I am an academic librarian, professor, and world traveler. I encourage my students to become emerging scholars through their contributions to Wikipedia. My profession has been advocating for open access and open education resources for decades, but it has only been in the last few years that mainstream educators and administrators have heard our call. They see open access as a means to lower the cost of higher education. I believe it's a capitalistic ideal disguised as a democratic war cry and cannot be achieved without a reworking of economic structures. Instead I see collaborative, hive-type work done by lay scholars as a means to equalize higher education while serving to engage diverse points of view.
I've been teaching Wikipedia editing to college students for over 7 years. I combine the Wiki Edu training with information literacy, globalism, and participatory culture theory to create a project that allows students to see themselves as emerging scholars.
