Although I thought that writing a Wikipedia page about engineering education research was commendable, doing so in an hour was quite a formidable task. There was a bit of silence at the beginning as we (I know this was true for me) tried to recover from the bomb that was just dropped on us. After the silence came a few ideas about the content, then there were a few ideas about the process. In no time, a Google Doc was created and many of us went to the front computer to input our e-mail addresses so that we could all make changes to the collective document. Then, there was a flurry of typing in different portions of the document as each person/group inputted information that they deemed necessary for the page. Some people were inputting lists while others were pasting the links that were relevant to the items of the list. I personally entered a few of the research areas as well as the corresponding short descriptions. Although we had a fair amount of material, it was not in any kind of orderly format. It was just a bunch of randomly placed ideas. This caused a new set of people to emerge and volunteer to get the ideas in order. The new task for most of the group was to figure out what the major sections of the page would be and to decide what material corresponds to each section. An implication of assigning material to a section was the material that was not selected for a section did not make it to the Wikipedia page. There were no votes or extensive speeches to try to get unassigned material onto the page as many may not have realized that the assignment process caused some material to be left behind. Once a few of the sections were formed (and maybe even before), there were people trying to get the material organized on the Google Doc and inserted onto the Wikipedia page. At the end of this exercise, we (as a class) had created a Wikipedia page about engineering education research. Looking back on this experience, I can see that it was boundary work. We were trying to carve out a space for engineering education research. Some of the things that I wonder about as I reflect on this boundary work are: What piece of the story is missing due to the unassigned material? What piece of the story is missing in general? Who is included by the boundary that we have created? Who is not included? How representative is the resulting Wikipedia page to each person’s personal thoughts of engineering education research? Or to the class’ collective thoughts of engineering education research?
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