The sex lives of plants
The biology of sex determination has come to the forefront of the culture wars, but if you’re a plant biologist, the idea that sex determination is complex is old news. Jennifer Blake-Mahmud’s The Secret Sex Lives of Plants spent time last Fall improving Wikipedia articles on these topics. A student in the class made major improvements … Continued
Improving politics and public policy articles
The fall 2020 academic calendar in the United States overlapped with one one of the most talked-about elections in history, the November 2020 election in the United States. English Wikipedia’s community of active editors followed well-established procedures to tackle misinformation, a huge topic of debate. But college students editing Wikipedia as a class assignment through … Continued
What Wikipedia means to our instructors
Ask 10 people what they think about Wikipedia, and you’re likely to get 11 opinions. Few websites evoke the same type of strong reactions as does Wikipedia, and this is especially true within academia. From praise to disparagement and from open and full embracement to grudging acceptance to outright rejection, Wikipedia is a constant source … Continued
Wiki Education works to fix Wikipedia’s gender gap
International Women’s Day gives Wiki Education an opportunity to reflect on the work we’re doing to address Wikipedia’s gender gap. On Wikipedia, the gender gap manifests itself in two ways: content and contributors. Wiki Education has been making progress toward addressing both disparities. When it comes to content gaps, you may be aware that only … Continued
Recapping the Fall 2020 term
In many ways, Fall 2020 was a typical term for us at Wiki Education. We supported 322 courses across a variety of subjects, course levels, and institutions. But Fall 2020 was by no means ordinary. The ongoing challenges of the pandemic and the tumultuous nature of the presidential election made it a term like no other. … Continued
Building my Wikipedia confidence
Delia Steverson, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of African American Literature at the University of Florida. Her classes work most closely with the WikiProject African diaspora. I assigned a Wikipedia project in the fall of 2019 to my honor’s undergraduate Gender and Sexualities in African American Literature course after several other colleagues mentioned the project’s … Continued
Students improve Rudolph Fisher article
Rudolph Fisher was a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance whose work has largely slipped from the public consciousness. The son of a Baptist pastor, Fisher was a physician, radiologist, and novelist. He also wrote short stories, plays, and music and was a skilled public speaker. Despite dying when he was only 37, Fisher made a … Continued
Improving Wikipedia’s coverage of Indigenous Canadians
Improving Wikipedia’s coverage of historically marginalized populations has long been a driving force behind our work, so we’re proud to highlight the incredible work of two classes from Fall 2020 that sought to advance Wikipedia’s content around Indigenous populations of Canada. Both courses tackled the systemic biases that continue to pervade Canadian institutions as they relate to Indigenous peoples … Continued
A Wikipedian gets assigned to edit Wikipedia in a college class
Adam started editing Wikipedia anonymously in elementary school, making minor copy edits. In 2017, over winter break from high school in Novato, California, he started experimenting more seriously, creating a user account (User:KidAd), improving the writing on a variety of articles, and tackling articles on movies, albums, and politicians. Three years later, he’s racked up … Continued
Expanding Wikipedia’s coverage of African topics
Despite being the largest project of its kind in human history with a reach that’s global, Wikipedia’s coverage skews heavily toward articles about the Global North. In much of the rest of the world, coverage can be spotty, and that’s especially true for a topic like politics. This is why a class like Martha Wilfahrt’s African … Continued