In Wiki Education’s Wikipedia Student Program, students are assigned to edit a Wikipedia article on a course-related topic by their higher education instructor. For some students, they pick something they’re already deeply familiar with; for others, it’s a personal interest. But for Zoe Muccatira, a junior at North Dakota State University, she picked her topic on the mineral ophirite – a mineral she knew nothing about prior. 

Zoe was taking a course taught by Dr. Bernhardt Saini-Eidukat on Mineralogy. Dr. Saini-Eidukat had students select a mineral without an existing Wikipedia page from a list of minerals recognized by the International Mineralogical Association, and asked Zoe and her classmates to create them.

“After doing research on the mineral I found out that it was really interesting: it is the first known mineral with a tri-lacunary Keggin polyanion – a structure known in synthetic compounds, but was unknown naturally,” Zoe explains. “I thought that the Wikipedia assignment was a nice addition to our regular coursework and gave us an opportunity to pick a mineral of our own interest to study more on and discover minerals we had not been introduced to in class. For most traditional assignments for Mineralogy, we spent time learning about more well known minerals of different groups classified by anion or anionic complex.”

Minerals are of particular interest to Zoe, who grew up in Hoople, North Dakota, a rural area with agricultural influence that had started Zoe on her path of loving nature. She’s studying geology and biology with an emphasis in ecology and conservation science.

“Growing up in the countryside on a farm surrounded in a sheath of nature was really the foundation of my appreciation for the Earth,” she says.

And Wikipedia was a natural extension of that. Writing for Wikipedia gave her key skills in science communication – and an opportunity to shape the public’s understanding of ophirite.

“I am mainly interested in environmental, evolutionary biology, and evolutionary ecology research. It is important that I communicate my research in a way that is effective and accessible to many – Wikipedia is a great platform for this reason,” Zoe says. “If someone wants to find out more about a specific topic, it is likely that one of the first search results will be a Wikipedia page on that topic.”

She admits she was initially intimidated. But with guidance from her professor and Wiki Education’s training modules on how to edit Wikipedia, Zoe found the experience not particularly difficult. She said it was more fun than writing a traditional term paper. Organizing, adding inboxes, and other aspects led to an exciting visual experience.

“I am glad that I had the opportunity to create a Wikipedia article in my mineralogy class because it is not something I would have initially done on my own. I wanted my Wikipedia page to look professional, and fit all the requirements of what makes a good, informative Wikipedia page not only for  my professor to grade, but for those on the internet who would find it soon after it had been published. I was proud of myself for creating the page, and it was amazing being the first person to add information about such a unique mineral on Wikipedia,” Zoe says. “In the future, I would like to edit Wikipedia again – whether it be creating a new page or helping edit someone else’s. It is an easy and fun way to add information in my field.” 

Wiki Education’s support for instructors who want to teach with Wikipedia are available at teach.wikiedu.org. Our support for STEM classes like Zoe’s is available thanks to the Guru Krupa Foundation.

When Georgia Institute of Technology student Annika Trout learned she’d be improving a Wikipedia article for her Introduction to Environmental Sciences class this fall, she felt like it would be an interesting change from her typical research essay or presentation.

“I also felt daunted by the challenge – it seemed like a huge responsibility to deliver accurate, reliable, and objective information to the general public,” she says. “I remember being impressed by the examples of articles provided by my professor that past students had written, and I knew that I wanted to try to produce the best article that I could.”

Annika succeeded, substantially improving the stub article on non-aqueous phase liquid. Annika’s professor, Jennifer Glass, had created a list of “stub” articles in environmental sciences — short articles needing improvement — and asked Annika and her classmates to rank their interest in the topics. Annika ranked non-aqueous phase liquid first due to her interest in hydrology and the subsurface environment, so she was assigned it.

Annika says she likes to divide projects into smaller tasks and work over long periods of time, which she did for this project. She started researching, collating notes and identifying topics she needed to seek more information on. She began drafting, then re-organized her notes for a more natural flow, and finally began revisions.

