Students in Gina Starblanket’s class at the University of Calgary added almost 30,000 words to Wikipedia on a range of topics relevant to Canada’s Indigenous communities. They added critical information to Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, an attempt by the government of British Columbia, launched in 2010, to better understand and manage cases of missing women in the province. The inquiry found that Indigenous women represented roughly 33% of cases, while only representing 4% of the total population, highlighting the tragic reality that Indigenous women are at greater risk of experiencing violence than other populations. They created the entry, Indian Rights for Indian Women, a group developed to restore Indigenous status to Indigenous women who marry non-Indigenous people, further highlighting the specific challenges faced by Indigenous women. In 1969, the Canadian government proposed a White Paper to address the socioeconomic disparities faced by Indigenous populations. Thanks to Professor Starblanket’s students, Wikipedia now has an article on The Red Paper, a counter-proposal issued by the Indian Association of Alberta that highlighted the short-comings of the White Paper. The White Paper was ultimately rejected in large part as a result of the Red Paper’s wide influence.

Students in Nykkie Lugosi-Schimpf’s class at the University of Alberta focused their attention on the treatment of Indigenous communities by Canada’s criminal justice system. They created the article R v Ipeelee, a 2012 Canadian Supreme Court case that reaffirmed an earlier ruling mandating that an individual’s circumstances as a member of an Indigenous community be taken into account when passing judgement and sentence in a criminal case as well as Prisoners’ Justice Day, an event held annually on August 10 to highlight prisoners’ rights and to commemorate those who have died while in custody. Both articles highlight the overrepresentation of Indigenous peoples in the Canadian criminal justice system. The class also created Indigenous peoples and the Canadian criminal justice system, outlining the many systemic and institutional reasons for the disproportionate number of Indigenous peoples within the criminal justice system of Canada. While Indigenous peoples only comprise about 4% of the total Canadian population, they make up roughly 30% of all those incarcerated.

Professor Lugosi-Schimpf’s students also tackled the challenges unique to Indigenous women. Students contributed to the article on Missing and murdered Indigenous women, which discusses the high rates of violence that Indigenous women face both in Canada and in the United States. Another student wrote the article on the Death of Loretta Saunders, an Indigenous woman who was tragically murdered in 2014 while writing her criminology thesis on the high rates of missing persons and murder among Indigenous women.

2020 has brought the ongoing inequities that many communities of color continue to face on a daily basis to the forefront of our collective social conscience. Professors Starblanket’s and Lugosi-Schimpf’s students work could not be more timely as the pandemic continues to highlight and unfortunately deepen these societal disparities. Thank you to both classes for taking on these challenging, but critical topics.

Image: ibourgeault_tasse, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

“In the past I have had students prepare proposals for exhibits that connect the broad themes to our local context in London, Ontario,” Dr. Peace writes about the course. “This year, I’m planning to shift the proposal into a Wikipedia article on a specific moment of historical significance, asking them to include in their article a photograph of an artifact or location here in London that connects to the broader subject.”

Wiki Education assists instructors, like Dr. Peace, who want to incorporate Wikipedia editing into their higher education courses. We provide assignment templates, how-to trainings for students, and staff support to help ensure students make meaningful contributions to the site and have a good experience doing it. Dr. Peace’s students did just that, adding more than 40,000 words to Wikipedia articles on a wide range of topics. In addition to expanding 17 different Wikipedia articles, students created five new ones.

One such new article is about the Black Power movement in Montreal during the 1960s. Student editor User:Pridenkom wrote more than 6,000 words in the article and cited 17 references. Pridenkom also found an existing photo on Wikimedia Commons to illustrate the information.

The Black Power movement in Montreal began in the 1960s, building off of decades of frustration over structural racism affecting Montreal’s black community. The movement sought change from cultural, economic, and political angles and found inspiration in other movements of the time like the Harlem Renaissance, Garveyism, Pan-Africanism, and Rastafari. The movement culminated in a student occupation of Sir George Williams University in 1969, which inspired conversations about racism both within the Montreal community and internationally. Thanks to Dr. Peace’s student, anyone with internet access can read about this history on Wikipedia.

Interested in teaching with Wikipedia? Visit teach.wikiedu.org for all you need to get started. Or reach out to contact@wikiedu.org for more information about how you and your students can get involved.

