A student reflects on her Wikipedia success

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

UPenn Visiting Scholar Gen. Quon is making real progress improving Wikipedia’s coverage of Classics

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

Wehwalt is ensuring the quality of Wikipedia’s coverage of American political history

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

“Don’t cite it, write it!” Why teaching students to improve Wikipedia is valuable

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

Students translating Wikipedia articles expand coverage of South American colonial history

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

Monthly Report, November 2017

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

A classroom assignment that “makes the world a better place”

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

New resource for students in science communication courses!

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