- For an overview of Wikipedia in relation to schools, see Wikipedia:Schools FAQ.
Everyone is welcome here. If you're a professor, teacher, or student within the college community, we encourage you to use Wikipedia and/or Wikiversity in your class to demonstrate how an open content website works (or doesn't). Many of these projects have resulted in both advancing the student's knowledge and useful content being added to Wikipedia. An advantage of this over regular homework is that the student is dealing with a real world situation, which is not only more educational but also makes it more interesting ("the world gets to see my work"), probably resulting in increased dedication. Besides, it will give the students a chance to collaborate on course notes and papers, and their effort might remain online for reference, instead of being discarded and forgotten as is usual with paper coursework, or classroom systems which are routinely reinitialized.
WikiProject Classroom coordination exists to provide guidance to educators who incorporate Wikipedia writing assignments into their classes. Post questions for experienced Wikipedia volunteers at the talk page. Instructions for teachers and lecturers and instructions for students are useful resources. There is also a syllabus boilerplate that you may want to use.
Guidelines
Please do keep the following guidelines in mind:
- Practice first yourself before setting an assignment. Log into Wikipedia yourself, and spend some time editing. Do this long enough to get some feedback to your work, preferably long enough to also include negative (and, if you are lucky, unreasonable) feedback which will help you understand some of the more problematic aspects of Wikipedia. If you are not happy about associating this with your academic name, you can easily create a pseudonym - but please create an account for yourself.
- Introductions. When you want to start such a project, please briefly describe what you are doing on this page under the "Current projects" heading, and if you think it is distinctive enough, feel free to leave a note on the Wikipedia:Village pump. Leave some contact information in the event that you need to be contacted about your project. Your wikipedia account's talk page is sufficient if you check periodically for new messages.
- Keep it real. Please do not encourage your students to create nonsense pages or add junk to articles. Though usually cleaned up very quickly, it still has to be done manually by people who would prefer to engage in more productive work on encyclopedia articles. Furthermore, your students might be blocked from editing Wikipedia for "vandalism." In egregious cases, this will result in your entire school being blocked. If you want your students to 'learn wiki' first, please ask them to read Wikipedia:Help and direct them to Wikipedia:Sandbox for any test or practice edits they wish to make.
- Testing and avoiding. It may be a good idea—though not necessarily easy—to run your own wiki and use it for experiments first. Use the MediaWiki software which can be installed on Linux, Windows or Mac OS X - see here and here. If some students do not want to submit material to Wikipedia (which forces their content to be licensed under the Free content license, the GFDL), they can use this for their final exercise instead.
- Account names. Please do not create numerical accounts that match your university or school account numbers. While this may be initially convenient, if your students continue to edit Wikipedia, they may well wish to do so under a real name or a more congenial pseudonym. It also becomes confusing for other Wikipedians to review a number of edits made under very similar account names.
- Read The Fine Manual. Encourage your students to take a look at the pages linked from Wikipedia:Help — they should answer many immediate questions.
- Copyrights. Please do keep Wikipedia:Copyrights in mind. Not everything on the Web is free for the taking, and even that which is may not be compatible with our licensing. This is true for both text and images. Please remember your students will probably work from your own course notes. Be sure that this is acceptable. Furthermore, check who owns your students' course work. If the owner is your institution, check that you have permission to submit it. If it is your students, ensure that you have their legitimate, probably written, consent to require them to add material to Wikipedia.
- Summarize and analyze. Once you have finished a project, we would very much appreciate reading a description of the results. This could be on a separate page if it is long, or on this page in the "Past projects" heading.
- No original research. Wikipedia is not the place to publish new ideas, discoveries or articles. We are an encyclopedia, not an academic journal. You should familiarize yourself with our relevant policies, "No original research" and "What Wikipedia is not".
- Original Research To publish or operate original research projects please consider Wikipedia's sister site http://www.wikiversity.org Projects and publication of original data and research activities are expected to remain within the constraints of evolving policy as with any reputable institution. As a site designed to support learning communities, Wikiversity has much greater flexibility to deal with tailored learning activities and data publication than a prestigious encyclopedia.
