Like many notable women of color in STEM, Hernandez’s work was missing on Wikipedia – until just two months ago, when four undergraduates living across the country from Hernandez came together to add her story.

“Jessica Hernandez is an Indigenous scientist who gets very little exposure and advocates for communities and groups that are also underrepresented,” said Dayanara Mendez, a first-year English student at Lone Star College-Kingwood, a community college in Houston, Texas. “To get the chance to write an article about a woman of color in STEM, especially since I’m Hispanic and I always love the chance to learn more about other Latinos, made this a great opportunity.”

Classmates Natalie Ramirez, Alexandria Ravina, and McKenna Sealy joined Mendez to create the new Wikipedia article for Hernandez, working collaboratively to outline sections, find high quality sources for citations, and review each other’s research and writing. For Sealy, the Wikipedia assignment was a chance to share an inspiring and important perspective.

“Jessica Hernandez has a lot to offer our world from her Indigenous perspective and research as an environmental scientist, activist, author, and researcher,” said Sealy. “She’s learned a lot through her family heritage about the environment, and that, combined with her formal education, can be very powerful in helping us to better understand the world around us and how to take care of it.”

Sealy noted the power of Wikipedia in shaping awareness and understanding of notable figures like Hernandez, emphasizing its accessibility.

“Because of Wikipedia, no one needs a database that costs money to learn more about people making a great impact on the world,” Sealy explained. “The assignment helped me realize that we can all contribute to big and important things even if we feel small and don’t think we can have an impact.”

At first, Mendez dreaded the research for the project, but once she began, quickly changed her mind.

“When I actually started, I found that it was pretty fun,” Mendez shared. “It was kind of challenging and I’m grateful for it because it was something new. It helped kill the boredom that I normally get from writing the same kind of essay consistently.” 

While she was a little nervous for the Wikipedia page to go live for the world’s eyes, Mendez received positive feedback from friends and would look forward to another Wikipedia assignment in the future.

Sealy agreed, noting the feeling of accomplishment when they finalized and published the article.

“This was a great assignment compared to a traditional assignment because rather than turning in a paper no one will ever see again, I’m actually making a difference and my work will be seen,” said Sealy.

Guided by course instructor Dr. Brian Shmaefsky, the group’s Wikipedia assignment is part of a larger Wiki Education initiative sponsored by the Broadcom Foundation, which encourages the creation of new biographies of diverse people in STEM on Wikipedia.

Interested in incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into your course? Visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn more about the free assignment templates and resources that Wiki Education offers to instructors in the United States and Canada.

Explore other related stories:

• Adding Claibourne Smith’s Wikipedia article: “like it was a piece of art that I kept looking at”
• Telling the story of an African American chemist
• Clovis students add biographies of diverse people in STEM

A collaborative, team-learning spirit (everyone’s a learner)

As a first time editor, editing Wikipedia can feel like a very solitary activity, especially when the onus falls on the editor to seek out the Wikipedia community either through the Teahouse or a Wikiproject that catches their attention. The students that participate in the Student Program are in a unique position, since they are learning the ropes alongside their peers and instructors. One instructor shared, “The Wikipedia assignment helped to create a collaborative, team-learning spirit: I hope that students emerge more aware of how we are all learners, professors included!” Another instructor commented, “Often we were teaching each other, sharing tips, and edits–it really enlivens the classroom because everyone is so invested in the outcome.” Invested not only in the outcome of their individual assignments, but in the success of all their fellow peers collaborating to contribute quality information to the largest knowledge repository in the world.

The kind of collaboration fostered among students and instructors through this project is a refreshing change to the typical, top to bottom structure of most college courses. The majority of our instructors have very little to no experience as Wikipedia editors. Our most successful instructors take a vulnerable step forward alongside students to learn the processes, and inevitably to make mistakes as a new editor does. As one instructor put it, “This helped me challenge the traditional classroom hierarchy of the instructor and student, as I was viewed as a fellow Wikipedia editor!” Fostering that sense of collaboration across traditional power dynamics helps establish a trust and curiosity among instructors and students that encourages an excitement to learn and complete the project.