Header images: File:Drapeau de Montréal (2311120212).jpg, abdallahh, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Dr. Webster has taught his students at Bishop University how to contribute to Wikipedia as a classroom assignment for a few terms now. In his Spring 2016 course, Memory, truth and reconciliation in the developing world, students created new Wikipedia articles on a variety of course-related topics, including Truth and Reconciliation in Cambodia and the International Commission of Investigation on Human Rights Violations in Rwanda since October 1, 1990. 16 of these articles, along with 4 from a 2014 course, are included in a new textbook resource for Dr. Webster’s students to utilize this term and beyond.

Dr. Webster wrote about the experience of having students write for their future classmates back in 2017. The experience provided students with research, writing, and digital literacy skills – as well as a new found confidence. “Now that they are content providers,” he writes, “they won’t look at Wikipedia the same way.”

Wikipedia is a unique platform through which to engage students. They learn to collaborate with each other and with other Wikipedia users as they distill course topics into concise, well-researched, heavily cited articles for the general public. The exercise strengthens research, writing, collaboration, and digital literacy skills – all while providing a public service. Students make academic information (often restricted behind paywalls) available to anyone with internet connection worldwide. Wikipedia is the ultimate open educational resource.

Another instructor in our program, Dr. Clare Talwalker of UC Berkeley, finds a Wikipedia assignment inspiring because it transcends traditional academic timelines. “Students may build on each other’s work in the coming semesters, returning to some of the same articles and slowly improving many important parts of the Wikipedia universe.”

And it turns out that this collaborative nature of a Wikipedia assignment is attractive to students, too. One student in Dr. Webster’s Fall 2016 course reflected,

“One of the main points I have taken away from this course is that public history, and by extension public memory, cannot solely be shaped by individual scholars. They must be created diversely and as collaborative works by all those whom it may affect. Wikipedia is optimal for this presentation.”

Students tend to be more motivated to produce quality work when they know their work can make an impact beyond their course. We’ve received such feedback from instructors and students alike that seeing the measurable impact of their work on Wikipedia makes a difference.

And the passion that the assignment can inspire also has the power to live on beyond the term. Haleigh Marcello at the University of California in San Diego, for example, shared why she found contributing to Wikipedia to be such a “rewarding and fun experience,” and one that she’ll continue to pursue. Similarly, Jane Lee came back to update her Wikipedia article months after her course at Washington University in St. Louis ended and shared how proud she was to work toward a better final product.

“There are few assignments that better illustrate the nature of sources, the research process, and the relevance of student writing,” writes Dr. Webster, whose course (which will utilize the new textbook) started last week. “I’m looking forward to seeing how this class responds to using a textbook written by former students.”

As are we!

Interested in teaching with Wikipedia? Visit teach.wikiedu.org to get started, or reach out to contact@wikiedu.org with questions.

Image: File:A course textbook for History & Global Studies 228, Bishop’s University.jpg, Dwebsterbu, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

In this blog, I pull together several of the concepts discussed in previous posts, such as Portals and WikiProjects, and consider how you can begin to develop course materials and assignments for a Wikipedia-based course.

Let’s say, for example, that you are teaching a physics course and want to assign students the job of editing or writing physics-related articles. A good place to start, for both student and instructor, is the Physics portal, which briefly reviews the field and links to the main article on Physics (see excerpt below).

It also has a tab entitled “Topics, Categories, Textbook, and Featured articles,” which links to Wikipedia articles on classical physics, modern physics and cross-disciplinary topics, as well as a “textbook” that slots Wikipedia physics articles under chapter headings. While the textbook remains a work in progress, it is a more efficient way to gauge Wikipedia’s coverage (or lack thereof) than simply using the Wikipedia search engine. Apart from the main Physics portal, other relevant portals might include Astronomy, Cosmology, Electromagnetism, Gravitation, and Science.

The third tab on the Physics portal page is “WikiProjects and things to do,” which I turn to next.

WikiProjects

The Physics portal lists four WikiProjects and task groups: WikiProject Physics, WikiProject Space, WikiProject Time, and WikiProject Cosmology. WikiProjects are valuable both to the quality of Wikipedia and to instructors; for an explanation, see my two-part blog, “WikiProjects, Article Importance, and Article Quality: An Intimate Relation­ship” (http://bit.ly/2l8fSEa and http://bit.ly/2lH9hjJ).

One of the key things that a Wiki­Project does is rank Wikipedia articles for importance and quality on a two-dimensional grid. For example, shown here is the grid from WikiProject Physics (screen shot of 27 May 2017, current version here). I’ve selected 822, which is the number of stub-class articles of mid-importance to WikiProject Physics, a list of which can be accessed by clicking on the number.[1] Stub-class articles can be a good starting point for student projects, though start-class articles are also good. An example of a start-class article that is also considered to be of top importance (of the seven in this category) is Classical physics.

