Roundtable/Conversation Hour TITLE Pay It Forward: Enhancing Student Learning and Service through Wikipedia?

Transcription

1 Roundtable/Conversation Hour TITLE Pay It Forward: Enhancing Student Learning and Service through Wikipedia? ABSTRACT This roundtable/conversation hour s objective is to introduce one approach and to brainstorm other ways to incorporate projects into the classroom that both improve the quality of I-O content on Wikipedia and provide a valuable learning experience for students. Thus, student learning and service to our profession can both be enhanced. PRESS PARAGRAPH Wikipedia is a free, web-based encyclopedia that supports an open, editable platform; therefore, anyone with Internet access can change entries. This format raises questions: What if important I-O psychology topics are missing? What if topics are described in limited or inaccurate ways? Can we serve as SIOP Wikipedia contributors? The objective of this roundtable is to share one approach previously used in a classroom and to brainstorm other ways of improving the scope and quality of I-O topics covered on Wikipedia through our classroom teaching. In this way, student learning can be augmented and service provided to our profession advanced. WORD COUNT 2261

2 The objective of the proposed roundtable/conversation hour is to share with I-O colleagues who teach undergraduate and graduate students a way to enhance their students learning while also helping to raise awareness of our profession via Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a free, web-based encyclopedia that has information available in over 270 languages. In the approximately ten years since Wikipedia began, it has grown into one of the largest reference websites available. Estimates as of February 2012 indicate that the site attracts approximately 476 million unique visitors each month (ComScore, 2012). When conducting a Google search on a topic, a Wikipedia entry typically appears as one of the first three web results, increasing the likelihood that individuals access information from this site. In this way, Wikipedia may often be the first research tool used by the public as an initial source of information. This first impression about the topic is crucial. Because Wikipedia allows individuals a non-threatening means to obtain preliminary information about a variety of topics, it may encourage them to examine the idea further, influence the direction of their more in-depth research, or even abandon their search all together. Thus, a Wikipedia entry may play a pivotal role in what people learn. Another unique feature of Wikipedia is that it supports an open, editable platform where almost anyone with Internet access can write or change entries. As such, the information on the site can be continually generated and updated, even within minutes of an event s occurrence. Moreover, links can be embedded within Wikipedia articles, which direct users to related pages providing additional information. Wikipedia, however, is not without its drawbacks. Anyone can change the information contained in an entry. Therefore, mistakes or even intentional misinformation can be posted, calling into question the reliability and accuracy of the information in Wikipedia entries. In fact, Wikipedia s policy on this issue states: While the overall trend is toward improvement, it is

3 important to use Wikipedia carefully if it is intended to be used as a research source, since individual articles will, by their nature, vary in quality and maturity ( Wikipedia does have policies about what content can be added. However, these policies may not prevent the addition of false information. Thus, Wikipedia relies heavily upon volunteer contributors to correct false statements and to provide more complete information. It is critical that the information from our field be accurate, as many individuals tend to believe what they read to be true and factual on this site. As a potential alternative, SIOP provides a collection of I-O resources, named SIOP Wikis (siop.editme.com). As the website notes, This wiki is designed to be a depository of information for those working in the field of I-O psychology. Unfortunately, it does not appear that the I-O community has taken full advantage of this resource. Only a few topics have entries. At times, the entries are to notify readers of a session at SIOP s 2011 conference. Moreover, unlike Wikipedia, these potential resources may not be written in a way that would be understandable and accessible to a larger audience as Wikipedia is. Finally, if you conduct a Google search on the terms SIOP wiki, the Wikipedia entry (or non-entry, see below) appears first in the list, followed by this SIOP site. If Wikipedia tends to be the preferable site, Wikipedia s open format raises a number of important concerns for I-O psychologists. What if the corpus of I-O psychology knowledge is under-represented? Might important topics be described in limited or inaccurate ways or be missing completely? Who might serve as SIOP Wikipedia volunteer contributors? Many other questions arise in this context. In response, the purpose of this roundtable/conversation hour is to start a discussion, asking attendees: Are there ways that teachers and students can make Wikipedia a more credible source for technical and professional information about I-O

