A high-impact, real-world assignment
Take your students beyond the classroom with the Wikipedia assignment! You’ll bring your subject expertise, we’ll bring ours in Wikipedia, and together we’ll empower your students to fill in content gaps and improve citations on the world’s largest encyclopedia.
Each term, Wiki Education supports hundreds of faculty across the U.S. and Canada as they incorporate the Wikipedia assignment into their courses by providing custom syllabi, tailored resources, robust student trainings, and staff support.
Get started with your Wikipedia assignment
Click “Apply Now” and follow the prompts to create your Wikipedia account, then head back over to dashboard.wikiedu.org to take our self-paced instructor orientation (the nuts and bolts!) and create your course page.
We are currently accepting course pages for the spring 2026 quarter and summer 2026. Course pages are accepted on a rolling basis as space permits. Get started today:
Join a live information session
Interested in connecting directly with Wiki Education staff and faculty who teach with the Wikipedia assignment? Join us for an information session on Zoom! We’ll explore:
- What are the associated learning outcomes?
- What kind of real-world impact do students make with their assignments?
- How does the assignment motivate students?
- What about AI?
- What kind of free support do faculty receive from Wiki Education to run their Wikipedia assignments?
Upcoming sessions:
Monday, April 27, 2026
10 AM Pacific / 1 pm Eastern
Zoom Registration
Thursday, April 30, 2026
9:30 AM Pacific / 12:30 PM Eastern
Zoom Registration
How it works
Through our Dashboard’s trainings, tracking tools, and human support, faculty guide their students to research course-related topics, then fill in missing information and add high-quality citations to Wikipedia articles.
Students develop research, writing, and digital literacy skills, all while improving public access to high-quality information for all – instead of writing for just for their professor, they’ll write for the world.
Wiki Education’s support for Wikipedia assignments is free for instructors and their students, funded by generous donations to Wiki Education.
Our free support extends to instructors teaching at postsecondary institutions accredited in the U.S. and Canada.
FAQ
Who can receive free support to incorporate the assignment? Nonprofit Wiki Education provides a free suite of support and staff guidance to instructors at postsecondary institutions accredited in the U.S. and Canada. What are the learning outcomes? With the Wikipedia assignment, students build skills in:
- Research, including source evaluation
- Fact-based, neutral writing for a public audience
- AI literacy
- Collaboration
How long does it take? Plan to incorporate your Wikipedia assignment into at least six weeks of your syllabus — whenever possible, we recommend spreading the assignment over 10-12 weeks. Wikipedia assignments can be completed outside of class, during in-class sessions, whatever you prefer.
Do students work individually or in groups? Our dashboard supports individual, pair, and group work. We recommend:
- Under 40 students = individual work
- 40-60 students = either individual or group work
- 60-100 students = group work
How do I apply? Start by creating your Wikipedia account on Wiki Education’s dashboard, then head back to dashboard.wikiedu.org to take the 30-minute orientation and answer questions about your course. You’ll then receive your course page, including your assignment timeline. Tweak it if you’d like, then submit your course page to complete your application. You can always make changes later!
How should I pick my Wikipedia username? We recommend that instructors and students create non-identifiable usernames when setting up their Wikipedia accounts. Students will see your username and you will see your students’ usernames on your course dashboard page. Your name and your students’ names will not be visible to the public, only your Wikipedia usernames.
Can I run a Wikipedia assignment in more than one course during the same term? Yes! Just be sure to submit a different course page (on the dashboard) for each course when you apply.
What about AI? Students may not use AI tools to write or edit their text for Wikipedia. We’ve found that even if AI-written text cites real sources, those sources often don’t actually support the fact being claimed. That makes the fact extremely hard to verify, and verifiability is a cornerstone of Wikipedia. We use the detection tool Pangram to flag likely AI use, so students can course correct with guidance from our team. With the Wikipedia assignment, we’re asking students to use their own critical thinking to build reliably sourced knowledge for everyone. We often hear from faculty that the Wikipedia assignment is a great way to improve understanding of AI’s limitations and spark conversations about the current information landscape.
Who do I email with questions? Reach out to us at studentprogram@wikiedu.org. We’re here to help!
The faculty experience
As students write Wikipedia articles through our program, they learn how to collaborate with their peers, frame academic research to the public, and convey knowledge to a non-expert audience. Essentially, they do work that really matters!
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- 97% of instructors agree that a Wikipedia assignment improved their students’ digital and media literacy skills.
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- 96% of instructors agree that a Wikipedia assignment helped their students develop a sense of digital citizenship (e.g., a desire to contribute to and ensure the accuracy and accessibility of information).
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- 93% of instructors agree that a Wikipedia assignment improved their students’ research skills
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- 77% of instructors agree that a Wikipedia assignment helped their students to become more socially and culturally aware (e.g., the ability to identify underrepresentation and other content gaps stemming from bias).
Explore faculty reflections on their experiences and peer reviewed literature about teaching with Wikipedia.
Interested?
To hear from us about setting your own Wikipedia assignment, please submit the form below. Note: Wiki Education’s free support extends to instructors teaching at postsecondary institutions accredited in the U.S. and Canada.
Questions?
Contact us at studentprogram@wikiedu.org.
Testimonials
Students’ Wikipedia pages and presentations also showed me that they achieved everything that a traditional research paper is supposed to do and more—they conducted research, analyzed it, wrote effectively about their topics, but also shared their work in a meaningful way with each other and with the public.
In the past two years, writing for Wikipedia has added intellectual substance and verve to my courses, while giving me and my students a sense of accomplishment as we produce and disseminate knowledge.
By the end of the quarter, they realize that their work has been affecting people, something that rarely happens with a standard term paper. In their evaluations of the course, students routinely mention the Wikipedia assignment as their favorite part.