Throughout the way, she learned not just about her topic, but also about the process of research and writing.

“I learned a lot about my capabilities as a student/researcher/writer. I learned that with dedication and patience, it is possible to produce a body of work to be proud of. I also learned how important it is to be intentional with organization when writing a research article. It’s important to keep track of the information gathered and what source it came from,” Annika says. “It’s also important to evaluate sources and corroborate ideas between sources. The revision process is also very important, as is peer review. It was important that I had friends and colleagues read and comment on my work so that I could revise parts of the article that needed more clarity.”

Annika attempted to submit her revision for a feature on Wikipedia’s home page, in the “Did you know?” section, but unfortunately she missed the cutoff window for submission. Still, she got great feedback from other Wikipedia editors on her article by engaging in the process.

Having other Wikipedia editors and the general public being able to read her work really motivated Annika.

“Its reliability as a source depends on the fact that the community works together to publish accurate and reliable information. For me, this provided a special incentive to do a good job because good work would invite more eyes to vet my work and make it even more useful for the public,” she says. “It was meaningful to me to be able to take information that might be inaccessible to the public and faithfully translate it into something that people could interact with and understand. Wikipedia assignments are a brilliant way to engage students in experiential learning by plunging them into the research process while simultaneously using their unique talents to make knowledge more accessible. “

Annika did struggle to find images relevant to her article. Being able to create her own images would have been helpful, but she felt stymied by a lack of graphic design skills. Nevertheless, she found the skills she gained from writing for Wikipedia valuable to her future career path. She aspires to a career addressing the global challenges posed by climate change.

“I don’t yet know what my professional role will look like, but for now, I’m focused on expanding my knowledge of the sciences as well as my unique skill set so that I can be a useful resource, whether that be through policymaking, conservation efforts, or development projects,” Annika says. “I absolutely think that my experience writing for Wikipedia helped me move closer to that ideal. It’s vitally important with a problem like climate change to be able to communicate reliable information, especially within a digital space. I learned about how information can be presented in different ways to achieve different effects and the value of objectivity in scientific writing.”

Annika intends to continue editing Wikipedia now that she’s learned how. She says this assignment shifted her perspective on Wikipedia, and she encourages other students editing as a class assignment to approach the assignment with enthusiasm.

“This assignment was one of my favorites I ever completed for school. It not only helped me expand my specific academic interests, but also provided me with a challenge that I could face and grow from,” Annika says. “Wiki Education is such a fantastic opportunity for students to pour their energy into a project with tangible positive impacts. I feel lucky and grateful that I was given that opportunity, and I encourage other students within Wiki Education to take pride in their work and give it their all!”

Wiki Education’s support for instructors who want to with Wikipedia are available at teach.wikiedu.org. Our support for STEM classes like Annika’s is available thanks to the Guru Krupa Foundation.

Charles Darwin coined the term “warm little pond” to describe the potential origin of life. But the idea lacked a Wikipedia article until Ula Jones created it this fall as part of a class assignment to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of the origin of life.

Ula is a first-year graduate student in earth and space sciences and astrobiology at the University of Washington. Her astrobiology professor, David Catling, assigned Ula and her classmates to edit Wikipedia as part of the class through Wiki Education’s Wikipedia Student Program this fall.

“I wanted to write about the warm little pond (WLP) hypothesis for this project both because geologic settings for the origin of life are relevant to my scientific background and research, and I was interested in the opportunity to synthesize the interdisciplinary links between chemistry, geology, and biology that underlie the topic,” Ula says.

Ula admits she was intimidated by the idea of writing for Wikipedia at first. But once she dove into the project, she got more excited.

“I eventually came to particularly like the idea of making my own work publicly available, as well as being able to read other students’ work and learn about those subjects,” she says. “Scientific literacy and communication are important to me. Since most people get their information online today, I was happy to have an opportunity to help expand access to discussions of recent research in a place where a lot of people might come across it.”

