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Parent Category: Lower-Intermediate News Lessons

Category: Education Lessons

Written by Chris Cotter

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia. At the moment, there are more than ten million articles in over 253 languages. Encyclopaedia Britannica only has 500,000, although it has a long history. Anyone with an Internet connection can add or edit articles on Wikipedia, so mistakes and poorly supported information appear. As a result, university professors generally don't let students use Wikipedia for term papers and essays, or at least, until now.

At the University of British Columbia, Jon Beasley-Murray permitted his students to write articles for the online encyclopedia instead of a term paper. One student said it was very difficult at first because anyone could watch. But she found the assignment more exciting and meaningful than a term paper. Another student updated his article 1,000 times. And a third student regularly stayed up all night to work on the assignment.

Beasley-Murray's class did quite well. Of the students who took up the assignment, three entries worked on by nine students made featured article status. Unfortunately, a few students had their work instantly deleted by other users. Overall, though, most agreed that it was a great learning experience.