Are you headed to Montreal this weekend for the 119th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA), or know someone who is? Be sure to add Wiki Education’s session “Beyond the classroom: How Wikipedia can play a critical role in Social Science education” to your conference schedule!
The Sunday morning panel discussion will feature reflections and insight from Sarah Hernandez, associate professor of sociology and Caribbean and Latin American Studies at New College of Florida, and Tanetta Andersson, senior lecturer in sociology at Trinity College. Both panelists have incorporated the Wikipedia assignment into their courses, which include Latin American Social Theory, Social Movements, and Global Gender Inequalities.
The two scholars will explore the challenges and benefits of a public-facing writing assignment, issues surrounding bias and knowledge equity, the development of expertise and voice within a field, and best practices for implementing a Wikipedia assignment in the postsecondary classroom.
The conversation will also examine how students are uniquely positioned to improve representation on Wikipedia by identifying and filling in content gaps related to historically underrepresented or misrepresented people and subjects. In the field of sociology alone, thousands of students have added 4 million words to Wikipedia through the Wikipedia assignment in courses like Hernandez’s and Andersson’s.
The panel will be held on Sunday, August 11, 10:00 – 11:30 a.m. in the Palais des congrès de Montréal, Level 5 – 517A with introductions by Wiki Education’s Andrés Vera.
Interested in incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into your course? Visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn more about the free resources, digital tools, and staff support that Wiki Education offers to postsecondary instructors in the United States and Canada.