It is a good idea for students to become familiar with the different categories of importance and quality in Wikipedia articles, so they know what to strive for and how things can be improved. For example, it would be instructive for them to review at least a couple of the project’s 61 Featured articles,[2] one of the six List articles,[3] a few of the 144 Good articles,[4] and a smattering of the remaining categories. Reading the Talk pages associated with these articles and looking at their View History pages is also a good introduction to the kinds of issues that student editors might face. See, for example, the “Classical physics” Talk page.

One of the things an instructor should consider doing is creating a list of articles that need work and that are within the scope of knowledge for a particular course. Students choose an article to edit from this list, and may also be assigned the task of peer-reviewing another student’s edits to that student’s chosen article. Both the editing and the peer reviewing can be graded. The aim should be to take assigned pages to Good article status, or as close as possible. (Students can make significant contributions to articles, even if, for example, they only start within C-class status, which is not the same as a “C” grade on the U of S grading guidelines.)

The Wiki Education Advantage

Wiki Education’s dashboard is a powerful resource that lets you see what aspects of the training that students have completed, as well as all articles or other projects they are working on. You can get started at the main page for educators and proceed to various pages, such as the one that provides case studies of assignments and grading.

Let’s consider an example of a Wiki Education course, this time from the life sciences. The course is “Molecular Genetics” and the main course page shows that it was taught in Spring 2017 by Eric Guisbert of the Florida Institute of Technology, with assistance from Wiki Education’s Ian Ramjohn. Clicking on the Dashboard link takes you to the details for the course; the header excerpt, linked to the Dashboard, is shown below.

This header, and further information found by clicking on its links (Timeline, Students, Articles, etc.) show that of the 27 students who registered for the Wikipedia option, 23 completed the training, and that this cohort edited 55 articles and created three new ones—about 1100 edits comprising some 31,400 words. The articles were viewed by Wikipedia users about 1.7 million times during the course, which provides a sense of the real-world impact—positive or negative—that student editors can have.

Let’s look at the work of one student with username Ncameron2013 (accessed via the “Students” link). Ncameron2013 was assigned (or chose) the article “Receptor Tyrosine Kinase” to edit and was also assigned (or chose) three other articles for peer review—that is, the student was tasked with reviewing and commenting on the work of the three student editors for those articles.

We can find out what Ncameron2013 did by clicking on the dropdown arrow on the right. The resulting screen shows that after completing the training modules and preliminary assignments, Ncameron2013 was active, first in the Sandbox, commenting on the work of LBates2008 and Cbyrd2011 and creating a new section of the article entitled “Regulation” (March 12–15); then working on the article live from March 15–16. (See below.) Clicking on the “Show” button for any of these entries allows us to see the work that Ncameron2013 did on these occasions. This feature is helpful in giving an instructor a precise understanding of a student’s contribution to article development; it is especially useful in the event that another Wikipedian edits or deletes the student’s work (as has happened more than once with my students).

In the case of Ncameron2013, the most extensive edit was the 8148-character addition on March 15 at 3:29 pm adding two new sections to the article—“Regulation” and “Drug Therapy”—as well as subsections, body text, references, and a table. (See the excerpt from the “Show” screen below; It shows the first two sentences and the relevant citations in Wikitext format.

Ncameron2234 continued to modify this addition to the article over the next 24 hours before wrapping up on March 16 at 3:20 pm. You can see the net effect of Ncameron2013’s edits by using the “diff” feature in the View history tab for the article:

This generates a page that shows the differences between the version of the article before Ncameron2013 started working on it (version saved by Headbomb on 2 March 2017 at 5:30) and the by the time Ncameron2013 finished working on it, ignoring any edits in between (version saved by Ncameron2013 on 16 March 2017 at 21:20).[8] The current version of the article (with subsequent edits by others) can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Receptor_tyrosine_kinase.

I hope that these blog posts have provided greater insight on how you can use Wikipedia assignments to help your students make the leap from consuming knowledge to creating it. From here, my recommendation is to “just do it” and learn how to adapt all of this to your own context. I thank the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning for giving me this forum to share my thoughts, and invite you to stay in touch with your stories about the use of Wikipedia in higher education.

Portions of this blog series are from an article that John and a former law student wrote about using a Wikipedia assignment for class credit. See J. Kleefeld and K. Rattray, 2016. “Write a Wikipedia Article for Law School Credit—Really?” Journal of Legal Education, 65:3, 597-621.

