Local history on Wikipedia is full of ripe opportunities. The site is global in reach, but among its 5 million articles are many that cover the small, but significant, cities and towns that shape our history. Even if those towns don’t actually exist. Take, for example, the town of Baring Cross, Arkansas. You won’t find … Continued
What’s in a name? When it comes to minerals, a name can tell you quite a bit. Students from North Dakota State University’s Mineralogy course created 16 new articles about minerals. All of them have surprisingly human names, because they’re named after famous geologists. Students tackled George-ericksenite, now a 3,000-word article about a yellow mineral … Continued
When higher ed students write papers for a chemistry class, they’re typically writing for an audience of one: their instructor. If students put any thought into communicating science, it gets lost in the fact that they’ll be communicating science with the exact same person they learned it from. But what happens when you’re one of the … Continued
November 18 marks Margaret Atwood’s birthday. The Oryx and Crake author writes on a variety of genres, including science fiction. Wiki Education has been focusing on women scientists this year as part of our Year of Science. But when it comes to inspiring women to engage in the fields of science and technology, there’s no … Continued
Unicellular organisms take the bare minimum to be considered complete. In that sense, they’re kind of the opposite of Wikipedia articles. It’s surprising that the Wikipedia article on unicellular organisms languished for so long. Once just a stub with a list of links, the article was transformed by a student in Joel Parker’s Cell Biology … Continued
Over 16 years, Wikipedia has emerged as the leading educational resource on the planet. The English Wikipedia’s five million articles are read by billions of people every month. Who writes Wikipedia, however, is a different story. In 2008, a study found that Wikipedia, which strives to collect “the sum of all human knowledge,” was falling shockingly … Continued
We’ve been talking all year about how Wikipedia is a platform for the public communication of science. Student editors have contributed nearly 2,500 science articles to Wikipedia so far this year. Those have been seen more than 80 million times. Most of those courses are researching science topics, and contributing to the articles about those … Continued
According to estimates, 20 million students are starting their first year of higher education this fall. We like to think big here at Wiki Ed, so we thought we’d ask: What would happen if just one tenth of those students wrote a Wikipedia article instead of a term paper just once in their academic career? … Continued
The White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy has declared today “Active Learning Day.” As passionate advocates of active learning in higher education, we couldn’t be more excited! You could say that we’re participating in an Active Learning year. After all, teaching with Wikipedia is the very definition of an active learning experience. As … Continued
