Over the past decade, Kate Grillo’s classes have worked to fix that problem, at least on Wikipedia. Initially at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse and now at the University of Florida, Dr. Grillo’s classes, supported by Wiki Education’s Student Program, have added almost 200,000 words to Wikipedia’s coverage of African archaeology. Student editors in the latest iteration of her class, Introduction to African Archaeology, created four new articles about archaeological sites – Takarkori in Libya, al-Khiday in Sudan, the Jarigole pillar site in Kenya, and Old Oyo in Nigeria. In addition to creating these new articles, the class also made improvements to another 20 articles.

Takarkori is an archaeological site in southern Libya, near the border with Algeria. Evidence of human habitation dates back over 10,000 years to a period when this area, now deep in the Sahara, was much wetter and supported lakes, wetlands, and flowing streams. 

The article provides readers with a sense of the depth of history of the site and manages to meet a reader’s need for background information without delving too deeply into tangential topics. 

A good Wikipedia article needs to strike a careful balance between providing the reader with enough information to keep reading without adding so much background that it ends up duplicating information that should be in a separate article dedicated to the topic. When writing in an underdeveloped area of Wikipedia like this one, getting that balance right can sometimes be a challenge.

Al-Khiday is a group of five sites on the western bank of the Nile in Sudan that were discovered in 2004. The best-studied of these sites, al-Khiday 2, was occupied at least four separate times between the pre-Mesolithic and the Late Meroitic (a time period that relates to the city of Meroë, the capital of the Kingdom of Kush).

This article provides a glimpse at life in the Upper Nile Valley at various points in time over the course of thousands of years. It also lifts the curtain as to how archaeologists learn about life in ancient times through clues like charring in food remains, starch grain sizes, and the imprints of bacteria on prostate stones. 

Jarigole pillar site, a communal burial site in northern Kenya, and Old Oyo in Nigeria, the capital city of the Oyo Empire which was abandoned in 1835 after Fulani attacks, round out the set of articles created by student editors in this iteration of Dr. Grillo’s class. Together, these articles help fill gaps in an area of Wikipedia where significant absences abound.

Popular – and sometimes scholarly – knowledge is shaped by the information that’s available. Wikipedia’s existence has put an incredible amount of information at the fingertips of anyone with an internet connection (and a decent command of English or one of the other major language Wikipedias). But the information on Wikipedia tends to reflect the biases in popular content. By adding specific scholarly content in an area that’s less visible in the public imagining of the ancient world, student editors like those in Dr. Grillo’s classes can help chip away at systemic issues in the representation of human knowledge. 

Just by doing a class assignment, they can start to change the world.

Interested in learning more about teaching with Wikipedia and getting started in your own class? Visit teach.wikiedu.org or reach out with questions at contact@wikiedu.org.

Hero image by Luca Galuzzi, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

These student editors may have channeled their research on birth control into unexpected areas of Wikipedia, but they weren’t the only students in Chris Babits’ History of Sexuality class who focused on adding information related to contraception to the online encyclopedia. Classmates also enhanced related pages including the Cornstock laws and Family planning in the United States. And until one Utah student jumped in, the Views on birth control in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints page was missing arguably the most relevant view: the church’s current stance on contraception. 

Just as real-world events can lead to spikes in readership of related Wikipedia articles, student editors can be motivated to work on topics that experience a peaked level of public interest, wanting to add information to the in-demand area of knowledge.

Babits’ students’ decision to explore the topic of contraception may have been influenced by the real-world interest in the information following a milestone decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. On June 24, 2022 the Supreme Court officially ruled to reverse Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, declaring that the constitutional right to abortion no longer exists. The decision undoubtedly drew attention to Wikipedia’s abortion article, which noted a significant jump in page views the following day, as well as to Wikipedia’s article on birth control, which nearly quadrupled in daily readership by June 25. 

So it should come as no surprise that Babits’ class, who’s collective edits on Wikipedia articles have been viewed nearly one million times, isn’t the only recent class in our Wikipedia Student Program to address knowledge gaps related to contraception. 

