The rapid expansion of fake news sites made real news headlines last week. The sheer prevalence of the viral stories has forced tech giants like Google and Facebook to think about how they handle fake news websites. Whether you think these sites are insidious attempts to sway elections or simply click bait to generate ad … Continued
Are you one of the many people celebrating Halloween with a horror movie night? A lot of our favorite creepy suspense films feature unnatural deaths — but how much do you know about the science behind the thrills? Dr. Katie McEwen’s Autopsy class at Michigan State University set out to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of articles … Continued
Wiki Ed staffers gathered with Wikipedia editors, Wiki Ed program participants, librarians, and others earlier in October at WikiConference North America in San Diego, California. This three-day event was an opportunity for Wiki Ed to meet face-to-face with important collaborators in expanding free knowledge on the English Wikipedia. Wiki Ed’s staff led a number of … Continued
A key facet of Wiki Ed’s Classroom Program is the work of our Wikipedia Content Experts — experienced Wikipedia editors who are available to support students as they navigate editing Wikipedia for the first time. I’m pleased to announce Robert Fernandez has joined Wiki Ed on a short-term contract to provide additional support to student … Continued
Highlights With 226 courses on board by the end of September, Wiki Ed’s Classroom Program will have its largest term ever in Fall 2016. We’re supporting a wide range of courses, including 132 so far this term as part of the Year of Science. The LA Times ran a feature article on Wiki Ed’s work … Continued
Wiki Education Foundation staff, board members, and program participants are descending on San Diego, California, October 7–10 for WikiConference North America. The conference was grown out of the successful WikiConference USA, which was supported by Wiki Ed in 2015. Wikipedia editors, instructors who’ve taught with Wikipedia, and cultural institution partners will come together to share … Continued
The typical assignment in most higher education mathematics classrooms is problem sets — but that’s changing, according to attendees of the Mathematical Association of America’s MathFest 2016, held last week in Columbus, Ohio. Leaders in the math community realize their graduates need to know how to write, either to explain mathematical concepts for the general … Continued
I’m excited to welcome the Wiki Education Foundation’s first research intern. Kevin Schiroo’s internship will focus on data science research that will help us understand the programmatic impact we have on Wikipedia content. Kevin’s project involves investigating what broad categories content development is happening in on Wikipedia, and investigating which categories our student editors are … Continued
As part of our partnership with the Association for Psychological Sciences, we took on a small pilot this summer to encourage instructors to edit Wikipedia. While we’ve successfully encouraged students to edit through our Classroom Program, their instructors tend to only improve student-written articles, rather than writing their own articles. One of the goals of … Continued