To learn more about our Classroom Program, visit teach.wikiedu.org or reach out to contact@wikiedu.org.

Notes

1. Hyperlinks in this grid direct to an external site, Wikimedia Labs. The link for the first 1000 entries in the stub-class, mid-importance category (that is, the intersection of these two ratings) is https://tools.wmflabs.org/enwp10/cgi-bin/list2.fcgi?run=yes&projecta=Physics&namespace=&pagename=&quality=Stub-Class&importance=Mid-Class&score=&limit=1000&offset=1&sorta=Importance&sortb=Quality. However, each of these categories has an equivalent article in Wikipedia itself; here, the relevant article link is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Stub-Class_physics_articles_of_Mid-importance.

2. See https://tools.wmflabs.org/enwp10/cgi-bin/list2.fcgi?run=yes&projecta=Physics&quality=FA-Class or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Physics#Featured_articles.

3. See https://tools.wmflabs.org/enwp10/cgi-bin/list2.fcgi?run=yes&projecta=Physics&quality=FL-Class (see especially the Featured List article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Physics).

4. See https://tools.wmflabs.org/enwp10/cgi-bin/list2.fcgi?run=yes&projecta=Physics&quality=GA-Class or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Physics#Good_articles.

5. This is a former Featured article, which means that the quality has slipped over time (see the articles’ Talk page).

6. The articles, not shown here, were “PLCG1,” “TLR4,” and “Classical genetics.”

7. See https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/courses/Florida_Institute_of_Technology/Molecular_Genetics_(Spring_2017)/timeline. See also the thorough set of assignments there, designed to gradually bring students up to speed on Wikipedia conventions and editing practices.

8. Times shown here are Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), closely related to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), and used by Wikipedia to keep track of edits. For the “diff” comparison between former and revised versions, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Receptor_tyrosine_kinase&type=revision&diff=770669168&oldid=768683561.

Image: File:College of Law University of Saskatchewan.jpg, Canadian2006, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

John Kleefeld’s students at University of Saskatchewan improved and created Wikipedia articles about law topics. By incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into his course, Kleefeld encouraged students to analyze “legal judgments from multiple perspectives—e.g., literary, historical, sociological, political, or jurisprudential”. Teaching with Wikipedia not only engages students in an enriching, new project, but also improves a resource that millions use.

Students worked on a number of articles including the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, a list of court cases involving the association, and judicial review in Canada.

The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association formed in 1962 to protect and extend civil liberties and human rights. It is a non-partisan charitable society that uses a variety of means to achieve its mission, such as litigation, lobbying, events, and publications. Its lawyers and pro bono counsel work on all levels of Canadian courts and has participated in a number of court cases. Thanks to the student who improved this article, you can find a list of these court cases in a new article that didn’t exist on Wikipedia before this student created it.

Wikipedia’s article about judicial review in Canada also didn’t exist before a student in Kleefeld’s class wrote it. The article describes the intricacies of the judicial review process in Canada, a process which allows individuals to challenge governmental actions and decisions as a protection against abuse of power. The article outlines the basic principles of the concept and key legislation that determines jurisdiction in the application of review. The article also outlines the controversy and differences in opinion surrounding this part of Canadian law.

Students are uniquely positioned to improve Wikipedia as a course assignment. Through their institution, they have access to peer-reviewed research which is normally restricted to the public behind paywalls. Contributing this information to the most accessed online encyclopedia in the world provides Wikipedia’s readers with knowledge to which they may not have otherwise had access. Students become knowledge producers, instead of merely consumers, and they walk away from the assignment with greater skills to identify trustworthy information in their every day lives.

To learn about how you and your students can get involved, visit teach.wikiedu.org or reach out to contact@wikiedu.org.

Header image: File:BCCLA at Vancouver Pride Festival.jpg, Guilhem Vellut, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

With 160 years of history, the university’s library has accumulated a wealth of resources about the history of Canada in general and the region in particular. That’s why I’m pleased to announce an opportunity for a Wikipedia editor to gain remote access to those materials for use in improving articles about the history of southwestern Ontario. The Wikipedia Visiting Scholar will receive a login to access the library’s full suite of digital resources, including databases, ebooks, and digitized collections.

Something we love about the Visiting Scholars program is the way it empowers passionate people to fill content gaps and improve public knowledge about topics otherwise underrepresented on Wikipedia. Wikipedia has developed an incredible amount of high-quality content on many subjects, but it’s much stronger in some areas than others. As the product of volunteers, the content in many ways reflects the interests and experiences of the predominantly white, male, English-speaking people who write it.

