Wikipedia in University Program: What Does the Metaanalysis of the Courses’ Page Tells Us?

Abstract

Wikipedia is an unavoidable resource when we do a web search with the aim of obtaining information. Its content is built from a bottom-up perspective and for this reason it is not always accepted in academia. However, this is not the view of the Wikimedia Foundation. Thus, under the motto “Wikipedia belongs to education”, the Wikimedia Foundation has partnered with educational institutions through the Wikipedia Education Program, which includes the Wikipedia in University Program. Within this scenario, it was considered important to do the meta-analysis of the page related to the courses offered in the context of this program with regard to the Wikipedian Portuguese speaking community. For this purpose, methodologically, we followed the MAECC®, the Meta-model to Analyse and Explore Scientific Knowledge®. Our corpus includes 22 Higher Education institutions, 21 of which are Brazilian and 1 Portuguese – Universidade Aberta (Open University Portugal). In this text, we will present the meta-analysis grid created to meet the research aims, identifying the data obtained in all the 5 macro categories of the MAECC® model. In general, the meta-analysed courses are diverse and refer to dynamic practices and valid work strategies.