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

“I find immense satisfaction in knowing that I am improving an article with accurate and current scholarship,” said Dimitrova, an expert in late medieval and early Renaissance tapestries at the University of San Diego. “In many ways, serving as a Wikipedia editor is like being a super publisher – I can make significant changes instantaneously to a range of subjects and topics for which I have subject expertise – making measurable and meaningful content.”

For Dimitrova, the professional development course designed for pre-modern European art experts was a chance to connect with a new network of scholars, professors, museum curators, and librarians, and to engage with scholarship in a new, incredibly impactful way.

“I truly think that editing on Wikipedia (either editing a current article or creating a new article) is a form of public scholarship that has far-reaching influence, particularly to readers who are outside the walls of academia,” said Dimitrova. “Although I have published a co-edited volume in the field of medieval art history, my contributions to Wikipedia have the potential to make an even greater educational and scholarly impact, in part because the audience is larger and I can also create content on a relatively short timeline.”

Dimitrova’s assessment of Wikipedia’s scholarly impact is supported by research, including studies shared by recent Wiki Education Speaker Series panelist Neil Thompson which highlight how the site can influence the content in academic publications.  

To get started on Wikipedia, Dimitrova explored Stub-class to C-class articles from geographic regions that intersected with her research and teaching interests: Flanders, France, Spain, and Italy. As she began to edit the article on the Pastrana Tapestries, she quickly found herself “tumbling down a rabbit hole”, exploring other linked pages including one featuring 15th century leading tapestry dealer Pasquier Grenier, a name Dimitrova has repeatedly encountered throughout her three decades of research.

“I was dismayed by the sheer lack of sources and inaccurate information about him,” said Dimitrova, who changed course to enhance Grenier’s Wikipedia article. “I learned a lot of intriguing facts about him during my deep dive: he was a dealer not just in tapestries, but also in wine! Who knew!?”

Just as a hyperlinked page brought her to working on Grenier’s article, linked pages within the tapestry dealer’s article led her to editing other related articles, where she took pleasure in providing valuable and precise descriptions of works of art within her areas of expertise.

Although she has now completed her Wiki Scholars course, Dimitrova continues to work in her sandbox and edit on Wikipedia today, emphasizing its crucial role as a source of free, open access knowledge and underscoring the importance of Wiki Education trainings like Wiki Scholars courses and the Wikipedia Student Program for changing misperceptions of Wikipedia in academia.

“Academia’s long-propagated mistrust of Wikipedia as a viable academic source continues and students are still often advised not to use it,” Dimitrova explained. “However, I think that as more and more scholars and students alike become trained editors, they typically realize that Wikipedia’s system of ‘checks and balances’ is quite rigorous.”

Dimitrova expressed deep gratitude for Wiki Education’s Will Kent for his impactful instruction of the course, as well as for the course sponsor, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, highlighting its vital support of pre-modern European art scholars as they work to contribute to the field.

To find her starting point, Allison assembled a comprehensive list of works in the museum’s collection that related to the course themes and then explored Wikipedia to discover which of the works were already featured as articles. Her search led to the Wikipedia article about “The Jewish Cemetery”, a 17th century oil painting by the Dutch artist Jacob van Ruisdael.

“I came across the article for the Jewish Cemetery and noticed that some of the information, especially around provenance, was not accurate or as clearly described as what we had in our database,” said Allison, Collections Database Manager. “I wanted to check the sources and make sure we could update the article to share a clearer timeline of how the painting made its way into our collection.”

Allison did just that and more, tackling the project head-on. During her participation in the Wiki Scholars course, she added nearly 3,500 words and 36 references to the article, completely transforming several existing sections and adding a new section featuring the exhibition history of the painting.

Allison, along with her colleagues, continues to engage with and learn about Wikipedia and Wikidata to understand how to make accurate and robust information about their collections more accessible to the public. She encourages other professionals across all disciplines to lend their unique expertise, noting how the awareness of and immediate access to sources can save significant research time.

“Wikipedia can be a really great source of information for users looking to know more on certain subjects, but the articles are only as good as the sources and information that someone is able to provide,” said Allison. “Having resources and professional knowledge on a subject and being able to share it in this way helps everyone.”

When reflecting on her participation in the course, Allison noted the fun of rediscovering practices she hasn’t employed since her time as an art history student.

