Wikipedia:WikiProject Limnology and Oceanography/Workshops

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Workshops

We have hosted workshops at various conferences and institutions. See below for our list of workshops as well as material to help facilitate a workshop of your own. If you do run a workshop, please note that here along with any external links to workshop pages and/or advertising.

List of workshops

• Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography 2019 Aquatic Sciences Meeting, San Juan Puerto Rico, 2019-02-27, led by Maggibrisbin.
• Curating free-information on the aquatic sciences via Wikipedia. Society for Freshwater Sciences Annual Meeting. Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. May 19-23, 2019. led by Drarialshogren and others. https://sfsannualmeeting.org/archive/2019/Workshops.cfm
• Curating free aquatic information on Wikipedia and in your classrooms. Virtual workshop. June 30, 2020. led by Jayzlimno, Kellyproof, Drarialshogren, EcoStressJess, DrErinLarson, Dr.dwk, KHillWells, Waterbarnes

Resources for incorporating into classroom

Slides to help teach how to edit Wikipedia

Classroom handouts

The following are a series of handouts that may be helpful for incorporating Wikipedia editing in the classroom.

FAQ for teaching with Wikipedia

Do you need to be an expert on Wikipedia editing to teach it in the classroom? How do I get started with incorporating Wikipedia editing into my classroom?

• You do not need to be an experienced editor to use Wikipedia in your course!
• WikiEdu can help. The WikiEdu staff helps you structure the editing process (start to finish) over the course term and provides modules to teach students the ins and outs of Wikipedia editing. Articles generated through WikiEdu are available on Wikipedia once any changes are published.

What kinds of contributions can I assign students? What kinds of citations and references should be included on Wikipedia? Can students add or create diagrams or other visual information?

• Add content to an existing page - Wikipedia aims for concise encyclopedic knowledge (quality >> quantity) - which is a key learning objective for many students! For detailed tutorials on how to easily edit/add content visit our WP L&O page.
• Create an entirely new page - Students can also create new pages, as long as the proposed page follows the Wikipedia guidelines.
• Edit Page Structure - In addition to adding words to pages, students can contribute information boxes, a table of contents, and layout organization to an article. All of these help the “completeness” of an article.
• Add Inline Citations - Adding citations is an important part of Wikipedia editing. Cited sources on Wikipedia should be verifiable, reliable and published and ideally open-access - and a tutorial for what sources to add can be found here. Blog post about citations on Wikipedia here.
• Add Images & Other Media- Given Wikipedia's strict policies regarding copyrighted material, you can easily search for and use images from Wikimedia commons. If an image is not copyrighted, you can upload an image to Wikimedia Commons, log in as an editor and visit this site or follow this tutorial.
• Upload Data - There are also opportunities to add open-access data to wikipedia and instructors can work with WikiEDU to add data as part of a course.

How can we apply ecology/biology concepts using Wikipedia? How do students find pages to edit, or figure out what needs to be changed?

• See WikiEdu’s guideline on editing Wikipedia for Environmental Science topics.
• You can also look at the “Open Tasks” or Start/Stub articles on targeted Wikiprojects, like for WPL&O and WP Lakes

What is the criterion used to determine the difference between a minor and major edit?

• No firm rule, but minor edits are often small copy editing changes, spelling checks, disambiguating a link, etc. that do not affect the main content of an article.

Any ideas for assignments? Does anyone have an assignment document/assessment rubric for including Wikipedia editing in courses?

• Adding / contributing to biographies to amplify underrepresented scientists
• Adding content, citations, structure to topical pages related to a class (e.g., Ecosystem Respiration)
• Some classroom rubrics & materials from panelists (Google Drive folder)
• Previous instructors have written articles on incorporating Wikipedia editing in the classroom (pre-WikiEdu).
• There are open source curriculum for incorporating Wikipedia editing in the classroom.
• Erin Larson’s course dashboard.
• Kinga Stryszowska-Hill’s course dashboard.

Have your students received any pushback or negative feedback from other Wikipedia editors? How do you handle ongoing dialogue with wikipedians on pages created after the course is over?

• Most commentary on edits happens on talk pages
• Generally, there is minimal pushback / negative interactions for pages if students follow Wikipedia rules.
• There are also efforts by WikiEdu to “tag” pages that are being edited by students, and general rules to be kind to student editors.
• Tracking pages after publishing is up to you!

Further reading

• Wikipedia as a teaching tool that empowers students
• Why this professor will “never go back to term papers”
• Video on incorporating Wikipedia into the classroom
• Follow up to my cautionary tale regarding using Wikipedia in the classroom