Establishing instructor & student relationships

Another facet of the Wikipedia assignment that results from its collaborative nature, is the opportunity for instructors and students to get to know each other as people. They’re able to share their interests within the course or outside of it, connect over the difficulties of learning new material and reach an understanding that comes from being able to frequently engage in 1-on-1 discussions. An instructor shared how they had the opportunity to have more individualized time with their students and describes the “great impact” it had on their instruction, “on a weekly basis I get to work closely with them, answer questions about how to research, which sources are reliable, how to cite something, what information is notable, and more. It’s a 1-on-1 situation I’ve never had before and I really value that time.” Even if it is hybrid or in person, the novelty of the Wikipedia assignment encourages students to engage in more inquisitive discussions with their instructors and can result in connections over unexpected challenges, such as in the case of this instructor who said the assignment, “really helped us to bond over finding reliable sources – students really got it.”

What really stood out to me were the personal connections made between the students and instructors. It was a surprise at how the Wikipedia assignment served to cut through the mundanity of the usual filing in and out of classes (in person or virtually). The assignment “provided an opportunity to get to know student interests and tailor other work in line with those interests. That is, allowed more opportunity to get to know them as people.” Especially as we reel back from the remote learning years of the COVID pandemic, it’s wonderful to see in person connections taking place as a result of this project. Other instructors shared similar experiences, “The Wikipedia assignment helped me to get to know my students better! Since I let them choose their articles to edit, I learned more about their interests and career plans.”

Each term, we hear from instructors and students alike about the great sense of accomplishment they feel about the global impact and reach of this project. Now we might sound like a broken record player at this point, but it really highlights how empowering it is for our students to be able to add their little grain of knowledge to Wikipedia. To relay an instructor’s insight, “I think it got students excited to have ownership over a project. They seemed to appreciate that it was an assignment that had a bigger impact beyond just me and them.” To become an active participant in the Wikipedia project as an editor, and to then intentionally reflect and zoom out of the immediate communities and relationships that we hold in our daily lives, and be able to attempt to grasp the idea of our participation in the knowledge building process on the global scale that Wikipedia functions at, is not an easy ask of anyone, or our students. Yet that very thinking becomes a motivating factor in producing quality work, “The fact that the work they were contributing was going to be seen on a global level made the quality of the work improve significantly over previous assignments.”

Contributing information for a larger, global audience also helps students think critically about the accessibility of their information. Students that participate in the Wikipedia project are from all over the US and Canada, and bring their unique, diverse lens to the knowledge creation process. One instructor shared a powerful reflection about their students, “One thing that I realized working with a class full of first generation students was that writing for Wikipedia allowed them to share their work with their families, many of whom had limited English skills. In someways writing for Wikipedia, writing for more general, less educated, global audiences, meant writing in ways that were more accessible for their own families. Many students in my class translated their work into Spanish, making it even more accessible, they were so excited to write for the world, especially when that included people close to them.”

Before I let you go, a quick recap of those fantastic numbers:

• Number of students: 5,980

• Number of courses: 351

• Words added: 5.08 million

• Refs added: 51,100

• Article edited: 7,430

• New articles created: 466

Thanks to all of the new and returning instructors and students that took that leap of faith to give the Wikipedia assignment a chance! We are grateful for your participation and contributions to Wikipedia. Cheers to future collaborations!

DeLoatch’s life story is one of championing African American engineers. He provided an opportunity for countless of his students to see him as a role model. That makes him exactly the kind of person who Wiki Education is empowering students like Kimberly to add to Wikipedia, thanks to an initiative funded by the Broadcom Foundation to support diverse students as they add biographies of the hidden figures of STEM to Wikipedia.

“If it weren’t for this assignment I’m not sure if I would have ever been introduced to Eugene DeLoatch and all of the other subjects of my classmates’ Wikipedia biographies,” Kimberly says. “Ultimately I gained an abundance of knowledge while writing this article.”

Kimberly is an elementary school teacher in San Jose, California, who’s pursuing her doctorate in educational leadership from Santa Clara University. She constantly uses Wikipedia but had never thought about contributing herself until her instructor this term, Dr. La’Tonya Rease Miles, assigned Kimberly and her classmates to create biographies of diverse figures in STEM.