In fall 2023, three of Caroline Smith’s students at The George Washington University collaborated to create a new article on emergency contraceptives on college campuses, exploring the history, accessibility, and legislation of access at colleges and universities across the country. Their article explores the first time morning-after pills were sold in vending machines on a college campus at The Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, the spread of the concept to other institutions, and the related legislation.

This spring term, four of Smith’s students also worked together to create another new Wikipedia article to share the history of Julie, a healthcare company that markets a non-prescription emergency contraceptive pill. Julie launched their product in September 2022 in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade with a mission of removing stigmas around emergency contraception and increasing access for marginalized communities.

By filling in missing information for topics of public interest and need, student editors like Babits’ and Smiths’ can make tremendous impact through the Wikipedia assignment. Interested in learning more and getting started in your own class? Visit teach.wikiedu.org or reach out with questions at contact@wikiedu.org.

The Wikipedia assignment is giving students career skills that allow them to address misinformation, to correct the historical record in racially marginalized communities, and to discover that personally, they are a crucial part of the solution.

I recently visited students at Denmark Technical College, a historically Black college in South Carolina, to share about Wiki Education’s efforts to diversify Wikipedia’s content and contributors. While reviewing the Wikipedia assignment, I showed them a picture of a recent conference of Wikipedians–the people who write what we could call our living history. And the students noticed something immediately. “Where’s the spice?” they joked, pointing out that the majority of the faces were white.

It’s true. Out of thousands of Wikipedians in the US, 89% identify as white and 85% as male. So we have this incredible resource–Wikipedia–that is mostly curated by white men. The students understood the problem with just one photo. Without a diversity of contributors, how can we expect Wikipedia to reflect the perspectives and experiences of all people? Of the students in that room?

So far, Wiki Education has helped Wikipedia make some progress. Only 55% of people in our programs identify as white, as opposed to 85% in the larger Wikipedian community. 69% identify as women or nonbinary, in contrast to roughly 15% of Wikipedians. And Wiki Education is responsible for bringing 19% of new editors to English Wikipedia each year.

My job at Wiki Education is to continue to increase the diversity of content and contributors on Wikipedia. One of the ways I do that is by inviting instructors from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), and Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) to lead Wikipedia assignments. My dream is that one day, there will be more students of color editing Wikipedia than represented in the population of the US. It’s a personal dream, a personal goal, that powers my work every day. Here is how Wiki Education programs are doing so far:

I have a lot of conversations with instructors at HBCUs, HSIs, and TCUs about how a Wikipedia assignment does or does not meet their course objectives. And I find we usually circle back to the same core things that we both wish for students. We want them to:

1) see themselves in our culture and history

2) feel inspired by their schoolwork

3) have the skills to weed out misinformation in their life, and ultimately

4) influence the world around them, change the narrative.

I’d like to share some student work from HBCUs over the years that I think are particularly powerful examples of students filling important knowledge gaps on Wikipedia while choosing topics that are meaningful to them. Writing on such a public stage is a pretty powerful motivator for students, who take extra care to get it right and feel proud of their work.

Students identify biases and gaps, and change the narrative

A student at Kentucky State University noticed that Alice Walker’s Wikipedia biography spoke of her ‘feminism’ rather than her ‘womanism,’ the term Walker coined for her work. In fact, Walker did not feel represented within the mostly white feminist movement of the time. Understanding this nuance, the student changed the section title from “Feminism” to “Womanism” to better reflect Walker’s work and legacy, and expanded the section to briefly describe the difference between feminist movements. Since they made this correction in 2018, 2.2 million readers have visited the page and benefitted from the addition.

Alice Walker isn’t the only pioneering Black woman whose biography contained biases that students at HBCUs have fixed. Did you know that Hattie McDaniel–the first Black woman to win an Oscar–wasn’t allowed to attend the premiere of the movie she won it for because of her race? A student added this information to her Wikipedia biography, which has reached 2.1 million readers in the last three years. And what about Elaine Brown, the first and only woman to lead the Black Panther Party? Even with her impressive leadership position, she still experienced sexism within her career. A student from Spelman College added that information to her biography, which has been viewed 117K times since. Another student at Spelman College wrote about how McCarthyism affected jazz musician Hazel Scott’s career, for the benefit of 276K readers.