One of the library’s strengths that the Visiting Scholar could take advantage of is the numerous materials it has about the region’s First Nations people. In particular, the university sits on the Three Fires Confederacy of First Nations, comprised of the Ojibway, the Odawa, and the Potawatomie.

Visiting Scholars at the University of Windsor is coordinated through the Centre for Digital Scholarship, which brings together the digital services offered by the Leddy Library to support its students, faculty, and staff. It develops and curates research and archival tools and is also an active publisher of academic journals, monographs, and conference proceedings.

If you’re a Wikipedian with an interest in the history of southwestern Ontario, or if you just want to learn more about being a Visiting Scholar, visit the Visiting Scholars section of our website here.

Image: File:University of Windsor campus on August 2006.jpg, Mikerussell, GNU Free Documentation, via Wikimedia Commons. 

On February 8, 2017, this blurb appeared on Wikipedia’s main page in the Did You Know? section, which features interesting facts from newly developed articles. In this case, the article was created and fleshed out by Andrew Hatelt, a student in a Wiki Education-supported course.

The DYK shoutout isn’t the only recognition Andrew received for his excellent work. In fact, Andrew received a fourth-year writing prize for the article at York University, where he attends.

In Fall 2016, as part of Jonathan Obar’s course at York University, Resistance and Subversion on the Internet, Andrew created a new Wikipedia article about the Digital divide in Canada. Throughout the course, students discussed “the open internet as a site of resistance, with Wikipedia presented as an exemplar of this resistance to institutional power structures.”

A digital divide refers to the inequality of access to internet or digital resources for citizens. This lack of access may be due to economic reasons (the high price of Wi-Fi, for example), geographical reasons (connectivity limitations in rural areas), educational reasons (lack of digital literacy), and even social reasons (differences in digital practices due to age, gender, language, or culture). Andrew’s contributions to this new article highlight efforts to close the digital divide in Canada by government and other entities, and the societal implications of those efforts.

Andrew was initially surprised at the mention of a semester-long Wikipedia project, as the merits of Wikipedia were often condemned by his high school teachers. In an interview about York University’s recognition of Andrew’s work, Professor Obar had some great things to say about the merits of a Wikipedia assignment.

“When students contribute content to Wikipedia, they not only benefit from the active learning outcomes achieved through the power of online social networks—their work lives on beyond the scope of the class, helping others to learn about, debate, and change the way we understand the world,” he said.

The LA&PS 2017 Writing Prize that Andrew received is a “faculty-wide competition open to all students from the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies at York University,” said Jon Sufrin, coordinator of the competition. Submissions are diverse, ranging from “reports, reflective writing, grammar assignments, feature-length journalism, and academic essays.” Professor Obar nominated Andrew’s work for the fourth-year category.

The prize is highly competitive, with about 25,000 students eligible across 21 different departments and schools.

“To be nominated for, let alone win, the competition is a significant achievement,” said Sufrin. “Overall, I’d say the fourth-year level of the LA&PS Writing Prize is usually the toughest to win. The papers are expected to be well-researched, well-composed and deep pieces of writing that showcase the best the Faculty has to offer.”

“I think it is fantastic that the work I did with Wikipedia was even considered for the award, and was completely blown away after finding out that it had won,” said Andrew.

Not only was the recognition satisfying, but the assignment itself was an enriching experience for Andrew.

“I learned and gained more from working with Wikipedia than I have from almost any other assignment I have completed,” he said. “Learning how to interact with Wikipedia’s collaborative social network, adapting to a work environment that isn’t a traditional word processor, and practicing a style of writing which isn’t common among university assignments. These are all things that I would not have experienced if I had been working on something more traditional, yet I believe having less traditional experiences like these is also an important part of growing academically.”

Sufrin also spoke of the value of a Wikipedia article as an academic assignment.

“It’s pretty clear that digital writing is going to be in demand in the future, and this kind of writing takes a specific set of skills to do well,” he said. “You have to be able to sort through all the available sources, have skills at hyperlinking, and understand how to make use of the web as a dynamic medium. Digital writing isn’t just screen prose, it’s interactive prose. All of these skills are in addition to actually being able to write something. And if you get your submission recognized by the online community of Wikipedia editors, as Andrew has, it means you’ve really done a great job.”

Through his editing efforts, Andrew has taken part in an act of digital citizenship, and he hopes to remain involved in improving the great resource that is Wikipedia.