“I was excited, intrigued, and intimidated all at the same time,” she says. “I knew it was going to take a lot of thought, preparation, and energy to create an article. My initial impression of this assignment was, ‘this is innovative!’ Requiring us to become Wiki editors and create a Wikipedia biography article is unprecedented, and I would choose a Wikipedia assignment over a traditional term paper every time. Not only did we learn a valuable skill, but provided a service to the community.”

Kimberly took Wiki Education’s training and got feedback from Wiki Education staff on her draft. She found the experience meaningful, and intends to contribute content again, as part of her efforts to highlight achievements of African Americans.

“Learning about Wikipedia’s lack of biographies of people of color and women in STEM fields opened my eyes to the privilege and power that news and social media platforms possess,” Kimberly says. “Our nation has a history of presenting information that portrays African Americans and people of color in a negative light. The absence of positive contributions from groups that have been historically marginalized can be equally oppressive. Because of these inequities that exist, I made a conscious decision to choose an African American male as a subject. After learning about DeLoatch’s development of Morgan State University’s engineering program, and that he is responsible for training more African American engineers than anyone else in the world, writing his Wikipedia biography became more than a graded assignment. DeLoatch deserves the type of public recognition that possessing a Wikipedia biography article grants.”

“I’ve referenced Wikipedia extensively throughout my academic career and enjoyed the idea of contributing to it,” says Marina, who just wrapped up her first year of the Social Justice Leadership EdD program.

Her course was participating in an initiative funded by the Broadcom Foundation to create diverse biographies of people in STEM on Wikipedia, so Marina set out to create the biography of Arnaldo Díaz Vázquez. As a self-identified Latina, Marina says she wanted to increase the presence of Latinx scholars on Wikipedia.

But she didn’t stop there. A guest lecture by Dr. Daniel Solórzano in another class she was taking inspired Marina to learn more about his work. She found that many of the scholars whose work she looked up to were connected to him.

“I became curious about what his Wikipedia page might say and how extensive it might be. I was shocked that Dr. Solórzano didn’t have a page despite having hundreds of people study under him for several decades, many of whom have been successful in their own right,” she says. “After my shock subsided, I thought about our assignment and why we were creating the pages in the first place; because of an underrepresentation of people of color on Wikipedia in STEM fields. I realized that underrepresentation might also be the case for scholars of color in Education on Wikipedia.”

Armed with her research mindset and newfound knowledge of how Wikipedia worked, Marina dug deeper. She searched for academics that inspire and inform her work, such as Dr. Angela Valenzuela (aesthetic vs. authentic caring), Dr. William G. Tierney (cultural integrity vs. cultural suicide), Dr. Ricardo D. Stanton-Salazar (school and kin support networks), and Dr. Mark Granovetter (social network theory), among others.

“I was disheartened to find that those who identify as people of color, Dr. Valenzuela and Dr. Stanton-Salazar, did not have Wikipedia pages. Yet those who identify as white, Dr. Tierney and Dr. Granovetter, both did,” Marina says. “I wasn’t surprised, and yet I still felt disappointed. This frustration, added to the disappointment of Dr. Solórzano not having a page, caused me to want to do something beyond simply being upset; I wanted to take action. Creating a Wikipedia article for Dr. Solórzano allows me to expand on whose knowledge we value and whom we consider important enough to have a Wikipedia page.”

Marina says she felt compelled  to start a page for Dr. Solórzano after learning how to create and edit Wikipedia articles and is now confident that she can. Given Wikipedia’s neutrality and conflict of interest rules, it’s better for someone like her — who has no personal connection to the subject — to create the article. So she is working on it.

She credits Wiki Education’s staff (with special thanks to Wikipedia Expert Brianda Felix) for  helping her learn the ropes of Wikipedia. Marina says her favorite part of the assignment was sharing her course output  with friends and family instead of a dense, jargon-heavy academic paper.

As a scholar of education and information science, Marina sees the value of the assignment in developing  open educational resources (OERs) like Wikipedia as a way  to support students of color as a future university librarian.

