This weekend, Outreach Manager Samantha Weald and I head to Honolulu to join plant biology faculty and students at the annual meeting of the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB). When we partnered with ASPB, we committed to increasing the number of students that we support as they improve Wikipedia’s coverage of plant biology-related topics. We’re looking forward to meeting university instructors face-to-face to share with them the pedagogical benefits to students, and how we make it easy to get involved.
Since beginning our partnership in the fall 2015 term, Wiki Education has trained more than 700 plant biology students to edit Wikipedia. Together, they have added 337,000 words to articles that have received nearly 9 million views. Students have improved Wikipedia’s information about beech bark disease, carnivorous plants, the environmental impact of agriculture, North American azaleas, DNA sequencing, and many more. We’re proud of the great work they’ve done, like the students in Jennifer Blake-Mahmud’s course at Rutgers University who wrote about sexual reproduction and sexually transmitted diseases in plants.
If you’re attending the conference, we’ll be at the education booth in the exhibit hall Sunday through Tuesday. We’ll also be attending the education symposium on Monday, June 26th, from 1:30–3:15pm. There, Dr. Sarah Wyatt, who has participated in Wiki Education’s Classroom Program, will join her graduate students to share their experiences editing Wikipedia as an assignment. Please come join us at any of these events, or email us at contact@wikiedu.org to schedule an independent meeting. We look forward to bringing more plant biologists to Wikipedia!
