10 years of helping close Wikipedia’s gender gap
This fall, we’re celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Wikipedia Student Program with a series of blog posts telling the story of the program in the United States and Canada. I was reflecting on how Wikipedia’s gender gap has changed over the past 10 years when I heard the news that Supreme Court Justice Ruth … Continued
Join the second cohort of WITH Wiki Scientists
This is a republishing of a WITH Foundation blog from May 7, 2020. As many of you know, the WITH Foundation and our grantees are working toward inclusive and transformative healthcare. A facet of this work involves making information about disability and healthcare accessible for people who are looking for it. which is why we’re … Continued
“Where are the women in STEM?” We’ve always been here
Dr. Maryam Zaringhalam is a molecular biologist, science writer, and member of the 500 Women Scientists leadership team. Here, she invites women scientists to help achieve our goal of writing 500 biographies of women in STEM into Wikipedia. Inspired by my brilliant friend Jess Wade, I started writing Wikipedia biographies for women scientists to tackle … Continued
Looking back at Fall 2019: engagement, service, and excitement
Wiki Education now regularly supports around 400 courses each term. With thousands of students adding millions of words to Wikipedia every academic year, you’d think we’d know everything there is to know about the Wikipedia assignment, from what it takes to be successful to what students get out of the project. But each term brings … Continued
Representing accomplishments of elite Indigenous athletes on Wikipedia
What are the implications if the world’s leading source of online information highlights the accomplishments of elite Indigenous athletes? It’s a question that Dr. Vicky Paraschak’s class at University of Windsor surely discussed as they created brand new Wikipedia biographies for Indigenous athletes from Canada as an assignment this last fall. Tony Cote, the first … Continued
Teaching students that their words have power
“College professors tend not to allow you to include a Wikipedia article as a citation in a paper you write. So what are you doing encouraging your students to go to Wikipedia?” Houston Matters host Craig Cohen asked Dr. Melissa Weininger in a radio interview last week. “Well, I’m not encouraging them to go to … Continued
Trying something new in an already popular class
“I was hesitant about shaking up a popular class that had worked well for years, but one statistic finally convinced me. … And this assignment quickly took on a much deeper significance than a research paper.” Dr. Stephennie Mulder at University of Texas at Austin decided to scrap the research paper for her Fall 2018 … Continued
Wikipedia’s gender inequality tackled by Rice students writing ‘activist’ articles
Jewish women are underrepresented on the reference site — but not if this class has anything to write about it Wikipedia is the most popular reference site on the internet, with nearly 20,000 articles added every month. Yet an estimated 85% of its editors are male — a problem of gender imbalance the site’s founder, Jimmy Wales, … Continued
Remembering the unnamed women of history as a Wiki Scholar
Dr. Bridget Marshall is an Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and recently completed one of our Wiki Scholar courses with faculty at her institution. The Wikipedia training course is part of an initiative at UMass Lowell to build digital literacy teaching capacity and address the gender gap on campus and in Wikipedia. … Continued
6 million articles on Wikipedia!
As of late last week, there are 6 million encyclopedic articles on the English Wikipedia. Milestones like this serve as a reminder of how far this resource, which we all have at our fingertips, has come. This event is also an opportunity to acknowledge and appreciate the continued commitment of the Wikipedian community to share … Continued