“My favorite part about editing Wikipedia is getting to spend some time researching and writing about works in our collection and using skills I don’t often get to utilize since finishing school,” said Allison. “It is nice to slow down and learn more about a work and be able to turn that knowledge into something accessible and easy to read for the public so that they can learn more about the work as well, and maybe they’ll decide to come check out the collection in person.”

Funded by Samuel H. Kress Foundation and led by Wiki Education in fall 2023, the 10-week Art History Wiki Scholars course focused on training scholars in pre-modern European art and architecture how to add their expertise to this underdeveloped subject area on Wikipedia. The collective contributions of Allison and the other 19 course participants have been viewed on Wikipedia nearly 3 million times.

Collectively, the course participants contributed more than 900 total edits in more than 100 Wikipedia articles, adding almost 50,000 words and 718 references. The course not only yielded a substantial number of article edits, but it also resulted in a marked increase in the quality of articles. The work from the course raised the scores of 31 articles by at least five ORES points, a measurement Wikipedia uses to help rank the completeness of an article. The ORES score is determined by several variables, including article size, number of sections, references, and images. 

While Wikipedia encourages anyone to make edits to pages, regardless of background or experience, professional expertise – including knowledge of and access to high-quality sources – proves invaluable in enhancing and expanding the content of articles. 

“Contributing to Wikipedia aligns with a core professional goal I have: to democratize knowledge,” said participant Anne McClanan, art history professor at Portland State University. “The Wiki Education course empowered art history professors to contribute, ensuring that scholarly expertise is accessible to a wider audience, breaking down barriers to information.” 

McClanan, a Byzantine art historian, improved several articles including Byzantine silver (explore her changes inspired by a specific thesis), as well as the Wikipedia article about the Byzantine Empire. McClanan’s improvements of the Byzantine Empire article are particularly noteworthy, as the text was already considered one of the highest quality articles on Wikipedia, indicating the comprehensive and robust nature of its information and sources. Using her deep understanding of the subject area and related sources, McClanan was able to add small yet key pieces of information to the article, filling in content gaps previously unaddressed by editors. This article has been viewed 250,000 times in the past month alone and continues to be regarded as one of Wikipedia’s best articles.

Like McClanan, the other subject-area experts in the course sought to improve articles related to their own unique interests and professional backgrounds. James Clifton, Director of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, focused on the article about Bernardo de’ Dominici, an Italian art historian and minor landscape and genre painter. James not only crafted a detailed section about one of his works, but he also improved the article lead, cleaned up a long list of works, and polished the article’s overview of his life. Take a look at the Bernado de’ Dominici article in “the visual editor” mode – this view shows Clifton’s additions (in green) and text he removed (in red), edits which enhanced the overall quality of the article. 

For Clifton, the importance and impact of Wikipedia for both scholars and the general public cannot be underestimated.

“I use Wikipedia frequently,” said Clifton. “It is the quickest path to at least superficial – and often profound – information on countless subjects.  As such, its importance as a widespread source of information is incalculable, and it behooves those who contribute to it to make it as accurate and accessible as possible. The Wikipedia editing course taught me to do that in my own small corner of the world.”

As the scale and detail of Wikipedia more than eclipse that of every encyclopedia which preceded it, Wikipedia can often feel expansive and even complete. However, as these courses demonstrate, no knowledge system is immune to content gaps and systemic bias. Wiki Education courses provide experts with support to leverage a global platform and share their knowledge, research, and passion with the world. And in the process, they make this vast source of information a little more complete for all. 

This year, our courses will bring together groups including medical professionals, political scientists, and climate change scholars (just to name a few!), creating a bridge between their professional expertise and the information accessible to everyone through Wikipedia – making a great thing even better. 

Interested in learning more about the work of this course and its reach on Wikipedia? Visit our open-access Course Dashboard, and be sure to explore our upcoming courses for subject-area experts provided by Wiki Education.

Wiki Education thanks the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for their generous support of the fall 2023 Art History Wiki Scholars course.

