Writing a Wikipedia article — the student’s perspective
It’s rare to see a student excited to discover an underdeveloped Wikipedia article — but this was the initial reaction of College of DuPage freshman Stephanie Lemm this spring, when she looked up the “Educational entertainment” article. That’s because it was a topic that interested her immensely, and her English professor, Dr. Timothy Henningsen, had assigned Stephanie and … Continued
Bugging Wikipedia: Opening up insect ecology
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
The Year of Science spreads to Brazil
Wikipedia is the go-to source of knowledge for human beings around the globe. That’s why the Wiki Education Foundation’s Year of Science campaign works with science classrooms in US and Canadian universities. Together, we’re bringing clearer, more comprehensive knowledge about science to the public. But just as knowledge transcends borders, so does Wikipedia. So we … Continued
How Geobiology came to Wikipedia
We hear many stories of scientists visiting Wikipedia, only to find that knowledge related to their field is missing. A chemist may find certain compounds don’t have an article; a zoologist is likely to find a species of bird isn’t well described. That’s one of the things that inspired us to focus so much energy … Continued
Emerson performing arts students expand Wikipedia’s coverage of playwrights
Every empty Wikipedia article tells a story. When the public turns to Wikipedia for knowledge and nothing comes back, it tells us something about knowledge, culture, and science. Who tells those stories? Who gets a starring role? At Emerson College, 50 students in Dr. Magda Romanska’s World Drama class tackled both stories. Looking at the … Continued
The slow, necessary death of the research paper
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
For Wikipedia, the Doctor is in … class
When many people want to understand the side effects of a medication, or to diagnose a new pain or rash, the first line of inquiry for medical advice is a doctor named Google. Many—if not most—of those searches end up on Wikipedia. The online encyclopedia has 25,000 medicine articles, seen by 200 million people per … Continued
Feminist Praxis and Wikipedia in the Classroom
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
Coordinating a distributed content gap analysis partnership
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
Teaching (and diversifying) classical music through Wikipedia
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