Wikipedia assignments are perfect for my Freshman Composition students
Instead of turning her students away from Wikipedia, Janice Airhart decided to have her students at Tulsa Community College write articles related to their course. Here’s what she and her students thought of the assignment. In some ways, a Wikipedia assignment is the perfect method for instructing Freshman Composition students. It’s a class that essentially … Continued
Academia is changing its mind about Wikipedia
“Most medical students use Wikipedia, yet most medical schools do not train students to improve Wikipedia or use it critically.” So begins the research study published by MedEdPublish this spring about the use of Wikipedia in medical education. The article ultimately encourages the implementation of Wikipedia writing assignments “across all health professional schools.” Attitudes toward … Continued
An emerging movement of health professional students contributing to Wikipedia
Dr. Amin Azzam, MD, MA, Adjunct Professor at the UCSF School of Medicine shares how health professional students are improving Wikipedia as part of their formal curricula. Since 2013 I’ve had the great privilege of running a Wikipedia-editing elective course for fourth year medical students at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of … Continued
Engaging students with Wikipedia
Guest author Dr. Kathleen Sheppard is is an alumna of the History of Science Department at the University of Oklahoma and is now an associate professor of history and political science at Missouri Science & Technology. She was awarded 2019 Woman of the Year at MST “in recognition of her efforts to improve the campus environment for women … Continued
Why instructors join our open pedagogy community
Almost a decade into the Wikipedia Student Program, it can be easy to take the immense impact of the Wikipedia assignment for granted. Millions of words added by close to ten thousand students term after term has become the norm, and Spring 2019 was no exception. Almost 8,500 students from 400 courses across the U.S. and Canada contributed … Continued
Unerasing Gert Town
Dr. Jason Todd’s students at Xavier University of Louisiana dramatically improved the Wikipedia article of their local town, saving the area from erasure in cultural memory. This is Dr. Todd on the impact of such an assignment. I tried incorporating Wikipedia into a writing class back in the spring of 2008, during my first year … Continued
MIT awards instructor for utilizing Wikipedia in the science classroom
How better to have students practice science communication than by having them explain course topics to a general audience of millions? Dr. Amy Carleton, an instructor in our Student Program, has won MIT’s Teaching With Digital Technology Award this year for her approach to teaching thoughtful and impactful science communication. The student-nominated award recognizes “instructors who have effectively … 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
Making healthcare more accessible through translation
Kitty Quintanilla is a second year medical student at Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine. Here, she shares why she’s passionate about increasing access to free information. Have you ever had your parents ramble at you about the “when I was young, we didn’t have all these computers and the internet and … Continued