Education/Newsletter/December 2015/Science Outreach on Wikipedia has impact on the Education Program in Sweden
By Sara Mörtsell (Wikimedia Sweden)
Snippet: Wikipedia Education Program kicks off in Linköping University
In October, Linköping University launched their activities to engage their faculty in editing Wikipedia as part of their research communication now starting at Linköping University. This is a milestone in the Science Outreach project where five Swedish universities have set out to engage their research staff in contributing their expertise to Wikipedia. The project is based on previous experience at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), where training is about to start by systematically giving every PhD student an individual introduction to editing Wikipedia and how to improve topics in their research area. There has been significant overlap and impact on the Education Program in Sweden as Wikipedia is gaining credibility in Academia; three new university courses and one new high school, directly linked to the activities of this project, have enrolled in the program since autumn began.
Background[edit]
- 2013 Wikipedian in Academy at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).
- Since then, 149 users affiliated to SLU have registered on Wikimedia projects and some of these have added themselves on the list of participants on Meta, and together they have made 1500 edits.
- In early 2015, the project run by SLU staff, received considerable funding from The Swedish Research Council Formas to scale the work to include four more institutions; Linköping University, Gothenburg University, Karolinska Institute and the National Veterinary Institute. Wikimedia Sweden supports the project with expertise and User Profile templates as requested by participating universities.
- Autmn 2015 Two new universities join the Education Program enrolling three courses and one high school class joins. All courses are related to activites from this group of universities.
Read more about the Wikipedia Education Program in Sweden here.