Using Wikipedia in Australian Higher Education
By Alice Woods and Pru Mitchell
Wikimedia Australia has partnered with La Trobe University, Charles Sturt University and other universities in Australia to research the use of Wikimedia platforms in higher education within Australia.
These partnerships have resulted in a number of outcomes including:
Analysing Wikipedia articles as university assessments
Wikimedia Australia worked with Dr Katelyn Mroczek, Lecturer in Microbiology at La Trobe University on the introduction of active learning exercises as an assessment at by. The learning exercise was designed to develop skills to analyse the readability, accuracy, and authorship of Wikipedia articles within the context of science communication.
Third‑year microbiology students participated in a group activity where they evaluated immunology articles on Wikipedia and compared them with AI‑generated content. A structured rubric was used to promote critical literacy, collaboration, and information‑sourcing skills.
Following the assessment students were also asked to submit a reflection on the importance of information literacy and science communication in the digital age and encouraged to make edits to the Wikipedia pages that they looked at where they found that they could be improved. For more information about this assessment see the Education Wiki newsletter for August 2025 post by Pru Mitchell: Wikipedia vs AI at La Trobe University.
Journal article in Frontiers in Education
The La Trobe University assessment was also the subject of a research project and led to publication of an academic article, Development and evaluation of a Wikipedia based group assessment to enhance science communication (2025) in the Frontiers in Education journal in August 2025.
This article studied the results of the assessment and, among other findings, found that most students found that it made students more likely to use Wikipedia for future assignments as they became more familiar with it and this increased their view of its credibility and the presence of and ease of use of the references provided. They also showed noticeably more hesitation around the use of generative AI in an academic context.
Within a month of publication this article had reached the milestone of over 100 downloads.
Online higher education symposium events
Two public online events were hosted by Wikimedia Australia in 2024 and are available to be viewed on Wikimedia Commons.
- Using Wikimedia in Higher Education talks about the process of developing the La Trobe University assessment and introductory considerations and benefits of using Wikipedia in the higher education context. Held in September 2024 and attended by Australian and New Zealand academics, . speakers at this event were:
- Dr Katelyn Mroczek, Lecturer in Microbiology at La Trobe
- Belinda Spry, Executive Officer at Wikimedia Australia
- Pru Mitchell, Manager of Information Services at the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) and a volunteer Wikimedian
- Associate Professor Thiru Vanniasinkam, Charles Sturt University
2. Based on the success of this event we hosted a a second event called Using Wikiversity and WikiLearn for Teaching and Learning which looked specifically at Wikiversity and WikiLearn. In this event we spoke to:
- Dr James Neill, Assistant Professor in Psychology at the University of Canberra who uses Wikiversity in the classroom and is bureaucrat on English Wikiversity. James is an expert in this area and has also extensively published on the topic, including: Collaborative authoring using wiki: an open education case study (2024)
- James Gaunt, a librarian, music journalist and Wikimedian who developed an Introduction to Wikipedia course on WikiLearn that offers a microcredential for completion and takes between 3 to 5 hours to complete - it is a great option for new editors and people interested in contributing but can also help people with a decent amount of editing experience.
Conclusion
These education projects sit at the intersection of science communication education, digital literacy, and open knowledge, with the goal to prepare university students to navigate and contribute to online information.
Image attribution: Australian Society of Archivists, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