When we remember history, there’s a risk of downplaying the barriers that pioneers faced in favor of a whitewashed or milder narrative. Students can play an active role in telling the full story of our history, understanding that these nuanced perspectives matter and belong in places like Wikipedia.

Students document discrimination, possibly enacting change

Information is power and Wikipedia has the power to affect behavior. So when students document marginalization in various fields, they could very possibly enact positive change.

A few of Tanya Allen’s music students at Texas Southern University looked for information gaps in Wikipedia’s page about classroom management. One notable gap that a student filled was that Black boys are subjected to punishment more than white peers. 743K readers have visited the page since the student cited this research back in December 2017. Presumably some of these Wikipedia readers were teachers themselves, learning from and being made aware of these disparities and discriminatory classroom methods, and hopefully avoiding them in their own teaching.

Another student at Xavier University of Louisiana explained how colorism factors into the history of racial discrimination in the US, informing 970K readers since 2017. Another student from the same course wrote about how Black women face an increased risk of health problems in the United States for the benefit of 185K readers.

This process of identifying gaps in information sources that we may take for granted gives students the chance to discern fact from fiction as they build media literacy skills and correct the public narrative.

Students see themselves in our culture and history

Because students and instructors can choose the topics they edit, they can create awareness about a wide range of topics that they’re personally invested in. One instructor I spoke with recently is passionate about first generation college students seeing themselves represented more widely in our society. Wikipedia is potentially one avenue for accomplishing that. Many students report that this kind of personal investment in their learning is quite the motivator. It’s a chance to make their school work their own.

A Wikipedia assignment is also a chance to look at personal interests through an academic lens and inform many others about the connections between the two. Msia Kibona Clark’s student at Howard University, for example, wrote about hip-hop on the Black feminism page, which has already received 30K page visits since November. Another student from the course wrote about the “video vixen” or models that appear in hip-hop music videos and how the trope has affected the hyper-sexualization of Black women, informing 35K readers so far in just a few months.

Inspiring confidence and creating a passion for learning

In addition to being the Equity Outreach Coordinator at Wiki Education, I am a professional cellist and music teacher who’s performed on hundreds of stages across the world. And you might ask, “why does he work for Wiki Education?” There is a throughline. Our society simultaneously inspires a love of art and learning and, sadly, also works against it. When it’s hard to determine fact from fiction on the internet, when discrimination and racial disparities affect our communities, how can we expect students of color to enjoy the arts? When many student populations just need to put food on the table, how is there time to feel inspired by schoolwork or go to concerts? The Wikipedia assignment is giving students career skills that allow them to address misinformation, to correct the historical record in racially marginalized communities, and to discover that personally, they are a crucial part of the solution. These skills will help them feel more confident in their abilities, and hopefully, not fear getting out into the world and proving themselves capable of much more than they imagined. And maybe, just for a moment, that confidence will allow them and future generations to enjoy the wonder of art and music.

As part of my work at Wiki Education, I learn from instructors all over the United States and Canada as they grapple with these questions too. I truly believe that inviting students to write Wikipedia content as coursework is a powerful way to empower students and lift them up in our society. They can think critically about bias in information. They can practice determining fact from fiction and trustworthy information from untrustworthy. From there, they can make educated judgments about these questions in their own life. And they can take part in writing our living history.

That’s why we’re thankful that students in our program work on updating Wikipedia’s coverage of art and art history each term. Looking back at work from just a few semesters ago, we can really understand the far-reaching impact that students have on public knowledge.