Course participants:

• Paul Albert, Scholar, George Mason University
• Anne McClanan, PhD, Art History Professor, Portland State University
• James Clifton, Director, Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, Curator, Renaissance and Baroque Painting, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
• Margaret Ann Zaho, PhD, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Central Florida
• Kate Dimitrova, PhD, Lecturer, Department of Art, Architecture + Art History, University of San Diego
• Maria Ketcham, Director, Research Library, Archives & Collections Information, Detroit Museum of Art
• Jessica Allison, Collections Database Manager, Detroit Museum of Art
• Maura Wilson, Department Assistant, University of San Francisco
• Elizabeth Macaulay, DPhil, Associate Professor, Graduate Center, CUNY
• Anne Betty Weinshenker, PhD, Professor Emerita of Art History, Montclair State University
• John Hagood, Librarian, National Gallery of Art
• Susanna Caroselli, PhD, Professor Emerita of Art HIstory, Messiah University
• Casey Long, Head of Research & Instruction, Agnes Scott College
• Lalaine Bangilan, PhD, Gallery Director and Adjunct Professor of Fine Arts, Misericordia University
• Zoe Kobs, Student, University of San Diego
• Daniel Maze, PhD, Associate Professor, Head of Art History, University of Iowa
• Shirley Schwarz, PhD, Professor Emerita, Assistant Teaching Professor, University of Evansville
• Lindsay Cook, PhD, Assistant Teaching Professor, Penn State University
• Joy Kearney, PhD Candidate, Royal Netherlands Military Academy
• Eelco Nagelsmit, PhD, Lecturer, Leiden University
• Emily Everhart, PhD, Assistant Professor, Chair of Liberal Arts, Art Academy of Cincinnati
• Daniella Berman, PhD, Project Manager & Researcher, The Drawing Foundation
• Christina Tatum, Instruction & Outreach Librarian, Agnes Scott College

When it comes to experts’ understanding of climate science and the public’s understanding, there are some well-documented differences. American Physical Society members have been closing the gaps with impactful work on Wikipedia. With 18 billion page views per month, Wikipedia content has a proven track record for affecting collective behavior across a wide range of sectors. 

Since 2019, the American Physical Society (APS) has empowered 110 members—from a high school student to a Nobel Prize laureate—to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of physics and physicists. These scientists practice their science communication on a worldwide stage, write biographies of historically excluded physicists, leverage Wikidata—the open data repository behind Wikipedia—and are now correcting content gaps related to climate mitigation.

Dr. Allie Lau, the APS Public Engagement Sr. Programs Manager, has been instrumental in advancing the work.

“APS was excited about a Wikipedia training course focused on energy and climate science as this is an area of importance to the Society and its members,” Dr. Lau shared. 

The virtual courses, seven of them so far including the latest climate-focused iteration, present an opportunity for APS members to connect across disciplines and countries like never before. 

“APS recognizes the serious consequences of climate change and urges physicists to contribute to interdisciplinary climate research collaborations and efforts to design solutions to mitigate the human impact on climate,” Dr. Lau added. “The Society is committed to actions that will reduce greenhouse gas concentration and advocates for research and development of carbon-neutral and carbon-free energy technologies.”

Facilitating this chance for physicists to contribute accurate energy research to the public dialogue has been meaningful for the Society. As their Chief External Affairs Officer, Francis Slakey explains, “The Wiki Scientists course is a great tool for achieving our mission of diffusing the knowledge of physics for the benefit of humanity and amplifying the voice for science.” 

Correcting well-documented knowledge gaps

By adding up-to-date climate research to Wikipedia, APS Wiki Scientists supported by Wiki Education are helping correct the following gaps in public understanding: 

People misunderstand climate science and mitigation. 

The public often cites recycling and limiting trash pollution as the actions they think are most impactful for addressing climate change, whereas climate scientists focus on reducing carbon dioxide emissions on a much larger scale and across all sectors of society. 

Advances in renewable energy production, like solar* and wind, are some such mitigation strategies that physicists improved on Wikipedia as Wiki Scientists. Morgaine Mandigo-Stoba, one of these physicists, expanded the Wikipedia page about thin-film solar cells, which covers a variety of established and developing thin-film photovoltaic technologies for an audience of 5,000 readers every month. She wrote about what these types of solar cells are made out of; how they work; how they’re produced and the costs of production; their advantages over first-generation silicon solar cells (including being cheaper and safer to produce); recent advancements in how efficient they are for electricity production; their durability and lifetime; how widely used they are in new utility development; and their potential role in meeting international renewable energy goals. She even included a diagram of her own design to illustrate a solar cell I-V curve. 

