Education/Archive/Case Studies/WritingGoodArticles

Writing DYK/Good Articles

Piotr Konieczny

Assistant Professor

Hanyang University
South Korea

Course name
Collective Intelligence in Practice
Sociology of Globalization

Course level (undergraduate/graduate)
undergraduates

Learning objectives
Writing Skills Development   
Media and Information Literacy   
Critical Thinking and Research Skills   
Collaboration  
Wiki Technical and Communication Skills   

Discipline of course
Sociology

Class size
15

Individual or group assignment
Individual or Group

Duration of assignment
12 weeks

Resources
See various resources linked from the course page

Assignment

The students start from small edits, and progress to create an article meeting "Did You Know" and/or "Wikipedia:Good Article" criteria.

The goal of this assignment is for several groups of students (or individuals if the class size is small) to choose an underdeveloped or missing article on Wikipedia, related to course topic (ex. sociology and Korea), and improve it as much as possible towards Did You Know and/or Good Article criteria during the duration of the course (3.5 months).

The students start with small edits; they have to meet a quote of 10 edits/week. Each week or every few weeks if not possible, we discuss their best edits, problems encountered, and next milestones for 10-20 minutes in lab. After few weeks they have to start meeting deadlines (having a reference list, outline, first draft, second draft, responding to DYK/GA reviewers). The assignment is still doable (at DYK level), if more challenging, for ESL students (due to weaker English skills). The "DYK" allows students to feature their work on Wikipedia front page in the "Did You Know" section.