This is the course page for ENG/COM 395, offered at NCSU in the spring of 2013. The class is now over. Overall, thanks to the enthusiasm of the students and invaluable help from people in the Wikipedia community, the semester was a great success! The feedback I've received from both students and Wikipedians has been predominantly positive, but also includes some useful constructive criticism which, along with my own experiences over the past months, will lead me to do some things differently should I have the opportunity to teach another version of this in the future. If you're interested to talk more about what worked and what didn't—or if you're interested in using Wikipedia in one of your own classes, offering a course similar to this one, or otherwise want to explore the intersection of Wikipedia and education—please feel free to start a discussion on my talk page or send an email (you may also want to check out the Wikipedia Education Program).
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This is the main course page for ENG/COM 395. It serves two main purposes: to host the course syllabus and as a space for news/announcements/reminders. Students are therefore advised to add this page to their watchlist and to change their settings to ensure email notifications when it changes.
Links to the schedule, assignments, and resources are easily accessible here and on all subpages in the sidebar to the right.
Announcements edit
- Extra credit page added, explaining two opportunities. If you have another idea for an extra credit project, come talk to me before or after class on Monday.
Syllabus edit
Course Information edit
Critical Approaches to Wikipedia, Information, and the Collaborative Construction of Knowledge
- listed as both ENG 395 and COM 395
- MWF 11:20-12:10
- 1911 Building, room 110
Instructor: Ryan McGrady
- ryan DOT mcgrady AT gmail DOT com
- office hours are before class, 10:00-11:00, on Mondays and Wednesdays
- office is in the Ricks Extension (aka Ricks Addition or Ricks Annex)
- the door to the building is usually locked, so you'll have to knock (if the door is open, I'm in space #8)
Course Description edit
Students approach Wikipedia, the free and open online encyclopedia, from media studies and rhetorical perspectives. Includes assessment of popular arguments of credibility, authorship, expertise, and the site's role as information source, as well as critical discussion of collaborative knowledge production, the codification of knowledge, the encyclopedia genre, access and the digital divide, Web 2.0 and participatory culture, systematic bias, and free culture. Assignments take place largely on Wikipedia, developing firsthand experiential understanding informed by and informing class concepts.
Required Course Materials edit
In the spirit of free content, students will not be required to purchase any materials. Readings will be available on Moodle, through the library, on Wikipedia or its sister site WikiBooks, or via some other freely accessible online resource. See the schedule for a list of readings.
Course Policies edit
Correspondence edit
Email and Wikipedia will be the primary modes of communication outside of class. You are responsible for checking your email, this course page, and your Wikipedia account's user talk page on a regular basis and for notifying me if your address or username changes. It's a good idea but not mandatory that you add this page and your user talk page to your watchlist, which you can set up to email you when any changes are made.
I do my best to respond in a timely manner, but sometimes messages do slip through the cracks. Do send a follow-up if a day or two go by without a response. Also, since I often respond through my phone, my responses may be very brief and to the point, without formalities.
Attendance Policy edit
Class participation and attendance are essential to the learning process. 15% of your grade is dedicated to attendance and participation, which will be affected by a pattern of absences or late arrivals. Additionally, I will not be available outside of class to go over what you missed except in cases of a university excused absence. An excused absence will be issued according to NCSU policy, which you can find here. Make up work will only be allowed for excused absences.
Perfect attendance will be rewarded by a bonus of 5 points added to your semester grade.
Electronic Devices edit
While I don't explicitly prohibit any particular kind of device, distracting use of technology (to me or to others in the class) will directly affect your participation grade. This always includes ring tones, talking on the phone, playing games, and listening to music (unless somehow relevant to an exercise we're doing), but can also include texting and visiting websites that aren't class-related.
Incompletes edit
A grade of "Incomplete" is reserved for exceptional situations where students are prevented from finishing course work on time. The University policy in regard to incomplete grades may be viewed at the Academic Affairs website.