“Adding good data visualizations was really important to me in terms of making this page accessible to a wide audience,” Mandigo-Stoba shared. “Of course, I hope that this exposure can lead to people making more informed energy choices. One thing we talked about in the course is that people can feel a lot of anxiety around taking action against climate change and one way to alleviate that is to simply expose them to possible solutions. I hope that this page can help alleviate some of that worry that people have about finding the ‘perfect’ energy solution and help them feel empowered to explore new green energy technology.”

Another physicist improved the Wikipedia page on wind power, adding the physics at work in the power transfer from wind into energy. This page receives even more readers per month: close to 30,000! 

As Mandigo-Stoba explains, the exercise of writing a Wikipedia page is one of science translation. “Taking a topic that at its core is very technical and making it useful and interesting to a broad audience like this is a really fun challenge,” she shared.

People don’t connect the effects of climate change to their daily lives.

Many researchers have long assumed that the public doesn’t feel the urgency around mitigating climate change that scientists do. But according to new research, 61% of Americans say global climate change is affecting their local community and 70% are alarmed, concerned, or cautious. However, many still struggle to explain the connection between their lived experiences and the science behind global warming. Fewer understand how they can help. 

That’s why adding regional-specific climate information to Wikipedia pages like climate change in Illinois, as one Wiki Scientist did, is so impactful. This page now explains that, because of climate change, Illinois is likely to experience more frequent flooding, harmful algae blooms on Lake Michigan, and higher temperatures that may harm humans and agriculture. The page also illustrates local mitigation efforts, including strategies to reduce the effects of heat islands, as well as information about the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act–a job retraining program for workers impacted by the transition to renewables.

“When I came across this page for the first time, it was in bad shape,” says APS member Maggie Geppert who tackled the updates. “It was a series of long quotes from a single source from 2016, which is not appropriate for a Wikipedia page. I originally thought about simply going back to the original source and rephrasing the quotes. In that sense, my original goal was to make the page better by just bringing it to some baseline standards. However, a topic like climate change really does need current information, and a single seven-year-old article as a source is not nearly enough. I decided to update the information and expand it from projected effects to current actions people in Illinois are taking to mitigate climate change. People need to know that there is political will in the United States to fight climate change. This is not an impossible task. It’s really, really big and really, really hard, but there are people who are willing to take action now. I chose to edit the Climate Change in Illinois page because it’s about where I live. My students will be able to read it and relate to the places and climate conditions it describes.”

Contributing up-to-date information on this topic in particular counteracts much of the popular mis-narratives circulating about climate science. Wikipedia is nicknamed the “last best place on the internet”, after all.

“When it comes to climate change, there is a lot of misinformation on social media,” Geppert added. “Wikipedia stands as a beacon of truth in an area riddled with lies and misrepresentations.”

People struggle to see where they might pursue climate-related work or they may even distrust scientists.

A Wikipedia biography recognizes a scientist’s contributions in real time. It surfaces her expertise to journalists and panel organizers, humanizes her beyond her CV or university profile, and shows young people interested in STEM what career paths are possible for them. It also does the important work of boosting a scientist’s credibility, changing stereotypes about who gets to be a scientist, and fostering trust in scientific research. This visibility is especially important for climate scientists, who–like other scientists in politicized fields–often encounter pushback in the public sector about how they know what they know.

Wiki Scientists in our courses are putting faces to climate work by writing biographies of scientists. The biographies for Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine Hayhoe are much more comprehensive now. And Kate Marvel even has a new photo! Thousands of Wikipedia readers are being exposed to the scientific contributions of these scientists and others like them, every day.

Wiki Education kicked off our 8th APS Wiki Scientists course last week, and participating members will celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month by adding or expanding Wikipedia biographies of Hispanic and Latinx physicists. We’re thrilled at the commitment APS has made toward their mission of providing a welcome and supportive professional home for an active, engaged, and diverse membership, and we look forward to the ongoing work from their dedicated members.

The work lives on.

These are just some of the many examples of helping close the gap between expert and public understanding of climate science.

“Once you get over the fear of editing something which potentially will be read by many people, editing Wikipedia is not that difficult,” one APS Wiki Scientist shared. “Improvements can be made at all levels, from fixing grammar/readability to adding new content. And the benefit is that you are making real contributions to pages that are read by many, helping them make informed perspectives.”

For Geppert, the Wiki Scientists experience was also a new way to interact with her APS membership. “This class was an opportunity for me to mix with physicists in all different places around the world at many different stages in their career,” she added. “It was a lot of fun.”