Susan Lee’s student at Concordia College worked on the page about mannerism, a style of art that emerged in Renaissance Italy in the early 1500s, in her course on Renaissance and Baroque art. The student added a new section about common characteristics of artworks in this style, which differed greatly from the aesthetic norms of the Renaissance. A museum-goer might use the list to understand the significance of one work compared to another of a different style. The student also expanded information about notable artists that were drawn to the anti-classical tenets of mannerism, including Jacopo da Pontormo, his pupil Agnolo Bronzino, and Jacopo Tintoretto. The student contextualized their work in relation to the mannerism style and other arts of the period. Another student in the same course expanded Wikipedia’s coverage of cartography, adding detail about printing techniques in the Renaissance and the typical functions that maps of the period served. Since Susan Lee’s course ended in May 2019, 860K visitors have read the page about mannerism and 900K the page about cartography–all with these student contributions.

A student of Rachel Miller’s at California State University Sacramento worked on updating the Wikipedia entry for the famous Artemisia Gentileschi painting Judith Slaying Holofernes. You can see with our Authorship Highlighting that the student added analysis of what the painting depicts and how the subject Judith had been portrayed by Gentileschi’s Renaissance predecessors. The student also explained the personal connection that historians have drawn between this Judith and Gentileschi, proposing that Gentileschi represented herself as Judith here, referencing her own traumatic experience at the hands of her mentor. Since the student made these additions in May 2019, the page has received 400K views with spikes in views in July 2020 when Italian authorities blocked the attempted illegal sale of one of Gentileschi’s paintings and in October 2020 when a long-lost work was discovered in the aftermath of the Beirut explosion.

Another student, three years earlier in Jo Ann Griffin’s course at the University of Louisville, had expanded the section about feminist historical perspectives on Gentileschi’s career in her biography page. They added that critical reception of the Judith Slaying Holofernes work was influenced by the artist’s gender and that centuries later we can now point to the many barriers women artists of the time faced. This Wikipedia biography has received 2 million views since the student made these edits, including a spike of 60K views in one day when she was featured as a Google Doodle in 2020.

In a Wikipedia assignment, students hone their research and writing skills and they engage in an endeavor that feels purposeful. They create a lasting contribution to openly available resources and take evident pride in their work. The lasting effects for Wikipedia, and art appreciation in general, are positive. History is preserved and thousands around the world can learn about these works without needing access to paywalled journals or a plane ticket to museums across the globe.

Learn more about incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into your course of any discipline at teach.wikiedu.org.

Aaron Franklin, a third-year at Stanford Law, created the Wikipedia article about Independent state legislature theory just months before the Supreme Court would consider the once fringe legal theory in one of the most significant election law cases ever. Thousands would likely visit Wikipedia once the case hit the news cycle, so he wanted to strike the right tone.

“It was especially important for me to accurately represent the textualist and originalist logic behind the independent state legislature theory in a way that adhered to Wikipedia’s neutrality principles,” Aaron shared. “I hope readers will come away with a better understanding of exactly how ISL purports to interpret our constitution, which will hopefully allow them to develop their own sense of whether that interpretation is plausible or not.”

Through Wikipedia assignments, students can funnel academic research from behind paywalls out into the general public, letting readers make up their own minds about topics important to our democracy. 70,500 readers have now visited the article about ISL that Aaron created and that number continues to rise.

Political scientist and policy expert, Erzsebet Fazekas, led a Wikipedia assignment last Spring at the University at Albany. The course page invites students to practice the role they may embody in a future career in policy: explaining complex topics in a clear and fair way.

“Working in international development or in other internationally focused careers means working in a community of practice where members have unequal access to knowledge,” Dr. Fazekas writes to students. “Your job will entail strategically and effectively synthesizing and communicating knowledge to people in an accessible, balanced and inclusive way to fill knowledge gaps. This assignment will prepare you to do that.”

Students chose to update Wikipedia articles about the public management of humanitarian disasters, comparing public management tools across countries to address policy issues like refugee settlement and the COVID-19 pandemic. One student edited the article about procurement, or the purchasing of goods and services through a competitive bidding process. Thanks to them, the article now has a detailed section about “public procurement,” or how governments purchase goods and services for taxpayers. These additions explain the power of public procurement to cultivate economic growth, but also the associated challenges. It’s difficult to measure effectiveness, and there’s a risk that bribery will influence how procurements are distributed. 220,000 readers have visited the page since the student added this information.