- There are many other wikis, most with editorial policies different from Wikipedia's. Wikipedia is the world's most-visited wiki, and one of the largest. Wikipedia articles tend to rank high in Google Search results. Wikipedia's prominence attracts a large number of first-time wiki editors, some of whom are unaware that many other wikis exist. Because Wikipedia's editorial policies are much stricter than the ease of article editing may initially suggest, many articles by new editors are deleted. Some new editors would arguably be happier editing elsewhere, for example, on wikis catering to particular subject areas, with less-strict requirements for neutrality, verifiability and no original research. Choose Wikipedia only if you want to participate in the creation of a high-quality free encyclopedia, not simply because it's the first and only wiki you have heard of.
Considerations and suggestions
Wikipedia policy is a combination of written guidelines with unwritten customs, and can be difficult for a newcomer to fathom. Most Wikipedians will be helpful in guiding newcomers and explaining how we do things. However, for the sake of your class we strongly suggest that you yourself contribute here and become familiar with Wikipedia before sending your students. Your students will be much less likely to encounter problems here if you can give them appropriate guidance.
It is especially important to consider what your students will contribute here. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and has certain somewhat nebulous standards for its topics. A look at what Wikipedia is not is helpful in finding our topic boundaries.
As Wikipedia expands, students may have trouble finding appropriate subjects for which no article exists. Unless you have specific topics in mind that you know are appropriate, try the following, rather than requiring them to create new ones on their own.
Educational template
We have a template that can be easily copied and adopted to create a wiki-syllabus for your course on Wikipedia. See: Wikipedia:School and university projects/Piotrus educational boilerplate.
Suggested exercises
- Try having students start a requested article or expand an existing one:
- Tell students to fix spelling, factual, grammatical, and other errors.
- Tell students to add wikitext markup, links, and standard sections to poorly-edited articles (i.e., to wikify articles):
- Have students translate articles into English from another language.
- Students could translate our featured articles into other languages or write their own.
- Have students contribute to a subject-matter area that has generally been neglected.
- Students could work on the collaboration of the week.
- Students could help with the projects at one of the Wikiportals (pages organizing projects on a broad subject area)
- Students could add citations to existing pages, thus helping to improve the credibility of Wikipedia while they learn the significance of citing sources. (Wikipedia:Citing sources and Wikipedia:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards.)
- Fork selected problem articles into a local Wiki for a class so students can edit them collaboratively. The resulting revisions can then replace or be incorporated into the original Wikipedia articles.
- Students can participate as help desk volunteers, developing skill by answering questions from other Wikipedia users, and of course ask questions of their own:
- For many courses of study, related WikiProjects exist. Students may obtain guidance from Wikipedians with similar interests, and find lists of open tasks in one or more WikiProjects corresponding to their majors. Just a few examples:
[Please add more.]
Current projects
Students are invited to add {{EducationalAssignment}} to the Talk page of articles which are created or get significant changes due to an assignment. The ending date and link to the project are optional: {{EducationalAssignment|date=YYYY-MM-DD|link=Wikipedia:School and university projects#PROJECT}}
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This article is currently or was the subject of an educational assignment. |
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This article is currently or was the subject of an 2008-01-01 educational assignment. Further details are available here. |
An assignment was created by Davida Scharf, Director of Reference and Instruction at NJIT's Van Houten Library and tested in both online and face-to-face junior-level technical communication classes taught by Prof. Carol Johnson in the Fall of 2007. The basic assignment was to create a new topic or revise an existing topic on Wikipedia. Some results can be seen at the class website. This project has been incorporated into the syllabi of several other professors at NJIT and will be ongoing.
Professor Mara Scanlon is teaching a Long Poem seminar and her students have been working on a collaborative article in a stand alone MediaWiki to frame the history and significance of this poetic genre. As of April 1st, 2008, they created the Long poem Wikipedia article and are currently working on formatting it correctly, citations, and various other details. Jgroom (talk) 09:22, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Professor Kristan Wheaton teaches an Intelligence Communications course twice yearly, part of which includes a publication assignment. In Spring 2008, he assigned a dozen students to contribute new articles on topics he preapproved in the areas of intelligence reform, analytical techniques, etc. He plans to continue these assignments in the future, having found the experience effective in teaching online collaboration, publication, and research skills. See Professor Wheaton's blog for a list of the articles and his feedback on the assignment. --Pat (talk) 02:25, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
In Spring 2008, students in Professor Lambin's undergraduate level Historic Preservation Law class took on the task of expanding on the Wiki content related to historic preservation law. There is a tremendous body of relevant historic preservation case law out there, but, for the non-practitioner, it can be challenging to find and interpret. It is hoped that these new expanded articles will make this information more readily accessible to preservationists. Students were able to choose from a range of pre-approved articles. Some students will create new articles, while others will expand on existing content such as articles on major pieces of historic preservation legislation, including the National Historic Preservation Act. This will be an on-going assignment and will take the place of the final research paper. In Winter 2009 it will take the place of the final research paper. To learn more or to provide comment, contact Professor Lambin in Talk. A list of completed articles is coming soon.