—

* Links will direct you to Wiki Education’s Dashboard tool, which highlights the parts of Wikipedia articles that scientists in our program are responsible for writing. You also have the option in that window to navigate to the actual Wikipedia article, where you will see the same content. This tool is available to all of Wiki Education’s partners.

Wiki Education is looking to expand its impact on the public’s access to high-quality climate science. If you’re interested in getting involved, visit partner.wikiedu.org to start building your own Wikipedia Initiative with our support.

Take lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxides, for example. This is an important material in the lithium-ion batteries made for electric vehicles and our phones. Why is that? How do they work? Well, you can ask Enoch Rassachack who wrote the Wikipedia article about it as part of an assignment. He’s completing an honours degree in chemistry at the University of British Columbia and entering his final year of undergraduate study. He drew upon his studies and research experience to update this public resource.

“I have some co-op experience working with batteries which helped me find this article,” Enoch shared. “I also hope to work as a researcher in materials chemistry after (hopefully) going to grad school, and this project helped me practice communicating some of the knowledge I acquired. I see climate change as the key issue defining this century as well, so I hoped to work on an article that would educate people on something related to it, whether it be atmospheric and environmental chemistry, or technology that’s helping counteract the climate crisis. Considering all this, the page on lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxides fit me perfectly.”

Most of Enoch’s improvements to the article focus on adding new sections about the material’s structure and synthesis. The original version of the article touched upon these points a bit, but Enoch knew he could build upon it with the academic sources he had on hand. He also found the introductory lede section to be difficult to follow without already being knowledgeable on battery materials. This is the beauty of students engaging in this science communication work. They remember what it was like learning about these topics for the first time. But they also have developed some subject matter expertise in their studies. Enoch simplified the opening paragraphs for Wikipedia’s general audience.

“While a majority of my edits involved technical writing, my main goal was to help folks who hand’t heard of NMC materials get a basic understanding of what they are. To this end, the relatively short lead section was the most important part of the article to get right, in my opinion. Of course, my work on the body sections were also valuable, as the summarized technical knowledge would be useful for more savvy chemists/material scientists. But for most readers on Wikipedia, these sections would not be nearly as helpful as the lead.”

For Enoch, this practice in distilling a complex topic into digestible and concise explanations was good practice. He knows he’ll draw upon these skills in his future classes and career.

“There is a lot of focus on more complicated details in an undergraduate chemistry program and even in the technical writing course I did this Wikipedia assignment in, so trying to write for a more general audience was a nice change,” he shared. “Being able to generalize my research later on as a scientist will likely be a useful skill, too. I know that public sentiment can potentially be a factor in getting research funding so spreading knowledge about my own work to people without my chemistry training could help with getting grants. Practicing more concise writing will also help me be clearer in my writing in all aspects of any future career.

“I think Wikipedia can be a great reference tool as well as a good starting point for curious individuals to begin looking into certain topics. Being an online encyclopedia makes it really unique because it’s very convenient for finding generally credible information, but can still be scrutinized since anyone can modify articles. Summarizing topics is Wikipedia’s biggest strength so it is most useful for finding general knowledge in a field without going too much into detail.”

All in all, Enoch found the experience to be valuable in many ways. Considering most students say they’ve been told never to use Wikipedia, diving into its inner-workings and learning to interact with the resource critically and actively is a great experience.

“This was one of the most unique assignments I’ve ever done and gave me a good glimpse behind one of the best Internet resources available. It really showed me a more balanced side to Wikipedia; I knew how the site operated before doing the assignment, but actually taking part in edits gave me much more appreciation for the anonymous users that edit or write huge parts of articles. It’s a lot more work than it seems! My expectations for information from Wikipedia were tempered down closer to reality, too, after seeing how many pages still needed significant work in project pages. It’s still a super useful resource, but its limitations as an ever-expanding collection of knowledge are much clearer, which will ultimately help me use Wikipedia more effectively.”

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.

Dayanna Perez is a senior at California State University Dominguez Hills, who’d never heard of a Latina working for NASA until she wrote the biography of Christina Hernández.

“I chose Christina Hernández because she is the very first representation that I have seen in all my 22 years of Latinas in the aerospace field,” Dayanna says.

