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Rationale
Wikipedia is generally regarded in universities as a curse; besides being the source most frequently plagiarised for coursework, it is too often cited without question as an up-to-date, authoritative source to support a point, without any acknowledgement of the way in which entries are compiled or its regular dependence on the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. One US college has banned its students from referencing Wikipedia in their coursework, and many universities expressly discourage its use. However, since it is the source most likely to appear at the head of Google searches and the like, it seems naïve to think that students can be prevented from making use of it. It is preferable to educate them in its nature, limitations and advantages, and to draw on their familiarity with it as a means of exploring a range of important issues in the development of historical understanding and of developing some key skills.

Description of the Practice
The unit in question, Introduction to Ancient History, is a core skills unit for first-year students studying SH Ancient History and JH Ancient History and Archaeology; 37 students this year. It focuses on a range of practical skills (e.g. source analysis, referencing) and theoretical issues (evaluating and developing historical interpretations), and is assessed through a series of practically-orientated coursework exercises (e.g. book review, source analysis). The unit takes the theme of Roman slavery as a case study.

Students were divided into groups of 4-5 for the exercise. They were first required to make a short group presentation in the fifth week of the course on the Wikipedia entry on 'Slavery in Ancient Rome', focusing in particular on its use of evidence but also considering what topics are covered, what's missing and how reliable it appears to be. This was intended to focus their attention on the way in which Wikipedia entries are developed - which should emphasise their inadequacies as a source - as well as the way that their approach is tailored to their intended audience. It was also intended to develop skills in oral presentation and group working.

Secondly, the groups were required to submit a group project as part of the assessment, producing their own Wikipedia-style entry for the topic. Besides the continuing emphasis on group skills - the need to co-ordinate who would cover which aspect, and to work together to compile the sections into a coherent whole - this was intended both to test their overall grasp of the subject and ability to identify the most important themes and issues, and to encourage them to think about how historical material should be presented to a non-specialist audience.

Implementation
The main issue with the presentation was the size of the class, meaning that it was difficult to get all the group presentations into a single lecture - especially when, inevitably, some students over-ran their allotted time. In the event, some groups had to be cut off before all students had had a chance to speak, and not all groups had the opportunity to present their material. The idea of devoting a second class to the presentations is not attractive because of the dangers of excessive repetition. One possibility would be to ask all the groups to prepare presentations but select only some of them - which does, however, mean that some students miss out on the opportunity to practice presentation skills, so that it would probably be best to build a second presentation session, on a different theme, into the second half of the unit.

The chief problem with the group project was the fact that certain students, whether because of illness or other unspecified reasons, failed to contribute adequately. This was a useful test of group skills for the others, and in general they coped extremely well; it was necessary to reassure them, however, that they would not be penalised for uneven coverage of material if this was due to one person failing to send in their section. The larger problem was what to do with the defaulting students, who needed to complete some form of assessment in order to gain credit for the unit, but could not now be tested adequately on their group skills. The main change in future will be to provide more guidance in advance on how to respond to these problems.

Impact
All the groups who spoke identified a range of problems with the coverage, content and referencing practices of the existing Wikipedia entry; they showed a sound knowledge of the subject, good awareness of the need to provide support and citations for statements, and a keen critical sense, focusing particularly on the failure of Wikipedia to convey the degree to which various ideas were disputed and controversial. Interestingly, most of the groups failed to notice or discuss the way in which the entry was produced, but treated it as the work of a single, contemporary, author. One advantage of this failure was that it heightened the impact when one group did point this out; the subsequent discussion included some interesting comments on the idea of the 'wisdom of crowds' versus the claims of specialist authority, but showed above all that the students were now much more sceptical about what Wikipedia could offer them.

The group projects were generally very good, and a significant number were excellent: clearly structured, well supported with citations (without being over-loaded with references) and above all effectively presented for a non-specialist audience. Almost any of them would be a clear improvement on the current entry, and several would bear comparison with the best of Wikipedia. The most successful projects were those which had thought through the content and structure from the bottom up, rather than simply modifying and expanding the current entry, and which had spent enough time on proof-reading and editing the final version rather than just sticking together separate sections. Clearly some groups had worked together more effectively than others; the fact that this was so visible in the end result meant that it was easy to emphasise this point in the feedback provided to the groups on their work.

It remains to be seen whether the students will now modify their use of Wikipedia or abandon it altogether as a source, and whether they will apply their critical skills to all such sources (as they were encouraged to do) or simply assume that Wikipedia is uniquely problematic. Overall, my feeling is that it works well as a case study for this sort of exercise simply because the entry is poor enough for them to feel confident in analysing and criticising it (it is often difficult to get students to stop showing undue deference to 'proper' historians, and they require an extensive knowledge of the subject before they are able to develop a full analysis) while being just authoritative enough that the exercise seems worthwhile. The main change I would like to make in future would be to enable the students to make use of proper wiki technology to develop their group projects - and of course I will need to find a new topic, since the entry on Roman slavery will, I hope, now be heavily edited by this year's students.

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