Another student in the course chose to edit the article about public policy. It now states that drawing upon data science when making public policy decisions improves public services and mitigates errors and fraud. 163,000 readers have visited the page since the student made this addition last year.

Another student worked on the humanitarian crisis article, adding an entire section on how the United Nations and non-governmental organizations work together to manage them. The student wrote about the elements needed for successful management, including efficient coordination and communication between actors, working at both international and local levels, and centering the needs of those most at risk. This particular article has reached 18,550 readers since last year.

Wikipedia assignments are an effective way to channel academic research into highly relevant Wikipedia articles. As classrooms became remote at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Helen Choi’s engineering students made sure the article about Zoom video technology told students of their data privacy rights–informing more than 1.2 million readers that month and inspiring additional Wikipedians to expand the privacy section further. A business law student from Babson College expanded the COVID-19 section of the eviction in the United States section, updating with the changes to eviction law during the pandemic. Wikipedia editing is a way of putting timely, factual information into the hands of the public right as they’re looking for that information.

With the publication of Neil Thompson’s latest Wikipedia-related research, Trial by Internet, we understand Wikipedia’s importance not only to the public sphere but to the legal system broadly. Experimenters examined the invisible flows of information from Wikipedia to the Irish legal system, posting a set of 77 new Wikipedia articles about cases decided by the Supreme Court of Ireland. They analyzed subsequent decisions out of Ireland’s lower courts, finding that the cases with Wikipedia articles were 21% more likely to be cited as precedents and that lower court decisions drew on the Wikipedia articles in framing these precedents and their meaning. It seems that Wikipedia plays a big (if unacknowledged) role in keeping this knowledge system running–not just informing the public, but also the lawmakers.

As Amanda Levendowski, a law professor at Georgetown University, said, “It’s hard to imagine a more powerful way to further the public’s understanding of law and justice than by empowering law students to improve Wikipedia articles about those laws.” Wiki Education will help you guide your students to do so.

Learn more about incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into your course of any discipline at teach.wikiedu.org.

In reflections at the end of the term, students noted that the nontraditional assignment had them think outside of the box and beyond the classroom. “The accessibility of Wikipedia was a large part of why I am so glad to have done this project,” said one student. “I really appreciated having done something tangible and somewhat permanent that contributes in a positive way. Most projects I have done in other classes have existed almost in a vacuum, in that once it’s been written and graded, no one ever looks at it again. While the page I worked on may not be one of the most frequently visited ones, I was still able to contribute to the overall knowledge within Wikipedia.”

“After completing the project, I felt proud of myself knowing my work will be seen by others besides my professor,” said another student. “It is rewarding to know that my contribution to Wikipedia will benefit others rather than just my grade in the class. Doing the Wikipedia assignment also is a humbling experience that truly allowed me to value my education even further. I have honestly taken for granted the resources that I have had access to as a college student. It was fulfilling to know that thanks to my work I have allowed others to learn free of cost from resources that they would not have access to otherwise.”

Given the reach that their work will have, students also felt an increased sense of responsibility to get it right. “Working on Wikipedia made me think, almost a little existentially, how my own information and research can affect what is known about a topic,” wrote one student, who expanded the biography for Argentine feminist Juana Paula Manso. “My role in the online information landscape on this particular Wikipedia article was about giving the world a little more knowledge about an important figure that, so far as Wikipedia was concerned, was not well known because of how little was written on her existing page.”

Before the student worked on the biography, it was just three sentences long and received a steady stream of readers. Now, the article has 7xs the amount of citations it had before thanks to this student, the majority of which cite journal articles behind paywalls. The article still gets the same amount of traffic, but now readers have a much fuller picture of Juana’s life. The student has effectively freed that information for all readers in the future. “It’s a little scary, thinking on it now, that since my contribution is the majority—if not all—of what is on that page, if someone were to take my information and skew it, or misread it, I would be responsible if I accidentally used a bad source,” the student added.