Inspiring students to understand there is a diversity of role models in the STEM field is a key element of the project. And what better place to do that than Wikipedia, the first place people turn to when wanting to know more about someone? But Wikipedia’s representation gaps lead many people to not find biographies of people of color or women; instead, figures in STEM with biographies on Wikipedia are often white men.

“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. 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,” says Kimberly Ivy, a student in Dr. La’Tonya Rease Miles’s class who created the biography of Eugene M. DeLoatch. “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 bio became more than a graded assignment. DeLoatch deserves the type of public recognition that possessing a Wikipedia biography article grants.”

All told, students this spring added 18 new biographies of STEM professionals of color. The biographies have already received thousands of page views, bringing more attention to the contributions of people like:

• Rodney Adkins, the first African American senior vice president at IBM
• Abdul–Aziz Yakubu, a scholar and mathematical biologist who chaired Howard University’s mathematics department
• Marcus McCraven, a nuclear scientist who served as the only African American engineer on the team who built the hydrogen bomb at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
• Asmau Ahmed, an advocate for women in technology and founder of Plum Perfect, a beauty technology company
• Camille Hearst, a technical entrepreneur who leads Spotify for Artists
• Juan C. Meza, an influential mathematician and computer scientist

In crafting these biographies for Wikipedia, the students also learn key research, writing, media literacy, and collaboration skills. As students graduate and pursue careers, these skills become even more valuable.

“Wikipedia has helped students to understand more about why they should grow, learn, and earn a career in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. They were able to be proud of people who look like them. Wikipedia has helped students to continue to see others who are working in many of the areas where many minorities are underrepresented,” said Corry Stevenson, a professor at Denmark Technical College, a Historically Black College and University, whose students created the biography of Marc Hannah. “Students gained a better understanding for procedures and requirements for why reading and writing skills are needed in today’s careers, and many of the students have modified their views. This initiative helped change their mind about pursuing a career in STEM.”

If you’re a college or university instructor at a diverse institution in the United States who’s interested in adding more biographies of historically marginalized people in STEM, teach with Wikipedia! If you want to learn more, register for one of our upcoming webinars.

Daveen Yang is a chemistry honours major entering her 4th year who joined Robin Stoodley’s course this spring. She improved Wikipedia’s article about thin-layer chromatography, adding more than 1000 words and 53 references for the benefit of 26,000 readers since April.

“A good Wikipedia article takes very complex topics and makes them more approachable for a general audience,” Daveen shared. “It’s very powerful for anyone who may be curious about a scientific topic but doesn’t want to get lost in the jargon found in a textbook or a research article.”

Daveen wanted to reach readers beyond the academy with her choice of article, thinking about what topics might strike a chord and how she might represent them for a general audience.

“Thin-layer chromatography (TLC) is a powerful tool that can be interesting for non-chemists because of the visual element to it — you can separate and see the different components of a mixture. However, its a topic taught in little detail and typically only introduced in upper-year organic chemistry labs. My goal was to draw attention to this topic, and to chemistry in general.”

As Daveen began evaluating the article’s gaps, she noticed the lede section was completely missing. Given that this part of a Wikipedia article is an important introduction to the topic and is often the only thing beginners might read, she saw it as a big missed opportunity.

“The article instead jumped straight into a multiple-paragraph description of thin-layer chromatography that made the article feel repetitive and intimidating to non-chemists. Overall, the article contained a lot of good information, but it was poorly organized.”

Daveen not only reorganized the content and added new detail, but she also illustrated the article with some photos she took in a professional lab.

“I’m an aspiring organic chemist and got a lot of experience in the field during my previous co-op position at Genevant Sciences Corporation. In that position, TLC was integral to my workflow. The Wikipedia assignment was a great opportunity to research this technique and learn something that I can apply to my chemistry in the future.”

Ultimately though, it was the lessons learned about writing for a public audience that stuck with her.

“The main skill I got was writing in clear and concise language. Particularly, using simpler vocabulary and splitting long sentences into shorter ones,” Daveen noted. “Additionally, I like that the articles are often organized to have less detail in the beginning, then go more in-depth later for anyone who is interested.”

“It was an interesting challenge because of how different the writing style is from other scientific communication methods, like lab reports, that I have more experience with. However, learning to communicate complex topics in an approachable manner will certainly come up in the future as my career progresses. I will keep this assignment in mind in those occasions.”

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.