“Most people assume that information literacy is intuitive, but it’s not, particularly when finding and utilizing academic resources such as library search engines,” Marina says. “At the beginning of the quarter, we discussed OERs and how people access information. This conversation, combined with my developing interest in the field of library sciences and  supporting students of color in expanding their information literacy skills, made this assignment particularly impactful. I considered how many people without access to academic resources such as scholarly journals and peer-reviewed articles use OERs such as Wikipedia. I also thought about the frustration that comes with being a student, trying to complete an assignment, and hitting a wall because the institution you belong to doesn’t have access to a particular journal. Despite my extensive experience searching for academic resources, this continues to happen to me. Now, more than ever, I realize the value of OERs and am excited about contributing to one through Wikipedia.”

And she’s grateful for the skills she gained. She hopes the articles she’s adding to Wikipedia will help raise the profile of other scholars of color.

“Without this assignment, I don’t think I would have thought twice about not finding a Wikipedia page for scholars of color that I admire,” she says. “The skills I learned through the experience of completing this assignment will benefit me long after this class ends. I now know more about OERs, adding to them, and will encourage others to do the same. I look forward to completing an initial draft of Dr. Solórzano’s Wikipedia page so that more people learn about his extensive and powerful work. I hope that creating Dr. Solórzano’s page supports communities  of color by amplifying our voices and lived experiences so that the lenses applied to research on our communities aren’t all deficit-based and instead, highlight our strengths.”

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.

Each term, I’m charged with reviewing and assessing the Wikipedia Student Program. It’s a time intensive process which is why these posts often appear several months after the completion of a term. It would be easy for us at Wiki Education to simply say that one term is like another. Thousands of students from hundreds of post-secondary institutions contribute millions of words to Wikipedia, and the world lives on happily ever after with countless topics improved for the public at large. True as that may be, each term brings its own experiences and learning opportunities for us at Wiki Education and a chance for us to highlight the amazing work of our students and faculty.

The numbers

The quantitative achievements of our students are nothing short of impressive! While numbers only tell a small part of the story, they demonstrate the sheer scale of the impact students can have on Wikipedia in a given term. In Fall 2022, we supported 363 courses and 6,460 students.

Those students:

• added 4.8 million words
• added 50,100 references
• worked on 6,300 articles
• created 497 new entries

And as always, their work was viewed hundreds of millions of times in the fall alone. Our students make up a small fraction of all students in higher education, and yet their contributions to Wikipedia and public knowledge are immense. As one of our instructors wrote, “One of the most profound experiences my graduate students have when doing this assignment is the realization of their own expertise in an area. I talk about how only 6% of Americans have a masters degree, and therefore it is their responsibility as experts in their field to ensure the content on Wikipedia is held to the highest standard, and that the way to keep it the resource that it is is for citizens like themselves to take pride and ownership in its development. I also emphasize how it is a privilege to be in Higher Education, and that they need to share this with the world, not keep it to themselves. It is their duty to share their knowledge. They take so much pride in this assignment/opportunity.” Ultimately, these numbers represent the opening up of knowledge to millions of people who otherwise might struggle to find reliable information.

Building community on and off line

When students engage in the Wikipedia assignment, they necessarily join the vibrant community of Wikipedia editors. Contributing to Wikipedia is inherently a communal act, and students learn how to construct knowledge in a collaborative setting. As one instructor wrote, “A few of my students actually started chatting with other wiki editors as they added content to their articles. It was a great experience feeling they were part of a community that was building knowledge.”

What’s less obvious are the types of offline communal engagements that the Wikipedia assignment can foster. Students often report that contributing to Wikipedia helps them to develop an authoritative voice and enables them to feel like members of an expert community. In the words of one student, “I can see how far I have come with reading and analyzing difficult research journals. I can share my findings with the public and make a difference in the science community.” Another student remarked on how the Wikipedia project opened their eyes to the inequities in mental health treatment globally and how this will inform how they interact with future patients. “When I thought about mental health inequalities, I often thought about different disparities between gender, age, race, sexual orientation, and education levels. It didn’t come to mind that not every country’s mental health system is as advanced as ours. Through doing this project, my eyes were opened to many injustices on a global scale. I think this information will be useful when working with clients with different backgrounds than my own and will help advance my clinical work.”

