Professor Yajun Mo’s course at Boston College delves into the changes in Chinese women’s lives through a period of profound change on the Chinese mainland: from the mid-19th century to the present. Yik Tung Tsui, a junior from Hong Kong majoring in history and mathematics, was one student in the course last year. He was … Continued
The Wikipedia assignment is giving students career skills that allow them to address misinformation, to correct the historical record in racially marginalized communities, and to discover that personally, they are a crucial part of the solution. I recently visited students at Denmark Technical College, a historically Black college in South Carolina, to share about … Continued
You may be aware that Wikipedia suffers its fair share of gender imbalance and that many are working to change it. Only 19% of biographies are about women. But the gender gap isn’t just about content. It’s also about the contributors who write that content–87% of whom identify as male. It’s important to bring women’s … Continued
Mallory Dixon is a sophomore majoring in Secondary Social Studies Education and minoring in English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. In the Fall 2022 term, she took an English 103: Accelerated Composition class, taught by Dr. Matt Vetter, and worked on the Wikipedia article “History of the Incas.” In the following essay, she reflects on … Continued
What if your power in this fight lies not in what you can do as an individual but in your ability to be part of a collective? You can’t solve the climate crisis alone, but it’s even more true that we can’t solve it without you. – Mary Annaïse Heglar When people first learned … Continued
The Van Gogh Museum had 366K in-person visitors in 2021. Meanwhile, the Vincent Van Gogh article on Wikipedia had that many views in one month alone. In an increasingly digital world, appreciators of European art young and old are flocking online to learn more. And they’re especially going to Wikipedia. That’s why we’re thankful that … Continued
Women are often the de facto leaders in community change, social movements, and political groundswells. So why are only 19% of Wikipedia biographies about them? That’s what Natchee Barnd set out to correct in our recent Women in Red Wiki Scholars course. In the virtual course, a group of experts spanning many disciplines gathered together … Continued
The world uses Wikipedia to learn about every subject, and medical content is no exception. Medical content is accessed on Wikipedia more than the websites of the NIH, WebMD, Mayo Clinic, NHS, WHO, and UpToDate. And we know from research that people make real behavioral decisions from what they read on Wikipedia. Wikipedia’s wide readership, … Continued
You’ve seen this spider, right? It lives in close proximity to humans and is one of the most common spiders in North America. You may have even Googled it to see if it’s poisonous, whether you knew the name or not. If you typed something like “spider with orange spots” into the search bar, you … Continued