Ula says in choosing her topic, she engaged with both modern research that was directly relevant to class readings and sources that revealed historical context. Her research led her to learn more about Charles Darwin, Alexander Oparin, and John Haldane’s works, lives, and beliefs.

“This was pretty neat, because historical background seems to often be brushed over when learning and communicating science. However, in this case it was necessary to present the whole context of the WLP hypothesis,” she explains.

While Ula has written many papers before, one thing she found particularly meaningful from learning to write for Wikipedia was the emphasis on citations.

“My favorite part about writing for Wikipedia was probably learning and applying good citation practices and reference management. While I had some knowledge about this already, the specific examples of best practices and ways to avoid unintentional plagiarism in the training were particularly useful,” she says of the online modules provided by Wiki Education. “It’s also pretty cool and unique to be able to share some of my classwork with friends and family just by sending them the link or telling them the phrase to look up.”

She found the experience valuable both for her current role as a student as well as her future career path. Science communication skills are core to any modern scientist, and this assignment helped her generate those.

“I would like to work as a professor someday, which involves educating students and typically public talks or outreach as well to some degree. In both cases it is important to be able to express and present scientific information in an accessible way. Because of this, the opportunity to practice scientific communication by writing for Wikipedia was valuable,” Ula says. “The assignment was both a great way of furthering my own understanding of what we covered in class, as well as expanding access to information about an important topic in origin of life research. I would be happy to contribute more to Wikipedia in future classes.”

Wiki Education’s support for instructors who want to with Wikipedia — including the trainings Ula highlights — are available at teach.wikiedu.org. Our support for STEM classes like Ula’s is available thanks to the Guru Krupa Foundation.

For an upper-division composition course for engineers at the University of Southern California (USC), we edited a Wikipedia article on the Chinese online marketplace, Temu, by adding over 3,700 words and 56 references and raising the article’s maturity rating from start-class to intermediate-class. This article is very popular with daily average views in excess of 6,700, and our edits have been viewed over 110,000 times. By doing this assignment, we honed our writing, research, and collaboration skills and we were also able to integrate our multilingual skills in a formal classroom assignment. In addition, writing for a real-life and public audience helped us to view our abilities as students in a U.S. university in a more expansive way, as we could see how our language skills are valued in the classroom and on Wikipedia. 

While we all are proficient in Mandarin, we come from different backgrounds in North America and China. Nicole was born in Toronto, Canada and grew up in Beijing, speaking Mandarin at home. However, she spoke English almost exclusively at school starting in the sixth grade, as she attended an international school where speaking English was strictly enforced. Nicole majors in Arts, Technology, and the Business of Innovation at USC’s Iovine and Young Academy (IYA). Peiyi also majors in Arts, Technology, the Business of Innovation at IYA  and is from Beijing. Peiyi’s first language is Mandarin, and he began learning English from an early age. Iris, from Northern California’s Bay Area, studies at IYA alongside Peiyi and Nicole. Iris is proficient in Cantonese and attended an English and Mandarin immersion school from grades K-8. The engineering major of the group, Juntong, studies computer science and applied mathematics, and like Peiyi, he was born and raised in Beijing. He expanded his English-language skills by taking Advanced Placement classes and studying abroad in high school.

We chose to work on the Temu article because we were familiar with Temu’s parent company, PinDuoDuo in China, and also because the article received a lot of daily page views but was missing a lot of key information. We wanted to help make the page more comprehensive and balanced, as it originally consisted mostly of the company’s negative reviews. As a team, we discussed some of the potential biases of the English-language sources towards Chinese businesses and brainstormed new ways of creating a well-rounded article that included the company’s problems, as well as information about how it operates. We used our Chinese-language abilities to conduct research to find quality sources to add more reliable content to the Temu article. For example, Nicole suggested we use a Chinese database, CNKI, to find academic research about Temu’s discounting and marketing policies. Because of her experience with working with CNKI sources at Tsinghua University, she was confident with the database’s credibility. Juntong also used popular Chinese news sources like NetEase for company information and facts about Temu’s parent company, PinDuoDuo. Applying these sources, we added information that is difficult to find in English-language sources.