The Wikipedia assignment is also a way for many students to connect with their local communities or places of origin. One instructor remarked, “My favorite outcome was seeing a student from Uruguay add content to a stub article on a television network in Uruguay. That opportunity to add information about his home country was exciting to me, and he did an amazing job.” Another instructor described how one of their students wrote about a museum and visited the museum to let them know they were contributing to their Wikipedia entry. “That student reported feeling very empowered and connected to her community as a result.” Despite its online format, it’s clear that the Wikipedia assignment can help students forge community both on and offline.

A pedagogical tool

Of course, the most obvious community to which students belong is their institution and their individual classes. The Wikipedia assignment can also play a critical role in shaping a class and forging a more dynamic community of faculty and students. Students and faculty often express that they are less than enthused at the prospect of writing and grading traditional term papers. The Wikipedia assignment offers both instructors and students a chance to engage in authentic work that has the potential to resonate far beyond the class. As one instructor noted,

“It is much more fulfilling for students to see their research efforts out in the world, for everyone’s benefit, rather than writing a paper which sits on my desk.”

Another instructor remarked, “I feel more accomplished by helping them contribute to real world information, but also, their Wikipedia reflective essays are one of the most rewarding assignments to grade.”

Apart from engaging in work with real world applications, the Wikipedia assignment often results in an atmosphere of collaboration.

“I always enjoy the dynamic created by the Wikipedia assignments,” wrote one instructor. “I become a coach as students navigate an authentic audience for the work they are doing.”

The overwhelming majority of instructors in our program have no prior experience contributing to Wikipedia. They are in many cases learning alongside their students which just reinforces the democratic spirit of Wikipedia. As another instructor explained, “The collaborative research was fun. I think it helped students to work with each other but also for me to work with them, too: we struggled together, and they thereby gained windows into the world of real scholarship! (Professors struggle to learn, to write, to revise, too!)”

The Wikipedia assignment also has the potential to build a real foundation of trust between instructors and students. In the words of one instructor, “The students really seemed to appreciate that I trusted them to make real edits to a Wikipedia article, and that I gave them a meaningful, challenging assignment.” The public-facing nature of the Wikipedia assignment can be daunting. Instructors who run Wikipedia assignments are often challenging their students to reach beyond their comfort zones, but they are also imparting a confidence in their abilities that is hard to replicate. This trust reinforces the collegial spirit of the Wikipedia project and allows students to feel like experts with something to contribute. “It forces them to ‘grow up’ and be confident in themselves an in their knowledge and understanding of this field,” wrote one instructor.

A novel way to build critical skills

The Wikipedia assignment resonates both within and beyond the classroom, but it also has the potential to impact students on an individual level. The Wikipedia assignment excels not just in helping students to develop critical academic and professional skills, but it brings these skills together in a cohesive and complementary way.

It’s almost cliche at this point to say that digital literacy skills are critical for today’s students, but it’s also no exaggeration to note that the Wikipedia assignment tackles digital literacy in a way that is difficult to replicate in other projects. 99% of instructors agree that the Wikipedia assignment helps their students to develop and hone digital literacy skills, and 95% believe that the project improves their students’ research abilities. Sourcing lies at the heart of the Wikipedia assignment, and students must learn to distinguish between reliable and unreliable information. As one instructor noted,

“The Wikipedia assignment made students more aware of the importance of revising one’s writing, remaining attentive to copyright issues, and scrupulously citing sources.”

Another asserted that “the students learned to give and receive constructive feedback through the peer review process.” Yet another instructor reported that the assignment is “the very best tool for the teaching of academic writing!” The combination of skills students obtain from learning to contribute to Wikipedia positions them to take on the complex information landscape of today.

Wikipedia’s strict policy against close paraphrasing also means that students have to truly understand the sources they’re consulting. They have to be able to comprehend the material such that they can put it into their own words and translate often highly specialized and technical information into accessible language. One student last term reflected, “Contributing to Wikipedia has been a great assignment and is nothing like I have done in college so far. It has taught me how to effectively summarize long research journals/experiments, explain scientific evidence and refrain from using scientific jargon. Thoroughly reading through two scientific journals helped me become a stronger student by challenging me to understand concepts on my own.”