4 psychology, and expand SIOP s visibility? What role can educators play? Moreover, what role can students play in achieving this goal while learning in the process? This idea to engage others in changing Wikipedia is not without existing precedent. The Association for Psychological Science (APS) began a Wikipedia initiative last year, and called upon APS members and their students to write, edit, and update Wikipedia entries. Their aim was to improve the scope and quality of the coverage of psychological science, which also included a Wikipedia entry describing APS. ( While APS and APA have entries describing their organizations, a Wikipedia search for Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology showed that the entry had been deleted as of July 2012 ( This missing entry may indicate an opportunity for educators and their students. Could a class project be developed to create a SIOP Wikipedia entry to both showcase our organization and improve student awareness of what SIOP has to offer? For a number of years now, SIOP has advanced a general initiative aimed at enhancing the visibility of our profession both nationally and internationally. In fact, the SIOP Executive Committee adopted a vision statement and core goals as part of the SIOP Strategic Plan. The first goal of SIOP stated in the plan is: SIOP will become the Visible and trusted authority on work-related psychology. This includes: Heightened awareness within lay, business, scientific, and government communities of the role and value of I-O psychology in improving productivity and well-being in the workplace.

5 Greater outreach to the broader field of psychology and related disciplines and organizations (including organizations outside the United States), policy makers, the public, and the media. Considering how frequently Wikipedia is accessed to learn about a topic, it likely serves as a viable, yet untapped resource that could help SIOP move towards our goal of greater visibility. I propose this roundtable/conversation hour as a means to explore this issue by sharing one approach and brainstorming other ways to improve the scope and quality of the I-O psychology topic coverage on Wikipedia through our classroom projects or student-centered learning activities. In this way, the overall goal is to generate ideas of how to better serve our profession by contributing to this already-existing public database. Proposed Session Highlights. During the roundtable/conversation hour, I will share my teaching plan for the Wikipedia class project that I added to my graduate seminar, complete with lessons learned, and the resulting Wikipedia entry on job interviews. The idea for this project came about while searching for an innovative, challenging assignment in addition to the typical research proposal for my graduate seminar on employment interviews. I previously heard about the APS Wikipedia Initiative and wondered about the coverage of job interviews on Wikipedia. I searched Wikipedia for an entry and found the coverage relatively sparse. It included some information about legal issues and stress interviews, but cited no empirical evidence from the more than 100 years of employment interview research conducted by I-O psychologists. This is unfortunate given that we know much more about interviews that could be beneficial to the larger public. For example, we know that adding structure to the interview can increase prediction. We also know that asking each applicant the same job relevant questions is one means of incorporating structure into the interview. None of this information had been shared.

6 I showed this limited Wikipedia entry to my graduate students, and we decided to take action during the course of the semester and try to make a difference. For this project, the students were first asked to identify an area that they felt needed representation with regard to employment interviews and justify their selection to the class. After writing their entry, they received feedback on this initial draft from at least three randomly selected classmates and from me. The entire class worked together as a group to add the information into a coherent, organized Wikipedia post. Thus, my graduate students enhanced the information on employment interviews on Wikipedia by adding more complete and accurate information with over 100 research study references. In addition, the graduate students learned how to translate research findings from journal articles on employment interviews into laypersons terms - skills that will undoubtedly benefit them in their future professional careers. As part of the formal class evaluation, anonymous ratings and written comments from students in the class (and verbal comments after the class) revealed the extreme value the graduate students reported they gained from this experience. Students from the class will also attend the roundtable/conversation hour so they can share their perspectives and experiences. A main focus of the roundtable/conversation hour is to encourage discussion. Attendees can share their experiences with approaches they may have taken in the classroom or elsewhere to improve the content of Wikipedia. We also will encourage discussion of other ideas and approaches attendees might have. Additionally, it would be important to identify a mechanism to share best practices with one another to continue moving this initiative forward in the future, (e.g., through the SIOP Exchange). It would also be useful to keep track of which topics were updated and which topics still needed to be tackled as a means to coordinate future efforts. We might also brainstorm ideas about ways to get more people involved. For example, imagine that

