Project AoW: Becoming a Wikipedian – Introduction

I’ve recently decided, together with my college and friend Benoît Majerus, to answer the call issued by the Wikimedia Foundation, asking academics to actively contribute to the largest, free, online encyclopedic repository of human knowledge in the known universe that we all resort to when we want to look up a concept or fact: Wikipedia.

We’re currently writing up a manifest to answer this call and try to convince our fellow academics to join us in making a small, but valuable, contribution to this growing body of shared collective knowledge…

(Virtually) everybody uses Wikipedia these days as a reference tool, so why not putting some effort into making it better every day?

Afterall, we, as academics, are in a rather privileged position when it comes to knowledge, its creation, production, publication and discussion… and we should contribute to the education of the global community, because we do believe that knowledge is power!

I will blog about our way of reacting to this call in order to 1) document, reflect and share my personal experiences with you, my readers and 2) gather your comments and reactions. So I really hope you’ll give me your thoughts to feed on…

By the way, if you have any ideas for good reasons to get more academics onto Wikipedia, please send in your thoughts!

About me

I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Luxembourg in the field of learning and teaching sciences. My PhD thesis was in cognitive psychology, focusing on implicit learning processes. I have always been interested in the integration of ICT in education, especially the strategic use of technology in teaching. With the advent of the digital revolution, I became interested in exploring the socio-cultural changes in learning caused by the use of digital technologies.

My current research focuses on the subjective theories of learning held by teachers and how these influence their use of ICT in the classroom. I am particularly interested in identifying factors that enable or hinder the use of ICT in teaching, and how these factors can be addressed.

Throughout my career, I have worked extensively as a teacher trainer in the field of educational technologies. I have experience with various forms of active pedagogy approaches, including problem-based, project-based, and design-research approaches. My goal is to help teachers integrate technology into their teaching practice in a way that enhances student learning and engagement.