Each term, hundreds of postsecondary faculty across the U.S. and Canada launch Wikipedia assignments with a free suite of materials and support from our team at Wiki Education. While some are newcomers trying the assignment for the first time, other faculty return to the assignment year after year as an established cornerstone of their syllabus. And when a professor brings the project back, each new group of students can pick up where the last left off — and the impact of that work can compound significantly.
Undoubtedly, this is the case for University of California Berkeley professor Juana María Rodríguez, who has assigned the project to 159 students throughout seven courses, empowering them to make an incredible collective contribution to Wikipedia’s coverage of LGBTQ+ history.
The big numbers:
- 332,000 words added
- 3,580 references added
- 588 articles edited
- 63 articles created
And probably the most staggering impact number from Dr. Rodríguez’s Wikipedia assignments over the years? Her students’ contributions have received more than 96,600,000 pageviews.
Their work hasn’t gone unnoticed — several media outlets have covered Dr. Rodríguez’s coursework on Wikipedia in recent months. In addition to the big impact numbers, they’ve spotlighted her reflections on the assignment, including the learning outcomes she notes as her students work to contribute well-sourced, fact-based knowledge to the encyclopedia.
For Rodríguez, the assignment offers the opportunity to spark critical reflection about knowledge production, sharpen her students’ skills in research and writing, and significantly broaden the reach of their coursework.
“I want my students to think of themselves as not just consumers of knowledge, but as being able to produce knowledge as well,” Rodríguez has explained, underscoring her motivation to return to the Wikipedia assignment term after term.
Rodríguez’s series of Wikipedia assignments are a powerful reminder of the cumulative impact instructors can make on public knowledge — and on the generations of students they empower to contribute to it.
Interested in incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into your course or know an instructor who may be interested? 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.
