Using Wikipedia as a teaching tool in higher education (Bookshelf)/Before the assignment starts
- Course outline
- How-to
Determine if Wikipedia is appropriate for your class assignment
[edit]Contributing to Wikipedia offers significant pedagogical opportunities, but Wikipedia's rules and culture make it incompatible with some kinds of assignments. In particular, Wikipedia has a policy of "no original research": Wikipedia is not a proper venue for students to advance original arguments or convey personal experiences, interpretations, or opinions. If original argument, novel analysis, or primary research are important elements of your planned assignment, this should be separate from any Wikipedia contributions you assign to students.
Review the pages "Five pillars" and "What Wikipedia is not"; watch the available Wikipedia instructional videos
[edit]As you begin to prepare for using Wikipedia as a teaching tool in your class, we suggest that you get some background on Wikipedia first. You may be surprised.
Let's start with a few key concepts that provide a foundation for everything on Wikipedia. These concepts are: The five pillars of Wikipedia, Verifiability and Neutral Point of View. These ideas will serve as a foundation for you and your students, just as they do for experienced Wikipedians.
Many people get confused as to what Wikipedia really is; Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. To help clarify the confusion and provide further understanding, please take a look at "What Wikipedia is not."
- Wikipedia:Five pillars and Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not
- Wikipedia: Verifiability and Neutral point of view, video on YouTube
- …
Contact Wikipedia Ambassadors to help plan your assignment
[edit]Wikipedia Ambassadors are volunteers who can offer feedback on your assignment plans, help match your course goals to Wikipedia's strengths and weaknesses, help coordinate the contribution timeline for your assignments, and provide online assistance to students. If you have questions or ideas about how you would like to use Wikipedia, Ambassadors can help you decide if Wikipedia is right for your course.
Create a Wikipedia user account and familiarize yourself with some of the key software features of Wikipedia
[edit]If you think you want to use a Wikipedia assignment in your course, it's time to get your feet wet with Wikipedia (if you haven't done so already) so you know what you and your students can expect.
Later in the course, your students will be asked to create their own user accounts. One of the main reasons for this is so you can review, on the article history page, the content edits made by your students based on their Wikipedia user name. With an account, every edit that your student makes will get assigned to their user name automatically. Additionally, a user account on Wikipedia is good way to start building a profile as a contributing Wikipedian, providing your students with a "Wikipedia identity" that helps them build contacts, become trusted members of the community, and negotiate roadblocks.
It would also be beneficial for you to have one too. As a registered user, you will have access to important features such as Watchlist, which allows you to follow your students articles as well as the articles that interest you. With an account, you and your students also get more options to edit - create new pages, upload images, and rename pages.
Note: You can edit Wikipedia without logging in or even having a user account. When you edit without a user account (anonymously), your edits get assigned to your computer IP address. The Wikipedia community tends to distrust edits from an IP address especially if the IP address is from a school or company network since it assumes conflict of interest. Such accounts are frequently blocked for vandalism which affects anonymous contributors on the network.
Check it out. See how it works. A Wikipedia account can be created in three easy steps: 1. Choose your user name 2. Select your password. 3. Click Create account
Defining your learning objectives
[edit]In speaking with many professors who are currently using Wikipedia in the classroom, their learning objectives typically fell into three categories: Writing Skills Development; Information Literacy; and Analyzing, evaluating and validating sources. Although your classroom learning objectives may differ slightly, the following provides additional information on how Wikipedia assignments may play a role in addressing the three learning objectives.
- Writing Skills Development
- Learning how to write for a diverse and general population
- Understanding the difference between fact-based (dictionary entry) and persuasive (essay) writing style
- Gaining the ability to effectively outline a topic area
- Immediate feedback
- There are several ways that students improve their writing skills with Wikipedia. First, they learn how to write for a diverse and interested reader-base that represents a significant percentage of the worldwide, online population. Because Wikipedia is the fifth largest Web site in the world, behind Google and Microsoft, it offers students the opportunity to write for- and engage with a unique and active writing/reader community. Often your students will receive immediate feedback on the information they have written. This is both exciting and challenging to say the least. Additionally, working through Wikipedia assignments, students gain the ability to effectively outline a topic area, post the outline to a discussion page, and discuss the pros and cons to their outline of the topic. With Wikipedia's core writing guidelines (i.e., Neutral point of view and Verifiability), your students learn how to write for Wikipedia and in the process begin to demonstrate the difference between fact-based (dictionary entry) and persuasive (essay) writing style.
- Improving Information Literacy
- Gaining insights in the creation process of texts on Wikipedia
- Wikipedia's transparent an collaborative content development process allows students to gain a deeper understanding of how information is both created and consumed. This provides an excellent learning opportunity for students to reflect on available sources and their appropriate usage. Additionally, when Wikipedia is considered in a larger context of information sources, students develop critical thinking skills as they analyze and evaluate all their potential sources of information, including Wikipedia articles.
- Analyzing, evaluating and validating sources
- Improving research and fact-checking skills
- Graduates and PhD students: improving review skills (in a safe environment)
- Learning how to critically analyze existing content on Wikipedia
- As part of a classroom curriculum, your students learn to critically analyze Wikipedia articles to determine how well the article covers the content, what information is missing, is the writing clear, concise and accurate, and is the article information well documented with sources. In the larger context, the evaluation of Wikipedia article helps your students to learn how evaluate all sources, not just Wikipedia.
Examples of how your students can contribute to Wikipedia
[edit]How your students can contribute to Wikipedia
- Adding new sections to existing articles
- Adding references to existing articles
- Creating new articles
- Uploading charts, graphics and other pictures
- Lateral editing: e.g., designing an infobox or a type of section that applies to a number of similar articles (e.g., an area of case law)
- Participating in Wikipedia's internal peer-review process
Examples of Wikipedia assignments:
- Content: a minimum of 3 sections must be added
- References: A minimum of 8 references must be added to Wikipedia articles
Take a look at the sample Wikipedia Course Syllabus and adjust it to your needs
[edit]Note: this is an example of a timeline and professors should be encouraged to find out what works best for them.
| Time | What you do | What the students do |
|---|---|---|
| Before assignment starts |
Timing: ~180 minutes
|
|
| Week 1 |
Timing: ~30 minutes
|
Review Materials:
|
| Week 2 | ||
| Week 3 |
Timing: ~10 minutes per student
|
|
| Week 4 |
Timing: ~30 minutes
|
Review Materials:
|
| Week 5 |
Timing: ~10 minutes per student
| |
| Week 6 |
Timing: entire class time
|
|
| Week 7 |
Timing: ~30 minutes
| |
| Week 8 | ||
| Week 9 | ||
| Week 10 | ||
| Week 11 |
Timing: ~15 minutes
|
|
| Week 12 |
Timing: ~20 minutes per student
| |
| Week 13 |
| |
| Week 14 |
Timing: ~10 minutes per student
|
Students provide feedback on course experience, instruction and learning |
Set up a project page for your specific course on Wikipedia
[edit]- What we recommend to do:
- Identify the WikiProject that covers your course's topic
- Create a sub-page for your course
- Inform the members of the WikiProject about your plans
- Add your project page to the list of school and university projects on Wikipedia
- Benefits:
- The existing community of Wikipedia contributors will be much more likely to give your students feedback if you let them know what you are planning
- Announcing the project and making everybody on Wikipedia aware of what you are planning minimizes the risk of conflicts with long-term community members
- Project page template
- Hints:
- In order to to maximize the amount of collaboration and feedback, you should create the project page and announce your project as soon as possible