as the first step to reach “traditionally more reliable” sources such as books, and journal, magazine and newspaper articles. We admit that the article offers a valiant proposal to incorporate Wikipedia into the academic research process, but we find it problem that Murley understands that Wikipedia remains a second-hand source as is exemplified in oral presentations, personal blogs and Facebook entries. According to Murley, the “usefulness” of Wikipedia as a teaching/researching resource is based exclusively on its technical and functional aspect of being able to “quickly” overview general understandings of the term and “a link or reference,” or a stepping stone, “to a reputable source” (p. 594). In this perspective, it is reasonable to presume that, because of Wikipedia’s ever-growing volume and widening coverage areas, it is no longer worthwhile to ignore it. However, we argue that it is not only feasible but beneficial to provide students with an opportunity in which they actively engage in so-called “web 2.0” contents in order to learn information literacy in contemporary internet environment. In this sense, we take Murley’s proposal to be still insufficient for it is influenced by and saturated in the traditional school belief, which “falls back on the gatekeeping functions of professional editors and journalists” (Jenkins, 2009, p. 80). By changing instructors’ own paradigm, students can become more informed in cyber culture as well as more critical and creative in academic culture. Along the line, we argue that Murley’s claim is not just of old academism, but that restricting the web 2.0 contents only for “secondary” reference sources may be even misleading when judging information. As Nature confirmed it, the degree of information accuracy of Encyclopedia Britannica does not significantly differ from those of Wikipedia contents at the point of 2005 (Giles, p. 900). Because it was six years ago when he reported the even score, it would be becoming more obvious that ever-lasting editing function on Wikipedia has a greater possibility of reducing errors now in 2011. Regardless of instructors’ preference, students are saturated in the internet environment on a daily basis. And, the process of creating their academic works, at least in the basic course level, is no exception. Because of this change, we must understand that a new regime of social networks has been emerging in commanding students’ perception of “the reality” of their research environment. Quoting statistics that prove more than a half of all teens created contents online and more than one-third of them shared the web contents, Jenkins (2007) argues that the teens are living in what he calls “participatory culture.” This is a culture - 2097 -