Using Wikipedia as a classroom tool - a translation experience

This paper presents a classroom experience regarding the use of Wikipedia in a teaching innovation project carried out between Jaume I University and Wikimedia Spain. Framed in the current post-postivist climate within the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), Wikipedia will be presented as an inter-disciplinary tool with a relevant number of classroom applications, reflecting how meaningful learning experiences based on collaborative work and authentic project-based tasks lead to better understanding and higher levels of motivation among the students. In the particular case of translation education, it will be argued that using Wikipedia in the course of the reverse translation modules allows the students to gain a deeper insight of its linguistic and discursive structures, as well as the critical/exegetic skills they need in order to assess the kind of texts with which they are commissioned, and the special discursive techniques associated to the translation task.