Wikipedia in universities and colleges?

Here at Jisc we are lucky enough to have a view across the education sectors in teaching, learning and research. I’m delighted to be at the EduWiki Conference this week, which is run by the Wikimedia UK Foundation and brings together educators to discuss how they use Wikipedia in their teaching and Wikipedians who create and edit the content.

I intend to give a view across the sector, pulling together changes in research and in teaching from our colleagues in the field, and showing how the ‘“Wikipedia” way’ supports those emerging trends in practice.  For example, Jisc has already been involved in improving Wikipedia entries by getting academics and Wikipedians together – as you can see from this blog post by my colleague Sarah Fahmy.

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Martin Poulter, who is organising the conference, told me: “This is the first Eduwiki conference and hopefully the first of many.  We see immense mutual benefits in working with educators and academics and really welcome the involvement of the Jisc community.”
I’m keen to widen the circle, too.  Some key questions that we’re looking at to help lead institutions through the changing scholarly process include:

How can students and researchers make best use of Wikipedia?  And importantly, how do they verify and cite their reading?
What’s different about the way people approach the scholarship on Wikipedia?
How can universities and colleges use that platform to raise the profile of their work?
How does the Wikipedia approach to openness impact on the way people are doing their research and reading online?

I’d welcome your thoughts.