While thinking critically about what sources are “reliable”, students also gained skills to synthesize information in their own words, retaining more course content in the process.

“Wikipedia is extremely touchy about sourcing: you can’t quote or paraphrase, and of course outright plagiarism is not allowed,” wrote another student. “But being forced to put everything I learned in my own words was a new experience for me, since I have been so used, in my other classes, to being allowed to quote amply so long as I was able to analyze the information in my own words after. Now, after having to source this way in Wikipedia, I’ve found that I have steered clear of sources that I didn’t understand enough to put in my own words; I have become less reliant on making other authors’ quotes do my writing for me and I have found it easier to make sure my quotes are supporting my own words on a topic.”

As for how students thought this assignment compared to the more traditional term paper, another student said: “I believe I learned about as much as I would have from doing a paper instead of a Wikipedia article, but I think I learned it very differently than I would have: I’ve honestly found that I can still remember, very clearly, the information I put on my article because I had to write everything in my own words—I can’t say I’ve ever remembered this much information from a typical term paper before, so in that way I think this project was extremely beneficial to the way I learned more about Latin America.”

To incorporate an assignment like this into your next course, visit teach.wikiedu.org for our free assignment templates, dashboard, and support.

Thumbnail image is Navy Mechanics School Ave. de Libertador by David, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

In Spring 2022, students in Edmund Palermo’s Biology in Materials Science class returned to the subject area for the fourth time, building on contributions by prior classes in 2017, 2018, and 2020.

Biofoams are a broad class of biologically-derived foams that now have a Wikipedia article, thanks to these students. Biofoams can include natural compounds like antlers, horseshoe crab shells and toucan beaks, but can also include synthetic compounds that serve as alternatives to petroleum-based products in areas like packaging or flip-flops. The article created by Professor Palermo’s students serves as an overview of many individual materials that previous incarnates of the class created or expanded Wikipedia articles for.

And speaking of new articles, one group of students created one on the toco toucan beak. While the beak of a single species of bird might seem like too narrow topic for its own page, the amount of research about it is enough to meet Wikipedia’s notability status. The inclusion of extensive information on the beak from the a biomaterials perspective, and its role as in biomimetic design — where it serves as a model for manmade systems — makes this article more than just one about a bird’s body part.

Fungal mycelium, the basic body tissue of most fungi, is the basis of a wide range of environmentally-friendly materials that can be used as alternatives in packaging, building materials, acoustic dampening, and in the fashion industry. By creating an article on mycelium-based materials, students in the class were able to tie together information that would otherwise be covered in a more disjointed fashion across articles about specific products or specific companies using them.

In addition to these three new articles, students in the class expanded a range of other articles. The amylopectin article, for example, was short and barely touched on its importance as a key component of starch foods like rice, potatoes and corn. The previous version also gave little useful information about the compound’s structure, history, or its important roles in diet, textiles, drug delivery systems, or tissue engineering. By adding all this and more, students in the class were able to transform the article into something much more useful to readers, while also integrating it into the wider bodies of information on Wikipedia. Connecting concepts on Wikipedia make them more discoverable, both to readers clicking links and search engines looking at information networks. The act of making these connections also inspires students to think across topics and disciplines.

Other students in the class expanded the bio-inspired photonics, nano-scaffold, and abductin articles. The last of these is especially intriguing because it’s the elastic protein that forms the hinge that connects the upper and lower halves of a bivalve mollusk’s shell together. The students were able to expand the article from four-sentences into something substantial and useful to readers.

Wikipedia’s coverage of a lot of areas is uneven. For subjects like biomaterials, which have the potential to play such an important role in the future of Earth as a livable planet capable of sustaining human life, filling those gaps is important. Maybe one of these Wikipedia articles — or one on a totally different topic one of your students creates — will help guide someone into a field where they go on to make an important discovery. We can all dream about making a difference, but by improving Wikipedia, you and your students actually are.