Making their work available for the public at large not only enables students to strengthen important skills, but it ultimately heightens their sense of digital citizenship. In moving from knowledge consumer to knowledge producer, students begin to understand the depth of responsibility that goes into making knowledge reliable and accessible to the general population. They understand that as college students, they are in a position of knowledge privilege and they can do good in the world by sharing that knowledge. As one student wrote, “I gained the understanding that, as an individual nearly-competent in my field of study and reasonably technologically-literate, that I can properly navigate primary sources and convert generally inaccessible primary source research into content digestible for the general public, which is simultaneously one of the grandest and smallest contributions to the world that I could possibly make.”

Thank you to all of our faculty and students from Fall 2022! We’re immensely grateful to your ongoing devotion to this endeavor. We take great satisfaction from the knowledge that Wiki Education’s support, “small” though it might be, played some role in your “grand” achievements.

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

You’ve seen this spider, right? It lives in close proximity to humans and is one of the most common spiders in North America. You may have even Googled it to see if it’s poisonous, whether you knew the name or not. If you typed something like “spider with orange spots” into the search bar, you would find the Wikipedia article for the bold jumping spider. But before September 2022, the article was actually quite underdeveloped. That’s when a University of Maine student, Kaylee Hussey, began revamping it as part of Dr. Erin Grey’s class assignment.

Dr. Grey’s zoology course explores the evolution, diversity, morphology, life history, and ecology of invertebrates. As part of the course, students update a Wikipedia article related to an invertebrate species. They conduct a literature review and incorporate their research into an existing article format, providing Wikipedia’s thousands of daily visitors with scientific information from behind paywalls. Kaylee, who just completed her degree in wildlife ecology with a concentration in conservation biology, noticed many gaps in her choice of article. Important information about the bold jumping spider’s life cycle, diet, and taxonomy was missing.

“This was surprising to me, given how widespread and prevalent they are in human-occupied areas,” Kaylee says. “I was particularly surprised that the article provided only limited information on the spiders’ hunting behavior and vision, as these are key features of the Salticidae family.”

So, combing through more than 20 academic sources and reflecting on what information was most important to include, Kaylee went about correcting that. With our Authorship Highlighting tool, you can see that she’s now responsible for the majority of the article.

The Wikipedia assignment fits STEM-focused courses well, requiring students to summarize complex scientific content in their own words. For many, they are writing for the public for the first time and must rethink how to describe concepts for someone who is unfamiliar with their field of study.

“One of the most important skills I learned in the assignment was how to synthesize and distill complex scientific research into language that is accessible and understandable to a general audience,” says Kaylee.

Writing skills are essential for students who wish to enter STEM fields after their college years. They’ll be creating reports and grant applications, writing annotations on code, and publishing papers. Without an ability to communicate their ideas clearly, concisely, and accurately, they won’t be successful.

Wikipedia is not only a powerful tool for fostering these job skills in students, it also gives them a chance to communicate science to the public. The article about bold jumping spiders alone reaches about 400 daily visitors. The other articles that Dr. Grey’s students worked on have received almost 300K total views since the end of the course. These students have made a tangible difference for the public’s understanding of science.

Having the skills to communicate ideas clearly and effectively can also establish a young scientist with their colleagues. Students who pursue STEM careers must be prepared to speak in an accessible language where other scientists can follow their logic enough to collaborate and review their work. The Wikipedia assignment lets students practice describing complex concepts in plain language, with the added bonus of informing thousands of potential readers in the process.

“Research papers often contain specialized terminology and concepts that are intended for experts in the field. This makes it difficult for the general public to understand research and interpret it correctly,” Kaylee notes. “Additionally, many journals require you to pay in order to access these articles. This exclusivity makes it difficult for non-experts who want to learn about these topics to do so! Wikipedia is a great tool for communicating research to the public because it uses language and concepts that are understandable to non-experts and it is free. It also allows ideas from many sources to be combined and filtered to convey information that is reliable and significant. Writing this Wikipedia article really allowed me to improve my skills! I hope to write more articles in the future and make a difference.”

