The Dashboard now counts references!
We’ve added a new feature to the Wiki Education Dashboard: References Added. Thanks to Khyati Soneji, one of our outstanding summer interns, the Dashboard now keeps track of how many references were added or removed in each edit to a Wikipedia article. You’ll see the total references added for each course, and you can also see … Continued
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
The ancient Middle East and the ethics of archaeology
Many of the advances that we enjoy and even take for granted nowadays have come from the Middle East. Love coffee? The earliest credible evidence of coffee drinking or knowledge shows that a monastery in Yemen during the 15th century enjoyed or knew about coffee. Have you performed in a marching band? The origins of … 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
Why a Wikipedia assignment: a student’s perspective
Sienna Stevens was a student in Dr. Rachel Miller’s Baroque Art class at California State University Sacramento this spring, where she expanded a Wikipedia article as an assignment. Here, she talks about what the experience means to her. Before taking this class, I honestly had no idea that anyone could edit a Wikipedia page. Sure, … Continued
Looking ahead: our plan for 2019-2020
We love to tell the stories of the thousands of students and hundreds of professionals making meaningful contributions to Wikipedia’s content through our programs every year. Those individuals make a big difference in spreading free, reliable knowledge globally. And we’re proud to share in their successes. Rarely, though, do we talk about the behind the … 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
Japanese women change-makers of the 20th century
Want to learn about a prominent Japanese anarchist feminist at the turn of the century? Or Japan’s first woman journalist? How about an important activist in Japan’s 20th century women’s liberation movements, who was imprisoned repeatedly for her politics? Thanks to Dr. Elyssa Faison’s students at the University of Oklahoma, you can now read all … 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