the sources selected for their projects to prepare biographies for individuals who were significant in Irish History, and adhere to academic integrity principles in order to have their Wikipedia entries accepted. Collaborating with the instructor and the Wikipedia representative gives the librarian greater influence over the introduction of critical thinking and academic integrity skills.
The library component for this learning experience involved three interventions: an academic integrity session, a critical thinking session, and a short introductory session on finding relevant library resources for the specific Wikipedia biographical articles the students were editing. The academic integrity session was developed as part of a university-wide plagiarism prevention effort with contribution from UCD Library (University College Dublin Library, 2019). The session was designed by members of the library and included a class discussion about the nature of plagiarism; giving students a set of specific scenarios and asking them to decide whether they constituted plagiarism (University College Dublin Library, 2013); and providing practical strategies to avoid plagiarism such as paraphrasing exercises and citation exercises using the APA referencing style (Collery, 2014).
As Biando Edwards (2018) identified, students often lack the ability to approach information in a critical manner and librarians are particularly well placed to impart this knowledge in the classroom (pp. 288–93). The critical thinking workshop was designed to provide students with the necessary tools to evaluate the academic quality of the sources they found for their Wikipedia entries and apply critical reading and writing skills to their collaborative work. The workshop used elements from both the Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL)’s Seven Pillars of Information Literacy Core Model (SCONUL Working Group on Information Literacy, 2011) and the Association of College & Research Libraries Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (ACRL, 2016) to focus on the evaluative aspect of information literacy. It also introduced John McManus’ SMELL test for analyzing the validity of news media reports (McManus, 2013). SMELL stands for Source, Motive, Evidence, Logic, and “Left Out,” prompting students to search beyond the surface of