All grades of incomplete will be left to the discretion of the instructor in regard to the student's needs and performance. If you experience a problem during the semester that may require an incomplete grade please see the instructor as soon as possible.
Academic Integrity edit
The Departments of English and Communication are committed to upholding the University's honor code. To read the University policy on academic integrity please see the Code of Student Conduct
The University and the Depts. of English and Communication assume all students are familiar with these standards and procedures. If you have any questions about academic dishonor or doubts about what constitutes a violation please see your instructor.
Plagiarism includes, but is not limited to:
- Using papers or speeches from another class.
- Using another student's paper or speech from any class.
- Copying a speech or a paper from the internet.
- The egregious lack of citing sources or documenting research.
- If you're not clear on what is or is not plagiarism, ASK. The BEST case scenario if caught is a zero on that assignment, and ignorance of what does or does not count is not an excuse. That being said, I'm a strong supporter of Fair Use doctrine. Just attribute what you use--and, again, ASK if there's any doubt.
Disabilities edit
Your instructor will do their best to accommodate any reasonable request from students with verifiable disabilities. In order to take advantage of available accommodations offered by the University and the department, students must register with Disability Services for Students at 1900 Student Health Center, Campus Box 7509, 515-7653.
While your instructor will help, it is the student's responsibility to tell/notify instructors of any problems. Please make instructors aware of known problems as early as possible for the most efficient and adequate help. If you encounter problems during the class let your instructor know as soon as possible so that arrangements can be made to help you get the most out of the class.
Inclement Weather Policy edit
In the case of severe weather, the university will notify students according to the Adverse Weather Policy. If the situation is such that your instructor cannot make it to class or cancels class due to severe weather, the instructor will notify both the Communication Department office and you via e-mail. If class is not canceled and you cannot make it due to severe weather, you will be counted absent and should notify your instructor regarding your situation.
Class Evaluations edit
Schedule: Online class evaluations will be available for students to complete at the end of the session. Exact dates will be announced.
You will receive an email message directing you to a website where you can login using your Unity ID to complete evaluations. All evaluations are confidential; instructors will not know how any one student responded to any question, and students will not know the ratings for any instructors.
Evaluation website
Student help desk email
More information about ClassEval
Equity Policy edit
All persons regardless of age, race, religion, gender, physical disability or sexual orientation shall have equal opportunity without harassment in the Communication Department courses and program. Any harassment should be reported immediately to either the classroom instructor or the course director.
Privacy edit
Due to the nature of this course, a great deal of the work you do will be available to the public. In order to participate, you will therefore have to sign a FERPA agreement consenting to the public use of class-related material.
You are required to work under a registered Wikipedia account, but you not required to use your real name. In order to identify each other within the class, however, the course Moodle site (private) will host a list of usernames and real names.
On Wikipedia it is absolutely imperative to be aware of what you have on the page before you click "save page." If you accidentally post your real name, even if you remove it right away, it will remain in the history forever.
Assignments and Grading edit
Attendance and Participation - 15% edit
In the spirit of collaboration and community, this will not be a course with many unidirectional lectures. It is therefore imperative that you do the readings and come to class prepared to make meaningful contributions to the discussion or activity of the day. A pattern of unpreparedness, lateness, and/or absences will significantly affect your grade.
Online Discussion - 15% edit
The first item on the schedule for each week is a link to a discussion prompt (see the schedule). Edit the discussion page as you would an article talk page.[1] Add new section headings for new ideas or questions and respond to those others have posted.
- To ensure you get credit, be sure to sign every post with four tildes (or by clicking the signature icon, which looks like
or 
). If you forget to do so, just edit the page again and add it. - When responding/commenting, remember to indent (by starting your line with a colon) to distinguish it from the original post.[2]
The way discussions are graded is intended to encourage conversations rather than soliloquies. A significant contribution[3] for each discussion is due by the time class starts each week (e.g. you should make your initial contribution to the discussion for week 04 by the beginning of class on Monday, January 28). You then have an additional week (until Monday, February 04) to continue the conversation (i.e. make one or more[4] additional contributions). After one week, grades are assessed on a scale from 0-5.
