Wicked Wikipedia? Communities of Practice,the Production of Knowledge and Australian Sport History

Academic responses to Wikipedia since its inception in 2001 have shifted from scepticism and hostility to serious critique. Wikipedia is a project driven by a community of amateur, and sometimes professional, scholars and it is this community – and associated rules and practices – that shapes the site's publicly viewable content. Despite the centrality of egalitarianism and communal wisdom to the Wikipedian ethos, the encyclopaedia is not filled equitably with historical knowledge or topics. This article addresses the role of Wikipedia in the production of knowledge in a sport history context. An analysis of 115 Wikipedia articles written about notable Australian sportspeople revealed a disproportionately large group of high-quality cricket biographies. Further investigation revealed that a small group of Wikipedians were responsible for writing these articles. The work of this community of practice is indicative of the influence that dedicated special interest groups can have over the production of knowledge on Wikipedia and raises broader questions about the production of knowledge in sport history.     

Evaluation of a Training Program in Aging Research for Social Work Faculty

Since 2004, we have offered a postgraduate training program in aging research for social work faculty from across the country. The overarching goal of the program is to expand the pool of social work faculty engaged in aging research. This, in turn, will reinvigorate participants' teaching; prepare them to update aging-related content in the curriculum, with special emphasis on cultural diversity and methodological issues; and enhance their ability to motivate new generations of students to pursue the study of aging. Program design includes an initial 8-day institute in Summer I; ongoing consultation, update meetings at several national conventions, and a 4-day midyear meeting during the intervening year; and a follow-up institute during Summer II. Between 2004 and 2009, seven cohorts of social work faculty (with 14–15 members in each cohort) participated in the program. More than 40 percent of the participants were from communities of color including African American, Hispanic American, Native American, and Asian American. This article reports the results of initial evaluation from two most recent cohorts (Cohort 6 and Cohort 7). In addition, it reports the results of a follow-up study we conducted in June 2010 on cohorts 1–5. Key lessons learned in offering the program are also shared.     

Assessing the Effectiveness of Online Information Literacy Tutorials for Millennial Undergraduates

This article reports on the findings of a study that evaluated the effectiveness of redesigning online information literacy tutorials in order to meet the learning needs and preferences of Millennial students. Using both quantitative and qualitative measures, this study compared two different online tutorials—a static, HTML-based tutorial and a dynamic, interactive, audio/video tutorial. This study found that, contrary to generalizations made in the library and education literature, Millennial students learned equally well from both tutorials. However, students expressed a much higher level of satisfaction from the tutorial designed to be “Millennial friendly.”     

A Bird’s-Eye View of the Past: Digital History,Distant Reading and Sport History

Advances in computer technologies have made it easier than ever before for historians to access a wealth of sources made available in the digital era. This article investigates one way that historians have engaged with the challenges and opportunities of this ‘infinite archive’: distant reading. We define distant reading as an umbrella term that embraces many practices, including data mining, aggregation, text analysis, and the visual representations of these practices. This paper investigates the utility of distant reading as a research tool via three newspaper case studies concerning Muhammad Ali, women’s surfing in Australia, and homophobic language and Australian sport. The research reveals that the usefulness, effectiveness, and success of distant reading is dependent on numerous factors. While valuable in many instances, distant reading is rarely an end in itself and can be most powerful when paired with the traditional historical skills of close reading.