Are you passionate about preserving and recording reliable election information? Editing Wikipedia is more important than ever — a recent NYT article highlighted how elections content newly published to Wikipedia can show up in an AI chatbot’s answer within 12 minutes. Wiki Education is working alongside political science and history associations like the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) to improve Wikipedia’s depth and coverage of US election articles, including federal, state, and local election-related pages. Our free Documenting America eight-week course will focus on civics, democracy, and the 2026 midterm elections in the United States.
We encourage enrollment from practitioners who will be able to attend all eight (8) of the weekly, hour-long meetings. Please note that, in addition to these live sessions, participants will be asked to do about three (3) hours of reading and writing work each week.
Registration closes on Friday, September 18th at 11:59 p.m. PT, with approximately 30 spots available per course. We will invite course participants in a timely manner and asked to confirm their participation.
Are you ready to improve the election content on the world’s largest online encyclopedia, with 500 million monthly readers? Click the purple ENROLL NOW button to the right to apply!
The Wiki Scholars course details
What is a Wiki Scholars course? We teach subject matter how to edit Wikipedia an 8-week virtual course. We’ll take a deep dive into Wikipedia’s coverage of civics and elections, adding high-quality information to Wikipedia to inform the public.
Meet Wednesdays: 8 live sessions with our Wikipedia experts and a focused group of 20-30 other participants.
3 hours per week of light reading, researching your chosen topic and writing directly on Wikipedia
Access a collaborative community of Wikipedia experts and professional peers
Amplify information about civics and democracy from your laptop, reaching an audience of millions
Week 1: Introductions
Get to know each other and begin to see Wikipedia as a powerful tool for communicating information regarding federal, state, and location elections in the United States.
Weeks 2–4: Joining the community
Discover more about Wikipedia’s community, and select your Wikipedia article. We’ll show you how to identify what information is missing from Wikipedia and how to add it according to Wikipedia’s standards. You’ll begin drafting content for pages that get as many as thousands of readers every day!
Weeks 5–8: Educating the public
You’ll take what you’ve learned and make your work “live” on Wikipedia. Your peers and Wiki Education’s experts will help you polish your work to make sure you meet readers with the best information out there. And you’ll get to commune with them about any challenges and successes you’ve experienced so far.
What will you achieve?
- Extensive knowledge dissemination: Contributions on Wikipedia about the history of US elections have the potential to reach millions, offering immense potential for knowledge dissemination and educating the public about topics still relevant to them today.
- Engagement in a vibrant community: Forge professional connections across fields, and interact with Wikipedia’s volunteer community. Interact closely with a dedicated group each week, sharing expertise and inspiration.
- Wikipedia proficiency: From crafting initial Wikipedia articles to refining editing skills, this course ensures confidence in contributing to Wikipedia, embedding expertise within your institution and field.
- And much more!
Email scholars@wikiedu.org with questions.
