I teach a biology elective course called Deep Sea Biology. My primary goal in this course of mostly senior bio majors is to increase awareness of, and enthusiasm for, the deep sea. I don’t particularly care if 5 years after my course students still remember what depth corresponds to the ocean’s abyssopelagic zone, but I hope that students are still thinking about how little we know about the ocean’s depths, that they remember the ways in which their own lives are indirectly affected by Earth’s oceans, and that they consider the impacts on the marine realm that their daily actions have. 

Because of these course goals, I have chosen to forego a traditional final exam, and instead have students take on a final project. I’ve done this in a number of ways, but in the Spring of 2020, I added Wikipedia editing (through Wiki Education) to the course for a few reasons. I wanted something that was an authentic contribution to the world beyond our classroom. When students know that I am the only person reading their paper they feel a different level of engagement and ownership of the project than something that may, ultimately, be publicly accessible. One of the themes I stress over and over again is how poorly understood the deep sea is. We spend a lot of time reading the scientific literature for the course, which is accessible to us through our institutional journal subscriptions, but much of this information is not accessible to the public. Translating and summarizing some of that information for a general audience seemed like a valuable academic exercise, and sharing it on Wikipedia felt like a valuable contribution. I could tell my students that they were going to play a role in making our knowledge about the deep sea more accessible to the general public. I could tell that this responsibility and challenge was something that appealed almost instantly to many of my students. They all use Wikipedia regularly, and have heard mixed messages about whether or not it is a “good” source, so in addition to the contributions they would make, this project would help them better understand how Wikipedia works.

Now that I’ve gone through the Wikipedia editing process once, I’ve learned a few things that will hopefully make things smoother. I want to separate out the research from the editing more than I did in the past. Trying to do both things simultaneously was frustrating for some students. The Wiki Education platform has lots of great tutorials, but having students do these too early (before they’ve selected a topic, for example) left some students feeling like the Wiki Education platform was a lot of busy work… I’m hoping that condensing these tutorials and assigning them right when students need that information will help.

This semester (Fall 2020) I am formatting the project in 3 parts:

1. Background research: Students choose their topic, read primary source documents, and create an annotated bibliography.

2. Wikipedia editing: Students summarize and translate their research into content that can be added to Wikipedia. For some topics this might just be adding some references and citations, for others it may be a page reorganization, and for some it could involve adding substantial text to their topic’s page (or even creating a new page). 

3. Get creative: Students propose a creative way to share what they’ve learned about their topic, that they will submit digitally for peer review before final submission. This semester especially, I wanted students to be excited and energized by their projects so I’m leaving this pretty open. I might end up with children’s books, music videos, art projects… who knows!

The following are some quotes from my students last semester about the Wikipedia editing project.

• With the Wiki Education project, I thought it was a cool way to combine research and teamwork while making an impact by providing updated information to be people browsing Wikipedia. I enjoyed being in groups for the project and would not want to complete the task alone. Some of the training felt tedious but it was also helpful to understand how to actually make edits and utilize the software.
•  I did enjoy the Wikipedia assignment, it was cool to be behind the scenes like that and get to make a contribution!
• I really enjoyed the Wikipedia project. It was interesting to study just one deep sea organism, and although we didn’t get to finish, it helped a lot with scientific writing and research.
• I liked doing the research and editing the article myself, and it made me feel like I was contributing to something bigger than had I just done the research and written a paper just for a professor to read and then nothing came from it.
• I think Wikipedia was a good way to expose those who do not know a lot about the deep sea to the greater community. It showed that people search this ad look through this information.
• I think I’ll probably remember the Wikipedia project — I now have a lot of oddly specific knowledge of an obscure genus of octopus, which should be fun at parties.
• I think the Wikipedia project was actually fun and it was a good experience in finding proper sources and adding to articles.
• I did enjoy the Wikipedia assignment, it was cool to be behind the scenes like that and get to make a contribution!
• I also really enjoyed the Wikipedia project, the team, and that it was something I could feel good about because others benefitted from our efforts.

