Teaching with Wikipedia

Phoebe Ayers UC Davis Libraries

October, 2013

Overview

• Introductions• How Wikipedia Works• Types of Wikipedia assignments• Learning outcomes• Best practices and caveats• Discussion/Questions?

Introductions

• Who I am• Who you are• Wikipedia editing experience?

Taipei, Wikimania 2007

How Wikipedia Works

Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all

knowledge.

- Wikimedia’s vision statement

Wikimedia is global

Wikimedia chapters, 2013 (dark blue = founded)

Wikimania, Haifa 2011

What is Wikimedia?12 projects

280 languages25 million Wikipedia articles

18 million media files• 100,000 active editors• 100s of local meetup groups• 39 local/national level chapters• 180 employees at the Wikimedia Foundation, San

Francisco• 1,130,000 individual financial donors (in 2011-12)• 500,000,000 readers/month

• Free [to use and reuse]

• Volunteer-written

• Supported by readers

• Everyone can participate

• No top down editorial control:

• Community curated work

Overview

• Neutrality (NPOV)• Verifiability (references!)• Notability• Encyclopedic treatment• … and many, many style guidelines

Core editorial policies

Wikipedia editors

Wikipedia and education

“At present, Wikipedia hovers at the fringes of academia, like an uninvited guest. Wikipedia's aims are eminently academic… it has been remarkably successful at promoting a culture of intellectual inquiry. Yet it is fairly consistently derided by academics themselves.

Still, everybody uses it, in one way or another, even if they might want not to admit to the fact. Above all, our students use it, openly or otherwise (as they are often explicitly told not to cite Wikipedia articles in term papers), but without necessarily knowing how it works. They are told that Wikipedia is bad, but they are not often told why; and of course, they find it an incredibly useful resource.”

-- Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbiahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jbmurray/Madness

Inviting the uninvited guest

"I’d rather spend 30 hours putting work into a project that will be available for public consumption upon its completion than putting 10 hours into a project which gets graded, returned, and then either thrown out or forsaken and forgotten. Turning in a paper and getting it back with a letter on it is far less rewarding than submitting an article onto one of the world’s most renowned knowledge bases for all to see.“

– Student in the Wikimedia Education program

Why teach with Wikipedia?

“ I liked the idea that students would be engaging in a real world project, with tangible and public, if not necessarily permanent, effects. In the end, an essay or an exam is an instance of busywork: usually written in haste; for one particular reader, the professor; and thereafter discarded. … Here they would be writing for a public audience, also one that almost uniquely was in a position to write back, to re-write and comment upon what they were writing.”

-- Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbiahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jbmurray/Madness

Why teach with Wikipedia?

Sample assignments

• Referencing and expanding articles• Copyediting articles• Creating technical illustrations or

videos• Translating articles• Analyzing articles, reflecting on

Wikipedia usage

• Writing skills–Writing for a general audience– Summary style– Technical and encyclopedic writing– Editing other people’s work

• Research skills• Critical thinking• Media and information literacy

Learning outcomes

• Know Wikipedia• Plan evaluation strategies• Don’t over-scope• Don’t ask students to write new

articles!• Don’t tackle controversies• Leave adequate time• Involve Wikipedians – be transparent

Best practices

• Wikimedia Education Program materials

• Past classes, sample assignments

• Wikipedians! (local and remote)– Campus ambassador program

Resources

On-Wikipedia course pages

Wikipedia Education Program

• Wikipedia is a working, complex editorial environment

• Do your student’s research and writing skills match the project asked of them?

• Do you have time to manage this assignment?

Pitfalls

• Student contributions may be removed– Do their contributions fit “house style”?– Do they understand how Wikipedia works?– Do they understand how they will be graded,

even if their contributions are changed or removed?

• Your class is not adequately documented– You may be contacted by Wikipedians asking

for more info– Students may be blocked if there are many

problems

More pitfalls

• Students’ work impacts tens of thousands

• Real-world writing, editing, collaboration and technology skills

• Lifetime impact of understanding Wikipedia and being a critical reader

But many gains

"If I had to pick one main advantage of a Wikipedia assignment, it would be the peer editing between Wikipedians that often doesn’t take place with traditional assignments. The feedback from other users and students in my class really helped me improve my articles."

– Student in the Wikimedia Education program

Gains, continued

Thoughts?

• What kind of assignment would work in your course?

• How big a project to take on? • What benefits would your students

get out of this assignment?• What challenges would you face?

Exercises

• Phoebe Ayers, psayers@ucdavis.edu • Jami Mathewson

jmathewson@wikimedia.org – US Education Program coordinator at the Wikimedia Foundation

• http://education.wikimedia.org• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:SUP

Contacts