Diversifying Wikipedia’s coverage of graphic artists

Nina Saxon is a film and TV title designer with a prolific career and deep influence on the aesthetic of film branding and title design, especially in the 1980s and 1990s. But until Kristin Callahan created it this year, Wikipedia didn’t have a biography article for her. “Nina Saxon’s biography highlights the achievement of women … Continued

Wikidata as a tool for biodiversity informatics

Rick Levy’s job as a scientific data manager at the Denver Botanic Gardens has him immersed in the field of biodiversity informatics. And a topic that keeps coming up in his field? Wikidata. “So many conversations at conferences and webinars mention Wikidata. I needed an introduction on how to use it, as it seemed to … Continued

Wikipedia article, or essay?

In Wiki Education’s Wikipedia Student Program, college and university instructors assign their students to edit Wikipedia as part of the coursework. For most courses, this replaces a research paper or the literature review section of a longer analytical paper, related to the course topic. But for some courses, Wikipedia also becomes an object of study for … Continued

Wikidata’s lexemes sparked this librarian’s interest

Digital Services Librarian Brandon Katzir wanted to learn how to edit Wikidata and build queries using SPARQL — so he signed up for Wiki Education’s Wikidata Institute class. “The class gave me a foundation in things like Wikidata data structures, and it also taught me how to query and use different kinds of tools in … Continued

Students improve articles on how bills became laws

Wikipedia’s articles about US federal laws tend to have high numbers of pageviews — despite the fact that they’re often incomplete. Like all articles, those about public policy tend to focus in on what was of particular interest to the volunteers who have contributed to it in the past, leaving other sections missing or underdeveloped. … Continued

Telling the story of Filipinos in Alaska

University of Alaska Southeast freshman Gio Renegado has always known about Wikipedia. But until he took a class with Professor Jonas Lamb, he didn’t know anyone could edit it. How did he learn this? By editing it himself, as a class assignment, with support from Wiki Education. “I didn’t know that I was going to … Continued

Wooster student expands Wikipedia’s coverage of Latin American topics

In the spring 2020 term, College of Wooster student Emma Schell took her first college-level history class, with Professor Katie Holt. The class was about modern Latin America and it included the assignment to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of Latin American topics, through Wiki Education’s Wikipedia Student Program. “I was nervous when I learned I was … Continued

Revamping Wikipedia’s coverage of the 1994 bond market crisis

Joe Valle majored in Economics during his undergraduate experience at the University of Virginia, where he graduated in 2020. One of his last classes in college focused on coding with the programming language R, which spurred his interest in data science. With the COVID-19 pandemic making the job market grim, Joe pivoted toward pursuing his … Continued

Learning about your community by editing Wikipedia

Koneal Laguidao was shocked when he enrolled in Professor Jonas Lamb’s Writing Across Contexts course in his first term at the University of Alaska Southeast — and discovered he’d be editing Wikipedia as part of the class. “I never knew students my age were able to write for Wikipedia; let alone write for Wikipedia as … Continued