CiteLearn - an academic tool for learning to cite sources

Project Member(s): Knight, S., Ford, H., Aileen Shibani Michael Xavier, A.

Funding or Partner Organisation: Wikicred
Wikicred

Start year: 2020

Summary: The practice of adding citations to Wikipedia and learning where citations are needed provides excellent training in research quality beyond Wikipedia. Our idea is to use citations and missing citations (such as those tagged {{citation needed}} and Jodi Schneider’s "Citation Detective”, a public dataset of sentences missing citations), to build a game in which university students learn about verifiability In round 1, students must locate where citations should be placed in articles that are provided to them, and for which we have groundtruth (for example, based on removing citations from existing articles, and knowing where these were situated, and which sentences were tagged {{citation needed}}, or had no such tag). And in round 2, must write articles, including citations. In this latter round, the Citation Detective API - which is used to label sentences that require a citation - will be used to provide automated feedback to students, and develop their citation practices. Other tools could also be added including Cite Unseen (which detects bias in citations). We anticipate this game being used to onboard people into Wikipedia citation practices, and more broadly to develop the skills associated with citation (credibility checking, verifiability, etc.) in a general population. The tool will be piloted with students (subject to institutional review), using data from the activity (pre/post-test scores), and where appropriate use of pre/post survey instruments for example on source use competence and citation motivation (see appendices in, Ma and Qin, 2017). Ma, R., & Qin, X. (2017). Individual factors influencing citation competence in L2 academic writing. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics, 24(2-3), 213-240.

Publications:

Knight, S, Shibani, A, Ford, H & Chambers, S, 'Inverting {{Citation needed}}: critical design reflection of a citation learning game', Learning, Media and Technology, pp. 1-17.
View/Download from: Publisher's site

FOR Codes: Educational technology and computing, Learner and Learning Processes, Expanding Knowledge in Education, Learning Sciences, Library and Information Studies, Human Information Behaviour, Library and information studies , Learner and learning, EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE

Acknowledgement of Country

UTS acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the Boorooberongal people of the Dharug Nation, the Bidiagal people and the Gamaygal people, upon whose ancestral lands our university stands. We would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for these lands.