To say that the spring 2020 academic term was unlike any other is a gross understatement. The pandemic abruptly upended normal life, and the students and instructors in our program were no exception. Mid-way through the term, just as most of our students were about to begin drafting their contributions and moving into the article main space, campuses closed nationwide, and students had to return home for the remainder of the academic year. Amid this turmoil, Wiki Education was thankfully able to continue providing uninterrupted support, and we reached out to all of our program participants to see how we could help.

Despite the unprecedented disruptions that the spring 2020 term saw, our students still did outstanding work, and Wiki Education supported 409 courses — our largest number to date. In fact, we quickly learned that the Wikipedia assignment became a lifeline for many of our instructors as they struggled to transition to remote learning. As one instructor wrote, “It actually was a perfect thing that I already had this scheduled and in the syllabus. It gave us an online component before we ‘needed’ it!” Others decided to run a Wikipedia assignment as a way to keep students engaged as their courses went online. We were truly grateful that we could provide some degree of stability for our instructors and students amid a tumultuous time, and despite it all, our students made substantial contributions to Wikipedia.

Across the 409 courses we supported in Spring 2020, almost 7,500 students collectively contributed more than 5 million words to Wikipedia, edited more than 6,000 articles, and created more than 500 entirely new entries. They covered subjects ranging from African American History to Prokaryotic Processes, and their work was collectively viewed almost 270 million times in the term alone.

A source of empowerment

We were also gratified to see that the Wikipedia assignment continued to be a source of motivation and empowerment for our students, as reported by instructors in our post-term survey. One instructor recounted the following anecdote: “Because of the pandemic, our university library was slower than usual. One student, frustrated that one of the books she wanted to read for the Wikipedia assignment was not immediately available at our university library, got on a bicycle and went to borrow a book in a city library in her town. I’ve never seen a student do that. I was happy to hear that, though I tried to hide my reaction in front of the student!” Another instructor reported, “One thing the struck me is I actually had a student came up and thank me for assigning this as their final. I was floored because, I’ve never had a student actually thank me for assigning them work or a final. This student really loved writing for Wikipedia and showing off their work to their family.”

Wiki Education has long been committed to filling in Wikipedia’s content gaps and especially those related to issues of equity, and we’re pleased to see that many of our students were also motivated by a desire to fill in Wikipedia’s equity gaps. “The project,” noted one instructor, “also increased their understanding of representation — who is included, who is not, and whose absence we notice. In many ways this grew out of the understanding that absences need to be addressed and that information is power (the Women in Red project). So thank you.”

Many of our students work on biographies of women to help close Wikipedia’s gender gap. One such student described their experience writing about Andrea Ivory: “Personally, I learned a lot when I was younger just going on random Wikipedia rabbit holes. It was really cool doing a deep-dive into Andrea Ivory’s backstory and working with my teammates to prove that she is, in fact, well known. And, more importantly, her work should be spotlighted regardless of how much media coverage she gets. Keeping my own experiences in mind, I was excited to go live with an article about such an important figure, because you never know who’s Wikipedia rabbit hole session may lead them to know more about Andrea Ivory!”

Just as important as filling in Wikipedia’s equity gaps is making the population that engages with Wikipedia editing more equitable. The students who participate in our program are representative of college campuses more broadly, and roughly 60% of our students are women. More surprising, however, is the number of female instructors who decide to run Wikipedia assignments. About 73% of our new instructors and about 60% of our returning instructors identify as women, a number that is far greater than the roughly 31% of women that make up academia more generally. Wikipedia has long struggled with a fairly homogeneous editing community — composed largely of men — and through our efforts, we are changing the face of who writes Wikipedia and who decides what content should be included on the world’s largest online encyclopedia.

Not simply an assignment, but a way to teach

When considering a Wikipedia assignment for the first time, instructors are often concerned that their students will spend more time learning how to contribute to Wikipedia than the content of the course. To the contrary, learning the ins and outs of Wikipedia can truly complement a course’s broader objectives. According to one instructor, “I started this assignment with the hope of highlighting the difference between academic knowledge (history, in my case) and Wikipedia knowledge. I ended up teaching, more effectively than otherwise, the key processes of history research, instead of teaching students what Wikipedia is. In other words, Wikipedia assignment helped me teach history, more so that a conventional research seminar can do.”

