Dr. Antje Gamble is a professor of art history at Murray State University and president of the Italian Art Society.
My journey teaching with the Wikipedia Assignment started in 2021 with the perfect storm of a recently added new course prep and continued remote teaching because of the COVID-19 Pandemic. I had first learned about Wiki Education’s free support for the project from a colleague Melony Shemberger, Ed.D. (read her experience here) just before we moved remote in 2020. Though it took a year for me to take her advice, it has been a great fit in one of my upper level classes.
First Iterations
I added the Wikipedia Assignment to the second iteration of my History of Modern Design course in Spring of 2021. The first semester the assignment was a huge hit; twenty-three students added over eleven thousand words. However, the next two semesters saw a slump in engagement, with four and five thousand words added.
For these classes, in addition to adding to research on Wikipedia, these students would have to write a longer academic paper on their Wikipedia project subject. I did this with the goal of having the Wikipedia Assignment serve as a kind of scaffolding for their research project. I required scaffolded research assignments in other courses, so expected similar results.
However, that was not how it played out. In the second two iterations, students ignored many of the skills to be learned with the project and just focused on the paper. This was not because the paper was worth more than the Wikipedia Assignment for their grade either—they had the same weight. Instead, it seemed that they perceived a hierarchy between the two that was not there. Therefore, I knew that I needed to make a change to increase engagement and learning if I wanted to keep the Wikipedia Assignment.
Latest Changes
In Spring 2026, I changed things up. Rather than seeing the Wikipedia Assignment as scaffolding assignment for their larger papers, it became the main course research project. They were still adding to existing articles; but I added more robust academic research requirements to the project. I did this in two key ways.
First, students had to find sources only available through the university library to add scholarly sources to Wikipedia. Students had been relying on museum websites as sources, which are a great scholarly source for simple information. They are, however, often very surface level material. By requiring students to use only sources accessed through the university library, their engagement with the material became much less surface level. Many voiced how interesting they found academic articles—something I honestly hadn’t heard very often in some time.
Second, I required a combination of writing length, or writing and visual media upload. This pushed students to really find the content gaps. Before this requirement, I would always have a portion of the class that did succeed here. Since this change, the entire class thoughtfully found content gaps and worked diligently to fill them. It was, honestly, a night a day difference. They seemed to really absorb the content and run with it.
Assignment Success
Ultimately, having students focus on the Wikipedia Assignment as their research project resulted in better scholarship. Importantly, students really owned their projects. They were not only excited to share their subject research, but also talk about the scholarly process. In Spring 2026, I had twenty-six students add over eight thousands words and three new commons uploads. Even more exciting, many students started editing other related articles, beyond the main requirements. Students ended up editing forty-three articles in total.
The real academic success was in their engagement in the process of academic research. By replacing a traditional academic paper with a Wikipedia Assignment, my students were more focused on the foundational skills: critical thinking, scholarly research, and writing. This shorter writing assignment worked particularly well for this class, in part, because this class supports a more professional degree track. This assignment now gives them the skills to produce the public facing writing required in the graphic design field, while also having learned the academic research skills that would serve them in an academic setting.
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.