Oakland University Department of Art & Art History (Fall 2008)
Students in Professor Corso's courses, Art History 101:Introduction to Western Art and Art History 291: Concepts of Modern and Postmodern Art, will edit existing Wikipedia articles on Western art, paying attention to both Wikipedia:Five Pillars and Strunk and White's guidelines in The Elements of Style. Further information will be posted shortly.
Freshmen students in Professor Foster's course on American Indian Law, History, and Literature will be expanding and creating new Wiki content related to four major areas of American Indian law and history through small groups. Individuals in each group will focus on particular sections under the major areas. This will be an on-going assignment. Details on each area of focus will be provided soon. Feel free to contact Professor Foster in Talk if you have suggestions and advice, as we are all 'noobs' to this process.--Tolfoster (talk) 03:01, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
GEOS 4320 (The Physics and Chemistry of the Solid Earth) – An undergraduate class co-taught by Dr. Robert Stern and Dr. John Ferguson. The class will split in to several groups to create or greatly expand articles on a subject relating to the class for a final project (due at the end of the semester). More information to come.
Students in the Hindu Law course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will be editing a series of articles related to both Hindu law and Dharmasastra. The collaborative project will expand and improve these existing articles and create a number of new (sub-)articles that enhance the information on law, legal theory, legal institutions, and legal history in India, especially in connection to Hindu traditions. The goal is to provide good articles on important subtopics in these fields and to enhance the broader information on Hinduism and Comparative law.
The University of British Columbia's class SPAN322 ("North of the Río Grande: Latin American Civilization and Culture") is contributing to Wikipedia during Fall 2008. Our collective goals are to bring a selection of articles on Chicano and Latino literature to featured article status (or as near as possible):
Please see our our project page. We welcome help and participation from other Wikipedia editors.
The project coordinator is User:jbmurray. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 11:45, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
Anderson University (eBusiness) class has been assigned the project of adding meaningful and substantial information to the Wikipedia entry on Anderson University (Indiana) by Emmett Dulaney, Assistant Professor of Marketing Anderson University. The guideline they were given was that they could add nothing that could not be substantiated elsewhere, or that was not worthwhile (nothing trivial).
An AP Biology class is contributing content to biology-related articles. See the project page (Wikipedia:WikiProject AP Biology 2008) for more information.
A first-year composition class is adding content to film pages and/or creating film pages. Students were first oriented to Wikipedia using the Five Pillars and WikiProject Films. They are asked to research the film in Wikipedia and, cross referencing with WikiProject Films, to determine the essential rhetorical elements of a good film page. They then propose edits to existing film pages, or the creation of new pages, using the talk pages. This project will conclude in November, 2008. --Bob Cummings (talk) 14:36, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
A junior/senior level engineering course of 9 students is adding content in the area of bioseparations (purification of proteins and other natural products). Among topics selected for coverage are centrifugation, fast protein liquid chromatography, and apheresis. The project will terminate in December 2008. susato (talk) 17:02, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
A first-year Religious Studies course (Religious Studies 110) has been divided into small groups (3-5 students) and assigned the task of fact-checking, editing and expanding 28 articles related to Chinese religions. This project was assigned in September 2008 and will terminate in November 2008. User:Usask_RelSt110
Dr. Silver's Intro to Media Studies to work on improving University of San Francisco and similar articles. See Wikiedia:Wikiproject University of San Francisco. Questions to phoebe / (talk to me) 04:21, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
Past projects
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Resources
[] Case studies
- Lakhani, Karim R. and Mcafee, Andrew P. (2007) Harvard Business School Professors use Wikipedia as a Case study. Harvard Business School Accessed January 2007.
Books on how to edit Wikipedia
- Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, published January 2008. ISBN 978-0596515164
- Note: For two free copies of the book, contact the author via email - see his user page.
See also
i>Wikibooks - wiki textbooks and particularly Guidelines for class projects
Wikipedia:Wikipedia in academic studies
Wikipedia:Wikipedia as an academic source
Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia
Signpost: Wikipedia classroom assignments on the rise
Category:Wikipedia articles as assignments
Wikiversity Free learning communities, projects, and materials.
References
External links
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