Another instructor remarked, “The Wikipedia project served as a great introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies as it incorporated the material we had discussed in class in a tangible, realizable way. It showed how the theories and practices we covered are not just concepts or academic discourse but are real, applicable, and powerful.”

The Wikipedia assignment transforms students from passive learners to active producers of knowledge. In a time where many feel helpless and powerless to change the world around them, this is no small feat. As one instructor put it, “Wikipedia has become a key pedagogical tool for me in my classes. I still start each semester anxious about how everything will go, but I’m increasingly impressed with what the students accomplish and what they get out of it! It’s a source of community and a source of empowerment and a space of learning.”

We all learned a lot from the challenges of the spring 2020 term, and we know that many of those challenges will persist as we embark on our fall 2020 adventure. What remains constant though is the potential our students and instructors have to truly make a difference through their engagement with Wikipedia.

Public health students in Tania Carreon-Valencia and Thais Morata’s course at the University of Cincinnati exercised their science communication muscles this spring as they added worker health and workplace safety information to Wikipedia. These topics are at the forefront of our collective consciousness right now as we contemplate (locally and globally) what “returning to work” looks like. And Wikipedia has proven to be a valuable resource during the pandemic as the world seeks updates on what to do.

While there may not be lots of peer-reviewed research yet about the effects of the pandemic on essential workers, it’s still worth keeping these topics up to date as information becomes available. Being aware of the risks of dental aerosols (a new Wikipedia page created by one of these students) might cause workplaces to contemplate how else coronavirus can spread and take precautions for reducing the risk. As this new page will inform you, the instruments that dentists use to probe and clean your teeth create aerosols that can pose a risk to clinicians and other patients. These dental aerosols even have the possibility to transmit diseases by spreading viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19. This is why on March 16th, 2020, the American Dental Association advised dentists to postpone all elective procedures. This student’s work has already been viewed more than 1,300 times, showing that even seemingly obscure topics can fill the information needs of many.

Another student improved the Wikipedia page about incident stress—the behavioral, emotional, and physical symptoms a frontline worker might experience after experiencing something traumatic on the job. While there is no method that is completely effective for preventing incident stress, there are ways to reduce its impact on the affected person. Possible steps to maintaining on-site health include maintaining nutrition and rest; limiting exposure to further stimuli, like noise; whether or not an employer is prepared to respond to cases of incident stress; and more. These steps are now captured in the corresponding Wikipedia page in a brand new section about “prevention” thanks to a student.

And the Wikipedia page about shift work sleep disorder, which consistently receives about 150 views a day, saw quite a few improvements in April. The disorder causes adverse health effects in people whose work schedule disrupts their typical sleeping patterns. A student added that it often goes undiagnosed and that the health effects include increased risk of bone fractures, low fertility, obesity, diabetes, decreased immune functioning, and negative effects on mental health. The page now also makes clear that sleep deprivation may lead to medical errors, workplace accidents, and low productivity. And it includes more methods through which decreased sleep quality can be assessed. The page has received 10,000 visits since this student made these changes.

The Wikipedia writing assignment was internationally recognized as an important tool for science communication around public health by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in 2019. NIOSH recognizes that Wikipedia makes research “usable” for the general public and lauds the site for policies that make information verifiable for readers. When Wikipedia is one of the leading sources for medical information out there, making sure that information is rooted in the latest science is hugely important. And students are great folks to do that work (with the assistance of their expert instructors and our Wikipedia training materials). Let’s make sure workers know their rights and that employers are up to date on science that can best prepare them to make positive decisions for their employees.

Interested in incorporating a Wikipedia writing assignment into a future course? Visit teach.wikiedu.org for all you need to know to get started. And here are some tips for incorporating the assignment into a virtual course.

Thumbnail image by Gmihail, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0 RS).

Students made substantial revisions to Daigo Fukuryū Maru, adding detail about the health effects to the surviving fishermen and the response of the US government, which was initially denying culpability and claiming that the fishermen were actually spies. The US eventually paid Japan more than 15 million dollars in reparations. The fate of the Daigo Fukuryū Maru was also added: initially purchased by the Japanese government, by 1970 the Lucky Dragon No. 5 was sitting in a garbage-filled canal. It was then pulled from the water and put on public display in Tokyo as a symbol of opposition to nuclear weapons. Students even created a brand new biography of survivor Oishi Matashichi, who went on to become an author advocating for nuclear disarmament, attending a 2015 memorial service on the Marshall Islands for the victims of the nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll.