Assignments - 20% edit
Throughout the semester you will have a number of assignments. Most will take the form of homework, but others will be completed in class. Most require work on Wikipedia, but others may relate more to tangential topics we cover in class. Unless otherwise specified, all assignments are graded on a scale of 0-5 where 0 means "not completed" and 5 means "exceptional."
Unless otherwise noted, assignments are due by the time class starts on the day they are due. From 11:21am until the beginning of class 1 week later, late assignments can be turned in for partial credit (up to 3/5). Assignments more than one week late will not be accepted.
Group Project - 50% edit
Using the tools and techniques covered in class, groups of 3 or 4 will be responsible for finding and choosing an article on a topic relevant to your interests which either does not exist or only exists as a stub.[5] Throughout the course each group is responsible for writing and developing that article toward the goal of attaining Good Article status. Good articles are well-written, a proper length, accurate, verifiable, comprehensive, neutral, stable, properly formatted, organized well, follow style guidelines, and use media when appropriate. An article must be nominated for this designation, whereby outsiders will review it and provide feedback before approving or rejecting.
This project will require an understanding of not just suitable writing techniques and technical competency with a wiki, but also familiarity with the processes and conventions of the Wikipedia community.
A step up from Good Articles are Featured Articles, judged according to the Wikipedia:Featured article criteria. As I write this, 1 in 286 articles have the Good Article label, but only 1 in 1,120 have been awarded Featured status (and the Good designation is much newer). You are not expected to attain Featured Article status, but if you do your group will automatically receive an A for this assignment.
In addition to the article itself, your grade will also consist of project milestones completed throughout the semester and a final paper. The final paper should be based on your group project but written individually. Describe the process of writing, developing, editing, and otherwise crafting your article. Go into the processes your team undertook, including struggles you or your team felt with different aspects of the assignment: writing, organization, formatting, sourcing, style, group dynamics, outside contributors, peer-review processes, and so on. What kinds of skills did you have to learn that may be valuable? Did your opinion of the site change? As Wikipedia is completely transparent, I will be looking for links to challenges and interactions you describe, so it may be useful to keep a weekly or biweekly journal of activity to look back on when writing this paper. As some of these questions only take definition as the project gets underway, we'll talk about this paper more down the road.
Extra Credit edit
There are several opportunities for extra credit in this course. See the extra credit subpage for details.
Grade Scale edit
The following scale will be used to issue grades at the end of the semester: A+ = 100-97, A = 96-93, A- = 92-90; B+ = 89-87, B = 86-83, B- = 82-80; C+ = 79-77, C = 76-73, C- = 72-70; D+ = 69-67, D = 66-63, D- = 62-60; F = 59-below.
What This Course Is NOT edit
- this is not a course on computer science or programming
- although you will be responsible for familiarizing yourself with basic Wikitext
- this is not an introductory composition course
- although you will learn new genres of writing and will be writing a lot
- this is not a course on organizational communication or knowledge management (in the disciplinary senses of those terms)
- the course itself is not a wiki and this wiki is not the course
- this course is not multidisciplinary but interdisciplinary
- in other words, this is not a combination of courses on writing, composition, new media, media studies, rhetoric, epistemology, critical theory, group communication, communication theory, cultural studies, research methods, and online communities, but rather a fusion of elements typically categorized under these and other disciplinary headings
Course Participants edit
Footnotes edit
- ^ If you don't know what this is or what it entails, don't worry; no prior knowledge of Wikipedia is required.
- ^ If responding to a response (an already-indented block of text), simply add another colon to the beginning of your line.
- ^ "Significant" as in thoughtful or valuable--not necessarily indicative of length. "Contribution" can be a new sub-topic (section) or a response to what others have written.
- ^ Quality, not quantity.
- ^ Articles must meet standards for notability, be of interest to all group members, and be cleared by the instructor.