This week, Wiki Education will join Women and Gender Studies scholars in Baltimore at the National Women’s Studies Association’s (NWSA) annual meeting. NWSA was Wiki Education’s first partner, as they saw an alignment between their mission to improve public understanding of women’s studies and our proven track record of training university students to add missing academic scholarship to Wikipedia.
Since launching that partnership in the Fall 2014 term, we’ve supported 169 courses related to women and gender studies. Nearly 4,000 students have added 2.47 million words to Wikipedia about the topics they were studying in class. That work has received 270 million page views from Wikipedia’s readers all over the world.
We’re proud of the contributions students are making to increase Wikipedia’s equity. As those in powerful positions repeatedly minimize women’s contributions in the workplace, it’s more important than ever to highlight the powerful ideas women have championed for decades. This year’s theme honors the Movement for Black Lives and encourages feminist scholars to stand in solidarity and support the movement. I encourage instructors to join me at one of the locations below to brainstorm assignment ideas to improve Wikipedia’s representation of black women.
Opportunities to Connect
I’ll be in the exhibit hall all weekend, encouraging faculty to join the Classroom Program and use Wikipedia as a teaching tool. Wikipedia Expert Shalor Toncray will join me today and tomorrow, so if she has supported you and your students this term or in the past, this is a rare opportunity to stop by and talk to her in person!
In the exhibit hall, we’ll introduce attendees to our new pilot, Wikipedia Fellows. NWSA is one of the participating partners whose members will join the interdisciplinary effort to train content experts how to edit Wikipedia.
Lastly, please join me on Friday, November 17th, from 8:00–9:15am in the Key Ballroom 9 at the Hilton Baltimore. There, I’ll present about the contributions students have made to Wikipedia and facilitate a discussion about why women and gender studies students should bring their voices to Wikipedia.
