The implications of Wikipedia for contemporary science education: using social network analysis techniques for automatic organisation of knowledge

ABSTRACT

Wikipedia is an Open Content resource, which is constructed by a users community, and is widely employed in educational contexts by both students and teachers. Wikipedia articles have hyperlinks that connect them, so it is possible to represent Wikipedia as a network, in which the nodes are the articles and the edges are hyperlinks. In this paper we analyze a complete copy of the Spanish Wikipedia. We apply Social Networks Analysis Techniques and, more precisely, Communities Detection Techniques, in order to identify clusters of articles with similar content. As the number of clusters is relatively small we use manual analyses to detect science articles. In addition we identify the most representative scientific fields and their main features. We conclude that science articles are about 11.66 % of Spanish Wikipedia articles and that the most important clusters of scientific articles do not always coincide with classical Science disciplines. This kind of analyses contributes to understanding better Wikipedia as an educational tool.

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Index Terms

• Applied computing

  • Education