Monthly Report, January 2020
Highlights This month, we worked with our partners at the Society of Family Planning (SFP) to launch the second iteration of SFP Wiki Scholars courses. SFP is sponsoring additional courses to train their members—primarily medical practitioners—how to add scientific information to family planning articles. This month the English Wikipedia celebrated a major milestone: 6 million … Continued
In solidarity: continuing to share knowledge amidst a global pandemic
Dear members of the Wiki Education community, Amidst the anxieties and uncertainties of our collective future, I’d like to express my compassion for all members of our community affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. We are in solidarity alongside you as we all face new personal and professional challenges. Because Wiki Education is based in the … Continued
Wikipedia as a teaching tool that empowers students
“I’ve improved my student reviews from it.” Dr. Jennifer Glass’ environmental geochemistry course at Georgia Tech last fall covered “how chemical, biological, and geological processes control the distribution of chemical elements on Earth and the solar system.” Through a semester-long Wikipedia writing assignment, she wanted students to gain experience “in scientific writing on notable topics … Continued
Representing accomplishments of elite Indigenous athletes on Wikipedia
What are the implications if the world’s leading source of online information highlights the accomplishments of elite Indigenous athletes? It’s a question that Dr. Vicky Paraschak’s class at University of Windsor surely discussed as they created brand new Wikipedia biographies for Indigenous athletes from Canada as an assignment this last fall. Tony Cote, the first … Continued
Teaching students that their words have power
“College professors tend not to allow you to include a Wikipedia article as a citation in a paper you write. So what are you doing encouraging your students to go to Wikipedia?” Houston Matters host Craig Cohen asked Dr. Melissa Weininger in a radio interview last week. “Well, I’m not encouraging them to go to … Continued
Everyone can help build one of the wonders of the modern world
Dr. Lydia Le Page is a postdoc at the University of California, San Francisco, where she images brain metabolism with MRI to understand Alzheimer’s disease. In our recent Wiki Scientists course sponsored by the National Science Policy Network, she was excited to improve Wikipedia pages that will help voters and policy-makers make the best use … Continued
Trying something new in an already popular class
“I was hesitant about shaking up a popular class that had worked well for years, but one statistic finally convinced me. … And this assignment quickly took on a much deeper significance than a research paper.” Dr. Stephennie Mulder at University of Texas at Austin decided to scrap the research paper for her Fall 2018 … Continued
Reading Wikipedia’s editorial culture
With three terms of Wikipedia writing assignment experience already under his belt, Dr. Josh DiCaglio reflects on having students understand Wikipedia’s editing culture by participating in it. He is an assistant professor in the department of English at Texas A&M University. Although many instructors have used Wikipedia in class projects, these assignments usually focus on … Continued
Wikipedia’s gender inequality tackled by Rice students writing ‘activist’ articles
Jewish women are underrepresented on the reference site — but not if this class has anything to write about it Wikipedia is the most popular reference site on the internet, with nearly 20,000 articles added every month. Yet an estimated 85% of its editors are male — a problem of gender imbalance the site’s founder, Jimmy Wales, … Continued
New Dashboard feature helps with grading your Wikipedia assignment
If you visit the Students tab of your course page, you may notice that it looks a bit different. As the first phase of our Spring 2020 push to improve the instructor user experience, we’ve rolled out a new version of the Students list that lets you view details about the Article Assignments for any … Continued