USING WIKIPEDIA FOR EDUCATIONAL AND TEACHING PURPOSES: AN EVALUATION QUESTIONNAIRE

Wikipedia is a free international online collaboratively written encyclopaedia. It is the best known application of wiki software and has become the most popular as well as the fastest growing educational reference site. Wikis are websites that allow the users to add, to remove and to edit their content and are considered as one of the most commonly used Web 2.0. tools. Web 2.0 tools, applications and services have already become part of most students’ everyday life, as they use them not only as a source of information but also as means of personal expression and communication with their peers.
In the present paper we are going to discuss some critical issues about Wikipedia’s use, such as its credibility, and to explore to what extent and in which way it could be used for educational and teaching purposes.
Finally, we suggest an evaluation questionnaire of Wikipedia, which is addressed to teachers. The questionnaire is based on the principles of instructional evaluation of educational software, but we also considered the evaluation criteria of educational websites, because it is mentioned above, Wikipedia could be seen as a reference website that has an educational character. Thus, we formed the following groups of questions: a. teaching content, b. teaching and educational methodology, c. content design and structure, d. user interface, e. website – user interaction and flow of information, f. attractiveness and aesthetics, g. other features.
This proposal of instructional evaluation of Wikipedia could be used as an evaluation tool of its educational use by the teacher and the students. In particular, the teacher could use the questionnaire to evaluate to what extend s/he could use Wikipedia as a learning tool included in an e-learning scenario. Moreover, our questionnaire could also become a tool of further exploration of the possibility of Wikipedia’s educational use.