Customer Reviews

Lazy Virtues: Teaching Writing in the Age of Wikipedia

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The author, Robert Cummings, Director of First year Composition at Columbus State University, has come up with an imaginative and truly creative way to reach the computer-savvy Freshman students we see in our university classrooms today. Instead of viewing the Wikipedia as an enemy of academic research, he embraces it. Thinking about the comments of a football coach colleague who advised, "Train your players for the environment in which they will perform," Cummings came up with the idea of having his students write and submit text for Wikipedia.

Stressing that the standard way of teaching Freshman writing classes -- by assigning readings and essays from the standard texts -- reflects a disconnect between the "students' future writing lives" and the reality they'll face in their careers, Cummings illustrates how he uses the Wikipedia as a teaching tool that provides his students with a real-world "genuine audience."

English faculty and reference librarians will be very interested in Cummings' rationale for using Commons-Based Peer Production (CBPP) in the Freshman English classroom, and consider the practical outline and guide he offers to accomplish his real-world application. After considering his sample Wiki writing assignment of "Writing About Film in Public Spaces," and perhaps trying the idea for oneself, readers can then determine for themselves if they agree with his statement that: "There's no guarantee your writers will solve global warming, but your writing class will never be the same."

Highly recommended for college and university libraries and faculty seeking to make their Freshman classes more lively and practical.

R. Neil Scott
Middle Tennessee State University