With the new academic year on the horizon, we’re taking a moment to look back at the remarkable impact made by more than 6,600 student editors in our Wikipedia Student Program in spring 2025.
Representing a wide range of disciplines and postsecondary institutions across the U.S. and Canada, the students sharpened their research and writing skills while contributing to the world’s go-to encyclopedia through their Wikipedia assignments. By improving public access to information on diverse topics, their contributions not only enriched Wikipedia but also highlighted the powerful role real-world assignments can play in advancing knowledge equity.
The big numbers
In spring 2025, more than 6,600 students across 368 postsecondary courses:
- Added 5.65 million words to Wikipedia.
- Added nearly 55,000 references.
- Improved more than 6,500 Wikipedia articles.
- Created 532 new Wikipedia articles.
And perhaps the most astounding number from the spring 2025 term? Student editor contributions on Wikipedia have been viewed more than 135 million times by readers across the globe!
A closer look
Behind these impressive numbers are the individual student editors who tackled their Wikipedia assignments head on – students like Georgia Gwinnett College’s Devani Rodriguez-Rangel and Wentworth Institute of Technology’s Ja’Maira Goodwyn, who both helped expand Wikipedia’s coverage of underrepresented figures in STEM.
And students like this pair at Ohio University who teamed up to completely transform Wikipedia’s coverage of women in Ecuador. (Relatedly, don’t miss the powerful student work to improve the Domestic violence in Ecuador Wikipedia article).
From A (American Studies) to Z (Zoology), our Wikipedia Student Program spring 2025 courses helped make the world’s largest open knowledge resource more comprehensive, accurate, and inclusive for millions worldwide.
And it wasn’t just the global audience of readers who benefited from the students’ efforts – the students themselves came away with new skills in research, writing, and digital media literacy.
“The Wikipedia assignment helped me incorporate scientific literature into my course in a very meaningful and authentic way that my students appreciate,” noted an instructor who integrated a Wikipedia assignment into their course in spring 2025. “The students also learned science writing for a non-professional audience, which is an extremely important skill for them in today’s world.”
Other professors emphasized similar learning outcomes, underscoring how their Wikipedia assignments deepened students’ research skills while also challenging them to think critically about the information they encounter.
“There is immense pedagogical value in the Wikipedia assignment, but especially in teaching students not just how to research, but how to judge and interpret the research you do find,” said one instructor. “The research students added to [Wikipedia] was far better in quality and relevance than any bibliography from the research papers of my advanced composition class. Students also left with an understanding of bias in history writing/remembering/archiving (knowledge equity) and a renewed sense of digital citizenship.”
Spring 2025 faculty repeatedly pointed to the public impact as a particular strength of the Wikipedia assignment. As one instructor told us, “The Wikipedia assignment provides real-world motivation for the research and writing [students] are doing. It makes the assignments relevant and practical instead of being busy work.”
And for many students, it was a new experience to feel like their work made a difference beyond their final grade.
“My students told me this was the first time in all their years of schooling that they felt they were producing something “real,” rather than simply completing an assignment no one would ever see but their instructor,” a professor explained.
This valuable feedback from faculty and their students continues to spark new energy and ideas at Wiki Education – and remind us of the critical impact we can make together.
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.