By writing this information into Wikipedia, the students have shared the story of the Lucky Dragon No. 5 with a global audience, helping thousands to understand the far-reaching ripples of nuclear testing in the Pacific.

Interested in incorporating a Wikipedia writing assignment into a future course? Visit teach.wikiedu.org for all you need to know to get started.

With these questions on the tip of all of our tongues, it was a great surprise to see that engineering students at the University of Southern California completed their Wikipedia writing assignment this semester by adding new data privacy information to the article about Zoom, ensuring folks have enough information to make informed decisions when using this online platform. These engineering students were already adding succinct, well-sourced content to the Wikipedia page a month ago, even before Zoom issued a statement about their privacy policy on March 29.

One student added that in the first two months of 2020, 2.22 million new users had signed up for Zoom (more than in the entirety of 2019). With this great influx of new users comes great responsibility. And one way to keep the platform accountable to data ethics and to help inform users of where their data goes, is to make sure that information is represented on this Wikipedia page where 40,000 visitors consult it per day.

That’s right. There have been 1,285,251 page visits on Zoom’s Wikipedia page since these students added this information at the end of March.

Instructor Dr. Helen Choi had wanted the Wikipedia writing assignment to help students learn to:

• write for academic, public, and professional audiences,
• demonstrate research and documentation abilities at the upper-division level,
• revise and edit to advanced academic and professional standards,
• work collaboratively to research, write, and present information and ideas,
• and write accurate, precise technical prose.

But what could prepare an instructor or their student for this kind of impact? The result is pretty incredible.

Interested in incorporating a Wikipedia writing assignment into a future course? Visit teach.wikiedu.org for all you need to know to get started.

Thumbnail image in public domain.

The immune system is complex and fascinating. Cells of our immune system encounter and destroy bacteria and viruses daily, most often without our even being aware of their presence.

So begins the description for Dr. Debby Walser-Kuntz’s immunology course at Carleton College this spring. After looking into components of vertebrate immune systems and how cells produce immune responses to foreign invaders, students were ready to examine the role of the immune system in infectious disease, allergy and asthma, autoimmunity, vaccination, obesity, and immunotherapy. And as a final project, they would become public scholars as they put what they learned on Wikipedia.

Quite a few of the articles that these students created and improved in the beginning of March attracted many more pageviews than usual by the end of the month, likely due to the increase in Wikipedia’s web traffic as readers sought to understand the unfolding coronavirus pandemic. With their access to academic sources and guidance from their expert instructor, students can help play an important role in answering the public’s immediate questions.

One of Dr. Walser-Kuntz’s students is responsible for nearly all of the current content in the article about immune response. They even uploaded a diagram they created to describe an innate immune response to a bacteria invasion.

The article has received 46,650 pageviews since the student made changes. There was a dramatic upswing in readership in March, likely as regions increasingly reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic and readers sought to understand how their bodies might respond to the virus.

Another student uploaded a diagram they made to the article about immunogenicity, “the ability of a foreign substance, such as an antigen, to provoke an immune response in the body.” The diagram explains the different factors that affect immunogenicity, including glycosylation (a chemical reaction between molecules), how the antibodies are administered to the patient, and more.

The page reaches an average of 180 readers per day. Now those readers will read the content that the student added, which accounts for nearly the entire page. The student also included an abundance of new references, responding to a warning template that had been placed on the article in 2013 alerting readers that there weren’t enough references.

A Wikipedia writing assignment presents a unique opportunity to translate scientific concepts in a place where people around the world are looking for answers. Students are great performers of this work, since they remember what it was like learning about these concepts for the first time.

Adding scientific content to Wikipedia, especially when it relates to medicine and health, can be complicated. Our trainings for students aim to prepare them to follow the sourcing and quality requirements that the Wikipedia volunteer community has built. With the guidance of their instructor, students can do some amazing work that lives on well beyond the classroom.

Interested in incorporating a Wikipedia writing assignment into a future course? Visit teach.wikiedu.org for all you need to know to get started.