over, such as the quintessential research paper, in favor of assignments where students actively engage in the creation or adaption of open educational resources (OER) (Wiley & Hilton, 2018). While supporting individual student learning, these OER add value as they can be seen, used, and improved upon by a broader community once completed (Wiley, 2015). Renewable assignments allow students to “contribute to the knowledge commons, not just consume it, in meaningful and lasting ways . . . shap[ing] the world as they encounter it” (DeRosa & Jhangiani, 2017, p. 9). Open pedagogy focuses on open teaching, open content, and having student work and interactions brought into the public sphere. As Bali (2017) suggested, it has an ethos of sharing and a social justice orientation. is emphasis on equitable participation in knowledge creation, centered around affordability, exemplifies the ways in which critical information literacy seeks to intervene upon information systems of oppression. Wikipedia offers an ideal site of praxis for critical information literacy and open pedagogy to intersect, demonstrating to students how knowledge is constructed and made accessible in open systems (Fields & Harper, 2020).
Wikipedia offers an outlet for publishing information on topics that are underrepresented in traditional publishing and mainstream media. Wikipedia provides a platform for diverse stories and histories while promoting collaboration among content creators with varying levels of expertise. In the classroom, learning how to improve Wikipedia gives students the opportunity to intervene upon the inner workings of a resource they all use while translating and publishing concepts from the course to a wider, public audience (Davis, 2018). Editing Wikipedia in class is also an example of what Hartley (2011) has termed “outlearning,” a distributed way to venture into “that intermediate space between expert elites and the citizen-consumer” (p. 163). Although one of our goals of incorporating Wikipedia into the classroom is teaching and practicing critical information literacy, it also produces a secondary effect of showing students that research is a community-building process.
This chapter discusses the importance of existing infrastructures, such as edit-a-thons and WikiEdu, to support bringing Wikipedia
