Teaching and Learning Conference 2019: Using wiki technology in interdisciplinary assessment

This year the module ‘Approaches to Knowledge’ (a first-year core course in the Arts and Sciences degree programme at UCL) featured a new assessment: in small groups students collaboratively wrote chapters in the Wikibook 'Issues in Interdisciplinarity 2018-19'. The assessment encouraged students to engage with the Open Knowledge movement (of which sites such as Wikibooks are a part). Moreover wiki technology facilitates a marker’s evaluation of individuals’ contributions by logging precisely who in a team contributed what. This paper will make the case for such assessments which work with rather than against the grain of a 21st-Century student’s research instincts.