When the public has access to accurate, well-sourced scientific information, the possibilities are exciting. And Kaylee has a personal interest in making academic research more open.

“Ensuring that scientific research is inclusive and accessible is important for increasing public engagement and support for research,” Kaylee says. “It’s also important that information is available to everyone that is interested in learning about it! As a first generation student, I am passionate about making sure that science is not exclusive and is welcoming to everyone.”

Through the assignment, Kaylee was also able to renew her passion for her desired field and potentially inspire others.

“I hope to become a wildlife biologist and share my knowledge with a wide range of audiences to influence policy as well as encourage people to appreciate wildlife. I hope that readers will gain a deeper understanding of the complexity and uniqueness of spiders. They are often underestimated and feared, but I hope that readers will come to appreciate their unique way of existing and perceiving the world. It is interesting to try and imagine what it would be like to have eight eyes that have different capabilities. It makes you appreciate how they see the world differently than we do. Plus I hope readers will think they’re as cute as I do!”

Visit teach.wikiedu.org to find out more about how you can incorporate a Wikipedia project into your syllabus.

Dr. Ingallinella outlines the benefits of utilizing the Wikipedia assignment in her undergraduate class, which is dedicated to reading Dante’s Divine Comedy in English. Her insights can be applied across disciplines, beyond Dante Studies. In the article, Dr. Ingallinella covers the educational outcomes of the assignment and other applications of this work for educators interested in digital public scholarship and knowledge equity. And she lays out a set of best practices for utilizing Wiki Education’s free resources. Reading this, you’ll find a blueprint for how one instructor incorporates our trainings and Dashboard into an actual classroom environment. She answers questions like:

• What does the assignment look like day by day?
• How does the task of writing Wikipedia articles fit into larger discussions of knowledge equity in your field?
• How do you set expectations with students who haven’t edited Wikipedia before, and have actually been told never to use it?

Dr. Ingallinella also provides insights into Academia’s acceptance (and nonacceptance) of Wikipedia, how representation of scholarly journal articles on Wikipedia benefits both public audiences and the academic field, and how a Wikipedia assignment provides students with a good entry point into the reference works important to your field.

Thank you Dr. Ingallinella for sharing your insights with us and our instructor community. We’re proud to support your work and that of many others each term. Every instructor who utilizes our resources (there are hundreds of you!) is part of a community doing this work across the US and Canada through our program. Reach out to us and each other, attend our office hours, present at conferences together, and let us know when you publish work like this. We love to share it. Read the article here!

Visit teach.wikiedu.org to find out more about how you can incorporate a Wikipedia project into your syllabus.

University of Michigan students in Hieu Phung’s course last spring helped flesh out this side of the climate narrative by adding well-researched information to Wikipedia. Students studied the social impacts of climate change and mitigation efforts in Southeast Asia, a region that is likely to be one of the hardest hit by climate-related events the soonest. Students then added their research findings to related Wikipedia pages for an audience of thousands. Devashree Patel, a recent graduate, and Piero Guerra, a fourth year student, made particularly impactful changes that have been read 4.5K and 5.8K times, respectively, since their course ended in April. Let’s dive in to what they did.

Climate resilience and the legacies of colonialism

Piero Guerra is an international studies major with a focus in Latin America and East Asia. He decided to look into Wikipedia’s article about climate change in Indonesia. Indonesia, particularly its capital city Jakarta, is particularly vulnerable to climate-related disasters. Sea level rise is especially harmful for agriculture, mariculture, and fishing industries, which a majority of Indonesian people rely upon for their livelihoods. Piero added information to the article about how sea levels change during monsoons; how much sea level is rising each year (10cm per year) compared to average rising around the globe (3-10mm per year); and why land subsidence is happening. The more he learned from his scientific research, the more he began to see how legacies of Dutch colonialism were affecting the region’s ability to mitigate these problems.

“The article about Jakarta’s sinking made me dive deep into Indonesian politics and history to get the proper context about certain policies and historic events that may have led or directly caused the issues Jakarta faces today,” Piero says. “Both my parents are Peruvians who immigrated to the US in the 90s for better job opportunities and general safety from political violence. Considering how many infrastructural issues in Peru are caused by a combination of lack of funds and overall corruption I wanted to see if the Indonesian government played a larger role in the sinking itself (ie: infrastructure projects deforesting the island).”

