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[edit] Sigrid

My name is Sigrid Schmalzer. I began contributing in a small way to Wikipedia in January, 2006. I am an assistant professor in the history department of UMass Amherst with specialties in modern Chinese history and science studies.

As a teacher of history, I am deeply concerned that students learn to think critically about the sources of knowledge and to contribute responsibly to the production of knowledge. I am beginning to think that Wikipedia is, for both bad and good reasons, a helpful tool in communicating these values.

While some efforts are being made to improve Wikipedia's verifiability, it remains devestatingly lacking in citations. In several classes, I have used Wikipedia as an example of an interesting and in some ways useful source that is nonetheless not appropriate for reference use. I show them a page for which there are no citations and ask them what makes them trust the information on the page. (I'm still unsure that Wikipedia could ever be an appropriate source to cite in a paper, since it is anonymous and the content varies from day to day. But these are different issues.)

I am now developing more positive approaches to using Wikipedia in the classroom, building on the efforts of others (see Wikipedia:School and university projects). I plan to offer students credit for adding references to existing Wikipedia content and to allow them to create new, citation-rich Wikipedia content for their final projects.

I hope that by contributing to Wikipedia, students will learn to see knowledge as socially produced. More specifically, I want them to recognize that knowledge does not fall from the sky, and I want them to engage actively, critically, responsibly, and joyfully in the production of knowledge.

You can find me at http://www.sigridschmalzer.org.