Where do people get their history? The American Historical Association conducted a study in recent years on that very question and the results, reported in a table, show that most people get their history from social media, films, and television, and that a very small percentage learns about history in a formal course. My students weren’t exactly shocked to learn that, but it did give them pause. Although I don’t believe history education has to be entertaining, it should be engaging, and it obviously is not since the university is quite literally the last place the public will go for historical information. As I always tell the students, I can reach more people through Wikipedia than I will with my scholarship. So, the project matters to me, and I hope the students might adopt the same attitude. Possibly the fact that they took the content gap problem seriously (e.g., many students wrote about women) this past spring is evidence that they did.

My course focuses on the medieval Mediterranean from roughly AD 200 to 1100. The themes and goals include to describe change over time (Periodization/Global Middle Ages); to understand processes of intercultural contact and exchange (Christianization and Islamicization); to explain the shift in global influence from East to West; and to demonstrate the diversity of the medieval world. But the structure resembles less a narrative and more a thematic series of discussions, but these are built around a single specific object, person, text, or site – just like a Wikipedia entry. I devote one class day a week to working on skills; basically, on Monday I present a sample Wikipedia entry, and on Wednesday we discuss research strategies and methods to formulate an argument. Every day starts with two threads, one related to a particular aspect of writing a Wikipedia entry and the other about a potential Wikipedia topic. I gradually tie the two together by contextualizing the topic and situating its study in medieval historiography.

In practice last semester I delivered content on Monday, and we worked on method every Wednesday. Monday’s class started with an artifact followed by its context, which I unpacked gradually. For example, I showed the students a strange multi-purpose tool dating to the late Roman period. It has been called the Roman “Swiss Army Knife” in popular articles. It looks like a pocketknife with several retractable tools including a fork. Although two reputable museums with similar (allegedly) Roman multitools, one in Italy and one in England, claim the items are authentic, there is no way that could be true, because of the presence of a fork. We have only recovered one fork from the confines of the Roman Empire, and it dates to the sixth century, centuries before the multitool was made. The dates ascribed to the objects in both museums have to be at least a few centuries too early. My point here was twofold. First, you can’t simply trust everything you read; and second, the knife didn’t exist in a vacuum (i.e., if you were writing the Wikipedia article for the multitool, what would you need to know?). I emphasized that even trustworthy sources should not be read uncritically; perhaps a source lacks corroborating evidence or requires additional sources, or different sources, to be convincing. I also wanted them to appreciate that we could only know the museums were mistaken if we were aware of the wider context.

Rather than incorporating method and approach into lectures, every week I devoted Wednesday’s class entirely to building skills, from how to find sources to checking personal bias, and every few weeks I deliberately scheduled an in-class workday. Putting aside time for developing their research and writing skills was a game-changing decision. The students who regularly attended class understood concepts that the students in upper-division courses struggled to grasp. Indeed, several students told me that the course gave them skills valuable in our more advanced courses.

I’d like to share an anecdote about a particularly wonderful student project. One student, who took my suggestion to select a topic that addressed a “content gap,” chose to revise the article on the sixth-century Empress Theodora. It was a bold decision, to say the least. I warned this student that the historiography on her reign is vast and that the primary sources are dense. She was not deterred. It speaks to how much work this student had put into the project that her entry raised so many fascinating questions. I mentioned to her that the Roman historian Tacitus described the third wife of Claudius, Messalina, in a specifically sexualized way as a proxy for the Empire itself, which might also be the case with Theodora. I gave her quite a few articles to read, none of which was required, of course, but she read them anyway. She took my idea and ran with it. Her entry highlighted that the sixth-century author Procopius deliberately styles Theodora as feminine because she’s been elevated to a traditionally masculine position and operated in a masculine world. However, the palace was a unique space, at once the state and a private household, and Roman women ran the Roman household, so the empress occupied a unique position. The substance of her article was fabulous, but in my critique, I wrote that it could be improved with some discussion of how historians have understood Theodora. I could tell she took that lesson to heart. In her reflective essay, she wrote, “It is impossible to determine how we should analyze a figure or event in the modern day if we do not initially consider how it has been previously understood historically speaking.” How many students over the years internalized that message in my courses? Very few. I was so appreciative of her entry because Theodora is one of the most maligned figures in history, and her good work corrects that perspective.

The Wikipedia assignment has proved an effective means to weave together important conversations in the field with the practice of actual historical research. I am proud of what my students have contributed to the discussion and look forward to continuing this work in the future.