“As time goes on and as new developments arise regarding the digital divide in Canada, I am sure that I will come across more information which would be a great fit for the Wikipedia article,” Andrew said. “In these cases I look forward to going back and working with my article again, and also hope to see others contribute to it as they discover suitable information.”

Contributing to Wikipedia has a tremendous impact—not only to a student, but also in the greater context of public literacy.

“By contributing this content, Andrew has contributed to a valuable resource that Canadians and others can use to understand one of the biggest twenty-first century challenges that we face in Canada, how to ensure that all individuals in Canada have equal access to the internet,” said Professor Obar. “I think in giving this award, York University is not only acknowledging the quality of Andrew’s research and writing, but his efforts to improve the world outside the university walls.”

Interested in teaching with Wikipedia? Find out more at teach.wikiedu.org.

File:Winner of the 2017 Liberal Arts and Professional Studies Writing Prize, York University, Toronto.jpg, Jon Sufrin, on behalf of Faculty of LA&PS, York University, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

University of British Columbia students from Kathryn Grafton’s Canadian Studies class wanted to ask the question “Who is participating in online discussions of Canadian literature, and why?” To accomplish this they edited 29 articles, six of which were new additions such as the Indigenous literatures in Canada and Dead Girls articles.

One of the articles they tackled was Joseph Boyden’s Wenjack, a novella about the short life of Ojibwe First Nations boy Chanie Wenjack. Created to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the young boy’s death, the novella tells of Wenjack’s escape from his cruel, abusive residential school teachers — only for the lad to die of hunger and exposure while trying to make the long journey back home. The book was not without controversy, however, as it attracted criticism due to controversies surrounding Boyden’s genealogy and tribal affiliations. The students also expanded the article for the book Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Some students did not limit themselves to novels; some chose to focus on theater and music literature. Four students chose to write an article about the Carol Bolt and Governor General’s Award winning play Pig Girl, which was based upon the murders of Indigenous women by Port Coquitlam pig farmer Robert Pickton. The play’s author, Colleen Murphy, wanted to draw attention to the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women. Another article was the 2016 electronic album We Are the Halluci Nation by the popular music group A Tribe Called Red, earning them a Juno Award, one of the most prestigious music awards in Canada.

Students and educators have a lot of knowledge to offer the world! If you’re interested in participating with Wiki Education we would love to hear from you! Wiki Education will provide tools, online trainings, and printed materials. All that’s missing is you! Contact us today at contact@wikiedu.org to get started.

Image: Koerner_Library_UBC_01.jpg, by Xicotencatl, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Each attendee brought their perspective to the table, leading to robust conversations about how to use Wikipedia as a teaching tool in the classroom.

Helping students overcome challenges of a Wikipedia assignment

After participants learned more about how Wikipedia works, we asked them to consider the challenges students may face during a Wikipedia assignment. Some mentioned the need for students to learn new technical skills to edit Wikipedia. One person wanted more help guiding students to communicate with other Wikipedia editors. Mostly, though, attendees believed directing students toward appropriate topics and Wikipedia articles would be a big challenge.

I regularly hear interested instructors ask this question of how to direct students toward good articles to work on. The good news is, we have built tips into our course timeline template and have developed a training module about selecting appropriate topics. Generally, if students select a topic related to the course readings that is already on Wikipedia as a Stub or Start-Class article, they should be in good shape. It’s also important for instructors to consider whether they want to allow students to propose a topic—which the instructor should always approve before students begin the bulk of their research—or if they want to provide a list for students to choose from. Both options provide a different value for the students and Wikipedia, so instructors should base this decision on expected student learning outcomes.

Engaging students with a meaningful assignment

Workshop participants also shared the benefits they believe a Wikipedia assignment gives students. During an activity to identify potential benefits, they listed the following as reasons to join Wiki Education’s Classroom Program:

• Asking students to consider different points of view
• Improving information literacy and digital skills
• Writing for a larger audience
• Learning how to write with a neutral point of view
• Understanding the pros and cons of Wikipedia as an information source
• Learning to be critical when using Wikipedia (and all sources)
• Listing their new skills on a CV
• Being motivated to work on something that is not “wasted” at the end of the term

To learn more about student learning outcomes during a Wikipedia assignment, see our report from a fall 2016 study. We thank our attendees for joining in on important dialogues about using Wikipedia in the classroom. If you’d like to teach with Wikipedia or host a similar workshop on your campus, email contact@wikiedu.org.