Workshop Notes edit
Introduction edit
"Most inquiry starts at Wikipedia, whether we like it or not. So as students and scholars, we need to improve it."
Chronicle of Higher Education
Wikipedia Comes of Age
Jan 7, 2011
"It’s the ability for students to feel that their works matters, that it doesn't get trapped in the classroom."
Georgetown Prof. Adel Iskander
The Washington Post
What is Wikipedia? edit
Wikipedia is a place to get a quick encyclopedic overview of a topic. It is created by people with a common goal of sharing knowledge. It should not be cited. Read about the topic and dig deeper by visiting the references and cite those.
It can be used as a teaching tool. For example, students can write about a topic and rather than their paper only being seen only by the instructor and their class, their work is seen by the public- potentially thousands or millions.
Is Wikipeda...? edit
- An encyclopedia? is
- A democracy? is not
- A repository of images, links or media files? is not
- Need more of a purpose, not just a list of links or gallery of images.
- Transparent? is
- A means of promotion or blog? is not
Facts about Wikipedia edit
- Top 10 most visited site. 39% of the world is online.
- Non-profit organization. 50 employees. Hundreds of volunteers.
- Not a primary source. Serves as a tertiary source, bringing together primary sources and secondary information.
- Cite every line.
- Neutral articles.
- Articles need to be notable. When you edit Wikipedia, be able to make a case for why your edit should be made.
Wikipedia Education Program edit
What is it? edit
- Created support materials for teaching.
- Campus Ambassadors
- 3 day training to become campus ambassador.
- Online Ambassadors
- Already experts, got training to assist new Wikipedians.
- Students get feedback on sentence structure, grammar, clarity, suggested references from other Wikipedians. They have to learn to appropriately interact online and respond to feedback. Can’t just ignore it like you can with a returned paper.
How can students contribute to Wikipedia? edit
- Write articles
- Find new articles by searching Google first, then Wikipedia. Google will often bring up more Wikipedia results than the Wikipedia search.
- Edit existing articles.
- Provide feedback on what should and should not be included.
Expected Learning Outcomes edit
- Expository writing
- Collaboration
- Literature review
- Critical thinking
Other Information edit
How would students cite Wikipedia editing experience on their CVs?
- Refer to themselves as a Wikipedia editor or contributor and list any articles they have contributed significantly to.
- People can see what edits have been done by that user.
- Possibly put it under Community Involvement?
Use View History and compare revisions to see how an article has changed over time.
- Use this to see how students have changed the article over time. See their revisions.
- Provide feedback on student’s Talk page.
How to get started editing: Create a new account
- Look at "Featured articles" and "Did you know articles" on Main Page for examples of articles that are well written, notable, with good sources, etc.
- Great examples of quality articles to emulate.
- Use the Help link on the right hand side of Wikipedia.
- Help documentation
- Live chat
- Managed by volunteers. Very quick response to questions.
- Need to make 10 edits or be active for 4 days before you can move content.
- Create a user page (click on your username in the upper right).
- Edit page to add content to that page.
- Fill out the edit summary to describe what you did. This is helpful when you look back at view history to see what you did, or if you need to revert to a previous version.
- You get a default “Sandbox”, which allows you to test editing or how an article might look.
- This is good for doing a rough draft of an article that you’re not yet ready to publish.
- The sandbox is a safer place to save your work until it’s ready to publish.
- You can create new Sandboxes.