New tool identifies Wikipedia articles ripe for improvement
Wiki Education’s technology team is consistently updating the Dashboard to run more smoothly and to better suit the needs of the thousands of people who utilize it. As part of our mission to improve its open source code in a sustainable way, we engage young developers in contributing their own improvements to the Dashboard. If … Continued
Changing students and the world: why instructors continue to teach with Wikipedia
Term after term, virtually all of the instructors who participate in our Classroom Program (between 97 and 99%) indicate that they will run another Wikipedia assignment in the near future. While we’re happy to report this success year after year, a far more interesting story is why so many instructors adopt the Wikipedia assignment as a main-stay … Continued
Announcing new features on the Dashboard Timeline
In our continual efforts to improve our core resources, we’ve incorporated feedback from program participants to make the Timeline feature of our Dashboard tool more effective. The Dashboard is used by all instructors and students in our Classroom Program. And since 2010, that has been more than 1,000 instructors and 43,000 students. That’s a lot of people … Continued
Looking back as we move forward
The Spring 2018 term was significant as much for what happened as for what didn’t happen. What happened During the Spring 2018 term we supported 400 courses! This was our largest number of courses to date, and more than we anticipated. More importantly, over half of those courses were taught by returning instructors (220 to be … Continued
How plagiarism is different on Wikipedia and how to help your students avoid it
While the overwhelming majority of students strive to avoid plagiarism on Wikipedia, they sometimes still miss the mark. Wikipedia’s definition of plagiarism differs in important ways from those set forth by academia, which is often the root of misunderstandings related to plagiarism. When students are caught plagiarizing, it’s often a case of close-paraphrasing. Students might … Continued
Assessing Wikipedia contributions
It’s the end of the term which means grading season is upon us. The ultimate goal of a Wikipedia assignment is to simultaneously improve content on Wikipedia while providing students with important digital literacy skills. But doubtless, students are likely eager to find out their grades, and instructors may be wondering how exactly to assess … Continued
Fostering inclusion in academia, Wikipedia, and beyond
By improving Wikipedia as a classroom assignment, students increase the public’s access to previously inaccessible knowledge, and improve Wikipedia’s coverage of underrepresented topics. And in the process, they learn about their own privilege to information as a university student as well as the social and historical forces at work regarding the sharing and recording of … Continued
Setting expectations for your Wikipedia assignment
While most students in the Classroom Program have written innumerable term papers, few had ever contributed to Wikipedia before joining our program. The Wikipedia assignment differs from the more traditional writing assignment in several key ways, which is why it’s critical to set expectations early on in the term. While Wikipedia is based on a … Continued
Wiki Education Visits Medical Students at UCSF
Since Fall 2015, Wiki Education has had the unique pleasure of working with Dr. Amin Azzam, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. Each term, Dr. Azzam offers a 4-week elective to fourth-year medical students, during which time they improve medical content on Wikipedia. I had the opportunity to visit Dr. Azzam’s Fall … Continued
Tips for Grading a Wikipedia assignment
As the term begins to wind down, many of our instructors are beginning to assess the work their students contributed to Wikipedia. Just as the Wikipedia assignment differs from traditional writing assignments, so does the grading of these projects. Over the past several terms, our instructors have regularly expressed that they would like more guidance … Continued