Jane Lee, a student in Dr. Joan Strassmann’s Behavioral Ecology course at Washington University in St. Louis, vastly improved a Wikipedia article about the Small heath butterfly species last fall. She added 4,723 words and went into depth about the butterfly’s taxonomy, life cycle, habitat, and behavior. And her work has been viewed more than 1,000 times by curious … Continued
Paul Thomas is User:Gen. Quon, an active Wikipedian who has helped an impressive 267 Wikipedia articles reach Good Article status, as well as several to reach Featured Article status. In October, we announced that Paul would receive access to scholarly databases to help in his efforts to improve the world’s favorite online encyclopedia. And now, thanks to the … Continued
Every experienced Wikipedia editor has a different way of improving the valuable resource that is Wikipedia. There are plenty of tasks that fall to these volunteers editors, not only in terms of adding missing content, but also in copy-editing existing material, fact-checking sourced content, checking sources for reliability, consulting with other editors about Wikipedia policy, … Continued
Dr. Zach McDowell, Assistant Professor of Communications, gave a talk on March 2 as part of the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Learning Sciences Research Institute Speaker Series. In his talk, “Don’t Cite it, Write it! Student Learning Outcomes and the Wikipedia Assignment,” Dr. McDowell walks through how a Wikipedia assignment works, what tools and support Wiki … Continued
Highlights Fall 2017 courses finished up in December and made quite an impact. This term, with 318 supported courses, students edited 7,200 articles, created 635 new entries, and added 5 million words to Wikipedia. That’s equivalent to about 11.5% of the last print edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica! We’re proud of our efforts to scale … Continued
Wikipedia articles are written and maintained by volunteers, all of whom have differing areas of interest and expertise. Volunteers have varying access to source material, so academic sources, that are often restricted behind paywalls, aren’t well represented on the site. Sometimes, however, sources for a particular topic are plenty, but they’re in another language. That’s … Continued
Highlights This month we were excited to formally announce our 2018 Wikipedia Fellows pilot, where subject-matter experts from three of our partner associations—the American Sociological Association, Midwest Political Science Association, and National Women’s Studies Association—will work with us to learn to edit Wikipedia and make substantial contributions to public knowledge via key Wikipedia articles. We … Continued
Dr. Ben Karney was interviewed by Howard Blume on KPFK’s show Deadline LA in March, along with two of his doctorate students, as well as Wiki Education’s Deputy Director and Director of Programs LiAnna Davis. He had a lot to say about the nature of a Wikipedia assignment, and why, as a psychology professor, public scholarship like … Continued
Students have improved a number of different scientific topics on Wikipedia, including conservation biology, voice disorders, environmental policy, medicine, and more! Communicating scientific topics to a general reader, who may not have any scientific background, requires students to master course material and speak with authority on a topic they’re studying. Students are uniquely positioned to translate scientific concepts, as … Continued