Piero found that urban planning decisions made during Dutch colonialism have led to the crisis of land subsidence and clean water scarcity today. In the Wikipedia article, he noted the importance of water infrastructure in making regions more resilient to climate change, especially cities that are expanding as rapidly as Jakarta. Piero also noted that a large part of the Indonesian population is unaware of the connection between land subsidence, urban planning, and the extraction of groundwater (a common practice since much of the population lacks other access to water).

“I really wanted to emphasize in the article that while climate change is of course a compounding factor that makes Jakarta’s sinking even worse, whether it’s increased natural disasters or sea level rise, it is not the only or even most prominent factor in Jakarta’s case. Connecting land subsidence with the legacy of Dutch colonialism was paramount to show how much of the sinking was due to infrastructural issues and not an unavoidable climate disaster, which is what most assume.”

Clean energy technology and impacts to local communities

Devashree graduated this spring with a major in an international studies and South Asian studies. She chose to edit Wikipedia’s article about hydropower technology in the Mekong River Basin, which could produce almost 60K megawatts of power according to some estimations. While hydropower is a promising energy option for the increased demand in the region, the negative side effects for the river are controversial. Less discussed, but undoubtedly important, are the tolls that hydropower dam projects can take on local populations.

“I think I was drawn to this article specifically because it seemed like such an important topic that wasn’t often highlighted when we think of dam construction,” Devashree shares. “Also, as a student focusing on international security and Asian studies, I was interested in how people and communities reacted to their changing environment. As we learned more in class about the communities that lived in the Mekong River Basin, it became apparent that locals regard the water as another entity that they interact with and in many ways depend on for their livelihood and culture.”

Devashree added a new section to the Wikipedia article detailing social impacts of hydropower in the region. The more dams are built on the Mekong River, the more that biodiversity and fisherman livelihoods have been negatively affected. Projects have led to irregular flooding, food insecurity, psychological effects like anxiety and PTSD, forced relocation of local populations, and resettlement programs that have failed to provide adequate financial support for moves. These effects have led to increased poverty in the areas affected.

“I wanted to make sure that I emphasized how much dam construction can negatively affect riparian communities and highlight that it’s not just their livelihoods, but it’s across all spectrums of their lives: holidays, celebrations, and the culture built around the river’s ebbs and flows. Additionally, hydropower projects are renewable energy sources and the Mekong River is accessible to many countries in the region and I noticed that the economic benefits are seen above the social impacts. In showcasing the different vulnerabilities that these communities face, I hope that readers understand that the depiction of hydropower projects in media is not without its consequences.”

How Wikipedia writing is different

The Wikipedia assignment allows students to discover new research interests and passions while making a contribution to global knowledge. Piero and Devashree have both succeeded in bringing these particular social impacts of climate change and climate resilience to light for thousands of Wikipedia’s readers. In doing so, they also practiced a different style of writing appropriate for Wikipedia’s encyclopedic standards: neutral, well-sourced, and concise.

“One of the most beneficial aspects of writing the assignment was making every single sentence count, reducing fluff to an absolute minimum, and having references for every statement I made,” Piero says. “It made my writing sound more professional but also helps with the purpose of Wikipedia, which is for people to gain information and have the sources available to trace my writing back to actual, credible academic articles.”

“At first it was difficult to write without having an argument or taking a position,” Devashree says. “It’s also important not to paraphrase but instead to take different pieces of information and put them together so it’s factual without plagiarizing. I hope to be able to take this skill set and be able to apply it in any career since I’ve realized how easy it can be to plagiarize someone’s work. I think overall, it was a great experience and exercise in a different style of writing. I learned to convey information without it being argumentative and evaluate a source to be able to tell if it’s credible. It forced me to really understand what I was researching so I could write the content in my own words.”

With the Wikipedia assignment, instructors have a real opportunity to integrate course topics with praxis, allowing students to have a new sense of autonomy and empowerment in their learning.

Visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn how to incorporate a Wikipedia assignment into your own course.

Hero image by TrapperFrank via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).