Despite choosing the Temu page for its high volume of readers, we were still surprised at the negative and positive reactions of other editors to our additions and some of their wholesale reversions caught us off guard. Rather than engage in edit wars, however, we worked with our professor to reach out to editors and learned that they perceived our initial edits to be overly promotional and biased; in response, we removed any content that lacked a neutral tone and added more reputable sources. In this way, vigilant editors helped improve our work, and our subsequent edits about Temu’s logistics, lawsuits, and pricing strategies were not reverted. As of today, Peiyi, who, along with Iris and Juntong, made the edits on Wikipedia on behalf of our group, is the top editor for the article in terms of amount of text added.

We take great pride in our contributions to Temu’s Wikipedia page, as they contribute to the world’s understanding of a growing global company. Like many college students, we have been taught to avoid Wikipedia because anyone can edit it. However, looking at the obstacles we encountered even when adding information from reliable sources, we realized that information on Wikipedia is highly scrutinized by editors who care about Wikipedia’s quality. We also learned that adding information is not enough – we must also consider the geopolitical context in which editors operate while keeping in mind the goal of providing neutral information. 

As one of the few instances in the U.S. composition classroom in which our multilingual skills were officially part of the curriculum, the Wikipedia assignment helped boost our confidence in our communication skills. We not only added information that might not otherwise be available to English-speaking Wikipedia, but we also learned that our cultural insights can be critical tools for making meaningful and lasting contributions to the world’s encyclopedia.

“Wikipedia articles represent one of the most accurate sources of STEM-related information that are widely accessed. The accuracy of Wikipedia articles is maintained by a near-continuous process of peer review and checks by members of the participating community. The Wikipedia Student Program helps college students review articles on Wikipedia related to their course of study, curate sources, and check articles for accuracy. Not only does this aid student learning, the process adds new members to the pool of Wikipedia reviewers for the future. The twin goals of maintaining sources of knowledge, and supporting youth in using these sources is very much in line with the mandates of GKF, and we are happy to be able to provide support for this project.” –Mukund Padmanabhan, President of Guru Krupa Foundation.

We know that Wikipedia continues to be a top source for health information on the web; it gets more traffic on medical articles than the NIH, WebMD, Mayo Clinic, NHO, or WHO. The Wikipedia readership of science articles is several times larger than the readership of all scientific publications combined. Wikipedia has more links from search engines than any other website, and is often the first search result listed when people look for scientific information.

Because tools like ChaptGPT are far from 100% accurate and can generate false sources, it’s imperative that Wikipedia articles on topics in STEM are devoid of misinformation. Understanding Wikipedia’s strict sourcing rules and policies forces students to discern what is real and fake as they edit an article. We consistently find improvement in students’ skills in digital media literacy, project management, research, and more after finishing the assignment. 

A key result from this project will be the addition of 145,000 words of trustworthy information to hundreds of Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia enables free, open access to the latest research and discoveries for greater education of the general public and practitioners in the STEM fields. 

The Guru Krupa Foundation’s grant will boost Wiki Education’s Communicating Science initiative, a staple of the organization’s strategy since the 2016 Year of Science. We are extremely proud of the pedagogical work that more than 52,000 students have undertaken in this area to date, expanding the coverage of science in 46,000 Wikipedia articles collectively viewed over a billion times and counting. This tremendous impact would not have been possible without the generosity of Wiki Education’s committed partners. We express our sincerest gratitude to the Guru Krupa Foundation for valuing a deep learning experience for all. 

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.