7 this roundtable/conversation hour inspires just two other academics to incorporate the aforementioned project idea into their graduate seminars every year. If those academics inspired two more individuals, and so on, within 5 years, over 100 I-O terms would be more thorough, scholarly, and informative to audiences on this site. Further, it would enhance the visibility of our profession if it were explicitly mentioned in the Wikipedia entry that I-O psychologists conducted the research cited. In sum, there are three objectives of the proposed session: 1. To brainstorm ways to incorporate projects into the classroom that both improve the quality of I-O content on Wikipedia and provide a valuable learning experience for students, 2. To focus the conversation on how each of us could personally improve the content of Wikipedia in order to raise the public profile of I-O psychology, and 3. To initiate collaboration aimed at bringing together those interested in similar aspects of this overall objective, as a means to consolidate and sustain our efforts following the roundtable/conversation hour. In conclusion, the overall purpose of this roundtable/conversation hour is to spark a discussion around specific ways each of us personally, as I-O psychologists and students, can enhance our teaching and student learning. In turn, we can also improve the quality and coverage of I-O topics on Wikipedia. The roundtable/conversation hour will additionally help connect and support those interested in making progress toward the SIOP Wikipedia Initiative, in order to get the idea off the ground. As a result of our unified efforts, user-friendly summaries of main research findings in I-O topic areas would be more accessible to a larger degree than is presently available on Wikipedia. Furthermore, this information could be made available in a real time as

8 studies are published in the I-O literature. The roundtable/conversation hour will be of interest to those who want to incorporate new learning opportunities into their classrooms, and other SIOP attendees, as Wikipedia entries on I-O topics could be useful to a wide variety of individuals. Such information would be of interest to researchers who could also obtain additional visibility for their research and conceivably increase their citation counts. Graduate students might be interested in contributing, and would also find the information valuable as it would provide access to relevant research in an easily-searchable, centralized location. Moreover, the entries would be of interest to practitioners, who may want a mechanism to more easily find current research. The initiative, as a whole, may serve to lessen the scientist-practitioner gap. Managers around the world who are interested in knowing more about an I-O topic may find the information on Wikipedia useful, and with direct access to the citations, they would easily be able to gather further information. Finally, the general public would better understand I-O topics and what we do in our profession. The host, Dr. Therese Macan, is an Associate Professor and Director of the Doctoral Program in Industrial and Organizational Psychology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She received her Ph.D. from Rice University. She has taught numerous graduate seminars over the last 20 years and each year alters some aspect of her course curriculum, embracing a continuous improvement approach. In fact, one component of her teaching philosophy is to expose students to new, experiential learning opportunities that can make a difference in their learning and contribute to that of others as well. Her incorporation of the Wikipedia project described above is one such example. She has written about the role of education and training in I-O psychology, addressing the teaching of practice from the perspective of the scientistpractitioner model, which has appeared in TIP (The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist). Her

9 research interests and consulting projects focus on selection and assessment, with a special emphasis on the employment interview process. She has published numerous studies on the employment interview that have appeared in Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Personnel Psychology. Her research has focused on identifying the social, cognitive, and contextual factors that affect interviewer decisionmaking, including interviewer note-taking and applicant information from social networking websites. Her interview process work also addresses issues central to legally protected applicants, specifically persons with disabilities and pregnant applicants. She has also written several chapters and other invited papers on the employment interview, one of which appeared in the International Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology and explores uncovering implicit and explicit discrimination in the employment interview process. References APS Wikipedia entry. Retrieved from September 12, ComScore (2012). Wikimedia. Retrieved from September 12, SIOP Wikipedia entry. Retrieved from September 12, SIOP Wikis. Retrieved from September 12, 2012.

10 Wikipedia: About, Retrieved from September 12, 2012.