Wiki Education awarded Spark Grant to update Dashboard

Wiki Education has been awarded a Spark Grant for their Wikipedia Student Program. This program supports Wikipedia writing assignments in higher education, giving students the rare and powerful opportunity to write for a real audience as part of their course work. The assignments go from guided critical thinking about Wikipedia pages — how they are … Continued

An ecology student becomes a Wikipedian

“You’re not always able to make a huge impact, but at least you can make a dent.” Kai Medina learned how to add content to Wikipedia pages as a student in Dr. Randi Rotjan’s marine biology course this Spring. Since then, he has remained an active editor on Wikipedia, adding content, photos, and field recordings … Continued

Incorporating Wikipedia as an experiential learning activity in an editing course

Melony Shemberger, Ed.D. is Associate Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at Murray State University. Here she provides a framework for teaching Wikipedia writing assignments in the journalism classroom. When I agreed to teach News Editing for the Spring 2019 semester, I went into full throttle to plan for a course that I had not … Continued

An instructional designer’s thoughts on Wikipedia

Johnathon Neist is an instructional designer at the Medical College of Wisconsin who incorporated Wiki Education assignment templates and tools into a recent course. Here, he shares why he thinks others should get their students involved in the Wikipedia movement. I recently co-directed a Wiki Education-supported class with Dr. Amin Azzam aimed at getting medical … Continued

An Audience of 500 Million: Editing Wikipedia as a Writing Assignment

Dr. Alexandra Edwards is a 2nd Year Brittain Fellow at Georgia Tech. This is a republishing of her reflection that appeared in Tech Style this last September. How can we help our students feel that their work in the writing classroom matters? Students struggle to see the point of crafting meticulous assignments when their work … Continued

Why this student says Wikipedia’s stigma is undeserved

Philip Marr is a student at Louisiana State University, where he completed a Wikipedia writing assignment in Dr. Josef Horacek’s English course last term. Here, he reflects on what he found most valuable about learning how to contribute content to Wikipedia articles. All throughout high school, I was always told that Wikipedia should not be … Continued

When social media savvy students write for Wikipedia

Dr. Carolyn Cunningham is Associate Professor of Communication & Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University. Here she shares what it was like for her media students to join the “Wikipedia ecosystem” in an assignment. I teach in the Communication and Leadership Studies program at Gonzaga University. This is a Masters level program offered in a hybrid … Continued

Me, a Wikipedian?

A few months ago, I got a text from a friend. “I think you’d be interested in this.” She’d sent me a link to an application for a course offered by Wiki Education and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to train people to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of women’s suffrage in the United States. … Continued

Wikipedia assignments are perfect for my Freshman Composition students

Instead of turning her students away from Wikipedia, Janice Airhart decided to have her students at Tulsa Community College write articles related to their course. Here’s what she and her students thought of the assignment. In some ways, a Wikipedia assignment is the perfect method for instructing Freshman Composition students. It’s a class that essentially … Continued