Love triangle: A collaboration between Wikipedia, AUB libraries, and communication skills classes in teaching academic writing

This presentation seeks to address the necessity for digital collaboration between students and librarians in developing an online presence for Lebanese and Arab authors on the world’s largest online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. Such a project helps students develop digital literacy through collaborative interactions with others (librarians and Wikipedia staff). In this way, students can be engaged in their learning as the New London Group (1996) suggested in their approach to literacy pedagogy. They stated: “Pedagogy is a complex integration of four factors: Situated Practice based on the world of learners’ Designed and Designing experiences; Overt Instruction through which students shape for themselves an explicit metalanguage of Design; Critical Framing, which related meanings to their social contexts and purposes; and Transformed Practice in which students transfer and recreate Designs of meaning from one context to another” (pp. 82-83). These four factors are accomplished by using Wiki Education as the primary learning platform. Through Wiki Education, students learn how to edit existing articles and develop new articles about Lebanese and Arab authors whose online presence is almost nonexistent. In this manner, students are learning how to conduct research, write well-cited and plagiarism-free articles, and build digital literacy capacity that few other learning platforms and exercises in composition and academic writing can offer. Students are also engaged in preserving their Lebanese and Arab heritage by digitizing it. The process and the results from this semesterly project will be shared with attendees thus allowing for similar future collaborations.