Wikipedia’s place in higher education
Alliana Drury is a first year undergraduate student at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. In the Spring 2019 term, she took an English 101: Composition 1 course, taught by Dr. Matt Vetter and Teaching Assistant Oksana Moroz, and learned to contribute to Wikipedia as a major assignment in that course. In the following essay, she reflects … Continued
Catalyzing deeper learning in the Humanities with Wiki Education
When the nature of an assignment leads to discovery, not simply to compliance, the learning becomes the students’ own. Dr. Gardner Campbell began teaching Wikipedia writing assignments at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2018. Here he shares the results that he says have “far exceeded” his expectations. For over two decades, from writing projects in freshman composition … Continued
When students write women scientists into Wikipedia
What can students do to fix Wikipedia’s gender gap? Turns out they can do a lot. University and college instructors who use our resources to teach Wikipedia writing assignments have their students work on a diverse range of subjects on Wikipedia — from anthropology to zoology. Not only do students expand Wikipedia’s coverage of academic topics … Continued
Everyday people changing the world for the better
What happens when ordinary people speak up in acts of resistance? What about when other people tell those stories of protest on the world’s most visited encyclopedia? Dr. Jennifer Chun’s course at UCLA explores Protest and Social Change in East Asia. “Protests have taken the form of historic mass mobilizations as well as everyday acts … Continued
My experience editing Wikipedia’s “Vaccination” page during medical school
Since 2013, the UCSF School of Medicine has offered an elective course on editing health-related Wikipedia articles. The course is one month of full-time work, and is offered 2- 3 times each academic year. The following are reflections by Derek Smith, one student who enrolled in Dr. Amin Azzam’s March 2019 cycle of that course. I approached … Continued
Science communication in action at Northeastern
This spring, students in Dr. Amy Carleton’s Advanced Writing in the Sciences at Northeastern University created lots of new Wikipedia articles as an assignment. The new articles include topics like tissue engineering of heart valves, extremophiles in biotechnology, Bilophila wadsworthia, Boston University CTE Center and Brain Bank and food safety in the United States. Tissue engineered heart valves are prosthetic heart valves that, unlike … Continued
Developing metaliterate and information literate Wikipedians in the classroom
Trudi Jacobson is Head of the Information Literacy Department at the University at Albany, SUNY. Here, she explains how she wove a Wikipedia writing assignment together with the six frameworks of information literacy. This course not only taught me how to write on Wikipedia, which by the way I always thought was the coolest concept, … Continued
Students write 50 Wikipedia biographies of women in STEM in less than a year
In Fall 2018, Dr Rebecca Barnes of Colorado College began asking her environmental science students to write Wikipedia pages for women scientists. In response, her students have risen to the occasion, producing a total of 52 new biographies for women in a wide variety of STEM fields since then. “I am excited for my students … Continued