Education/Countries/Australia
Primary Contact[edit]
Program Activities[edit]
La Trobe University[edit]
Contact: Leigh Blackall, Faculty of Health Science at La Trobe University, Melbourne
- No formal arrangement of policy regarding engagement with Wikimedia projects.
- 2012 and 2013, a small number of subjects and courses in the Faculty of Health Sciences started a pilot of open education practices using Wikiversity. Their work can be viewed on the category page: La Trobe Health Sciences. A report on this pilot is anticipated later in 2013.
- In February 2013, the Bendigo campus of La Trobe University hosted an all day Wikipedia editing workshop, in response to a request from the Bendigo Community Health Service.
- In March 2013, a small group of La Trobe University staff convened an all day open conference on the questions of open education, to coincide with the international open education week. They used Wikiversity and Commons to organise, promote and document the event.
Photography Studies College[edit]
Contact: Louisa Bufardeci, Photography Studies College, Melbourne
- Course title and description: Image Cultures 1. This course develops an understanding of the various histories of photographs with an emphasis on Australian photographs. The students are first year undergraduates. They will each be invited to write a Wikipedia article on one Australian photographer who is not yet represented on the site. This is the major assignment for the course. I have not arranged to work with an experienced editor or WikiProject yet but am open to doing so.
- Number of students: Numbers are not yet available but based on previous years it might be around 40.
- Start and end dates: 26 February - 4 June 2015.
- More information I|here on English Wikipedia.
University of Canberra[edit]
Contact: James Neill, Assistant Professor in the Centre for Applied Psychology, University of Canberra, Australia
University of Queensland[edit]
Contact: Kerry Kilner
- Semester-long project, running since 2010.
- Provides third year Arts students with an opportunity to undertake research into the lives and histories of Australian subjects. *Using traditional documentary research methods the students build a knowledge base to underpin a high quality Wikipedia article on people and organisations whose archives are held in the collecting library of the University of Queensland.
- I choose the subjects of research and the students work in groups of 4 or 5 in close consultation with me to develop the content for the article.
- After some weeks of research the students begin working in a sandbox to build the article.
- It is transferred to the mainspace two or three weeks out from the end of semester and the Wikimedia Australia members were asked to comment on their work.
- Learning how to work within wiki software and understanding the place of Wikipedia in contemporary knowledge sharing are essential aspects of this project.
- The students take great pride in their work and the University is happy with the results as well.
University of Sydney[edit]
Contact: Frances Di Lauro, Associate Professor in Writing Studies, School of Literature, Art and Media in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, the University of Sydney; Toby Hudson, Senior Lecturer, Theoretical Materials Chemistry, School of Chemistry, at the University of Sydney.
At the University of Sydney, we teach two credit bearing Open Learning Environment (OLE) units that are part of the University of Sydney's new curriculum:
- Working with Wikidata (from S1, 2021). Students taking this 2cp unit learn to edit Wikipedia, and about working with Wikidata. The unit will be taught online with 3 hours of asynchronous teaching and will run for 4 weeks.
- Writing for the Digital World (Since S2, 2018) This 6cp unit runs for a full semester and is taught partly online, with 2 synchronous workshop hours per week for 12 weeks. Students create an article about an underrepresented topic in their disciplinary area.
University of Technology, Sydney[edit]
Contact: David Carter
The Master of Health Services Management is a comprehensive course in health services management and aims to expand students' knowledge and future career opportunities. The course develops students' knowledge and skills, leading to an enhanced capacity to manage health services in a diverse range of health settings.
Contemporary health service managers are active contributors to practice, policy and research to enhance health care and health outcomes. In this assessment item, students contribute and improve live articles on Wikipedia through the creation of new articles and/or the improvement of existing articles on defined topics. This assessment item focuses on critically engaging with a range of challenges related to the structural and functional elements of the Australian healthcare system for which health service managers are responsible and key stakeholders. The assessment develops the writing skills, media and information literacy and particularly critical thinking and collaboration skills expected of a contemporary health service manager.
Start and end dates: February 1, 2015 - June 30, 2015.
More information here on English Wikipedia.
University of Wollongong[edit]
Contact: Brian McNeil
- Wikinews in the Classroom (2011 - Present)
Wikimedia in Higher Education Symposium[edit]
Contact: James Neill
Portal: Wikimedia and Higher Education Symposium
- Hosted by Dr Frances Di Lauro, Writing Hub, School of Languages Art and Media, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney, Australia, 5 April, 2013, Camperdown Campus, Old Teachers College Building (A22)
- One day symposium brought academics and editors together, to discuss best practise for using Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia and Wikiversity as platforms for education within the Australian higher education system.
- There are numerous instances of "Wikipedia in education" course-work already being run in Australia without incident; however they are either not disclosed or not well advertised, and invariably there has been little opportunity to discuss these in an academic setting within the Australian academic community.
- There is also a course which has successfully integrated Wikinews into learning outcomes; however there are concerns about the scalability of this idea.
- Short term measures of success
- Engagement of academics who are already using Wikimedia in education.
- Expertise shared with academics who are interested but are not yet using Wikimedia.
- Report on the symposium to be provided by the University of Sydney and released as CC-BY-SA to provide;
- evidence-based recommendations on best-practise for education using English Wikipedia in Australia,
- suggested list of ways to integrate other Wikimedia projects into higher education,
- recommendation on how to navigate between commonalities in student confidentiality policies and the disclosure expected by English Wikipedia.
- summary of other legal issues regarding using Wikimedia projects within Australian higher education,
- Journal articles written by attendees about the use of Wikimedia in education to be submitted to relevant journals/conferences
- Medium term measures of success;
- Two well-advertised instances of English Wikipedia being used in the classroom in the second semester of 2013
- 100 Australian students as new English Wikipedia contributors, with pseudonyms known to by least the Wikimedia Australia membership, and more publicly if legally possible.
- Suggestions for future goals;
- List of Australian higher education teaching projects which use Wikimedia projects
- Well-developed and promoted "featured" examples of the use each of the different Wikimedia sister projects in higher education in Australia. Also include example of the use of multi-language functionality of the projects.
- Ideas and issues about ways to manage university Wikimedia projects
Additional Information[edit]
- Video of Brianna Laugher, given at a talk at a LinuxChix microconference.
- Slides by Liam Wyatt, given at a talk at the 2008 NSW (Australia) English Teachers' Association Conference.
- Resource list by Brianna Laugher, presented at the 2008 Australian Computers in Education Conference.
- A project to augment and enhance the 2008/9 Wikipedia for Schools selection and make it more compatible with Australian school curriculums.