To incorporate an assignment like this into your next course, visit teach.wikiedu.org for our free assignment templates, dashboard, and support.

Mars often attracts interest from student editors — after all, it’s the best-known planet after Earth, Mars exploration is a hot topic, and its the only planet known to be entirely inhabited by robots. At the same time, a lot of the gaps that exist in information about Mars require specialist technical knowledge to understand the topic, along with access to scholarly resources that are frequently behind paywalls. A student in Journey to the Center of the Earth created a new article on the magnetic field of Mars, while one student in Planetary Atmospheres created one about Mars carbon dioxide ice clouds and others expanded the water on Mars and climate of Mars articles. In these kinds of specialized topic areas, student editors have a lot to offer.

From engagement rings, to conflict diamonds, to hidden loot in heist movies, diamonds fascinate. While people are usually only familiar with inclusions in the context of gemstones, the material trapped in diamonds during their formation can provide information about conditions in the Earth’s mantle at the time when the diamonds were formed. While inclusions are mentioned in the Wikipedia articles about both the mineral diamond and diamonds as gemstones, the nature of of the inclusions, their formation, and their importance in studying the interior of the planet isn’t a good fit in either article. A student editor in the Journey to the Center of the Earth class was able to recognize this omission and fill it by creating the diamond inclusions article.

While earthquakes are difficult or impossible to predict, certain areas are subject to repeated cycles of earthquakes driven by the accumulation of stress, followed by periodic release. One student editor in the Journey to the Center of the Earth class created an article about this phenomenon, the earthquake cycle while another made major expansions to the Earth’s outer core article. Others created articles about notable academics like geologist Holly Stein and geochemist François M. M. Morel.

Wiki Education’s Student Program offers opportunities for instructors in planetary sciences — be it this planet or others out there — to fill content gaps while empowering students to make a meaningful contribution. For more information, visit teach.wikiedu.org.

Thumbnail image in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Most people are familiar with the invasive species, but might have a hard time separating that concept from the related idea of introduced species. Familiar ideas like these got added to Wikipedia first (the invasive species article was created in 2002, while the introduced species article was created in 2003). The article on tramp species, on the other hand, wasn’t created until November 2021 when a student in Sarah Turner’s Advanced Seminar in Environmental Science class created the article. It’s a concept that fits an important part in our understanding of this topic, but as long as it had no Wikipedia article, it’s likely to be invisible to many people learning about the topic. Since undergraduates rely heavily on Wikipedia as a freely available alternative to textbooks, the topics that are missing from Wikipedia are more likely to slip through the cracks for students learning ecology.

Disease, as we have learned during the Covid-19 pandemic, is more than just the interaction between a pathogen and its host. There’s a whole world of environmental factors that means that there’s much more to disease transmission than simply infection rates. These sorts of things are part of the science of disease ecology, but more than a year into the pandemic, Wikipedia’s article on the topic was just a short overview. A student editor in the class was able to transform the article into something much more useful and information to to readers.

Climate change affects not only global temperatures, but also rainfall patterns and sea level rise. By expanding the ice sheet model and flood risk management articles, student editors were able to improve the information that’s out there for people trying to understand these important tools for forecasting changes in the world we live in. Other new articles created by students in the class include CLUE model, a spatially-explicit landuse-change model, Cooper Reef, an artificial reef in Australia, Indigenous rainforest blockades in Borneo, the Impacts of tourism in Kodagu district in Karnataka, India, and Soapstone mining in Tabaka, Kenya. Other existing articles that they made major improvements to include Alopecia in animals, Blond capuchin and Stream power.

Wikipedia’s coverage of environmental science is uneven. Many are covered well, but there are large gaps. Other articles suffer because they’re incomplete, badly organized, or out of date. This leaves a lot of room for student editors to make important contributions.

Image credit: Forest & Kim Starr, CC BY 3.0 US, via Wikimedia Commons