Dr. Chelse Prather assigned students to write Wikipedia articles as part of her “Insects and Society” course at Radford University. In this post, she discusses the design of that course, and the benefits it brought to her students. Insects affect human daily life in both positive and negative ways. Most humans are not conscious of … Continued
Dr. Elizabeth De Wolfe is a Professor of History at the University of New England. Her “Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies” course assigned students to expand women-focused content on Wikipedia. As historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich has famously stated, “Well-behaved women rarely make history.” And in addition to history, women — the well-behaved and otherwise … Continued
Timothy Henningsen is an Assistant Professor of English at the College of DuPage. He’s run Wikipedia assignments in about a dozen courses, and has talked about the experience elsewhere. In this post, “The Slow, Necessary Death of the Research Paper (And How Wikipedia Can Revive Composition Instruction)” he discusses the benefit of Wikipedia writing assignments compared … Continued
Ariella Rotramel’s Feminist Theory course was composed of 16 undergraduates at Connecticut College. They critiqued Wikipedia through a feminist lens to find gaps in available knowledge. The students then connected theory to practice, by researching and writing about missing topics. Our Wikipedia assignment was designed to help students gain metaliteracy skills, such as critical thinking … Continued
Monika Sengul-Jones is a Doctoral Candidate in Communication & Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego, and a Visiting Graduate Researcher at the University of Washington, Seattle. She has been researching and developing projects focused on the analysis of gender-related content gaps on Wikipedia. Recently, she created a set of learnings for feminism … Continued
Allison Schuette teaches with Wikipedia for her English course at Valparaiso University in Indiana. In this post, she shares the impact she’s seen the assignment have on student engagement. I teach a course, New Literacies, Technologies, and Cultures of Writing, in my English department that seeks to analyze how technology has shaped and is shaping our … Continued
Kim Davenport, Lecturer, Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences at the University of Washington, Tacoma, works with Wikipedia in her “Intro to Humanities” course for first-year students there. She shares her thoughts on student contributions to coverage of classical music on Wikipedia. My course introduces the world of classical music. Through several projects, students explore the role … Continued
Dr. Gretchen McKay is a Professor of Art History and Chair of the Department of Art and Art History at McDaniel College in Maryland. She shares her experience teaching an art history course with Wikipedia. Nearly a decade ago, the faculty at my small, liberal arts institution, McDaniel College, overhauled our entire general education program. … Continued
Liam Lair, an instructor at Louisiana State University, shares the experience of teaching with Wikipedia in a Women’s and Gender Studies course. As an instructor in Women’s and Gender studies, I challenge my students to connect topics we discuss in class to their lives. I encourage them to see how our studies come to bear on … Continued
