Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Appalachian State University/The History of Coal (Spring 2019)
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- Course name
- The History of Coal
- Institution
- Appalachian State University
- Instructor
- Sarah Carmichael
- Wikipedia Expert
- Elysia (Wiki Ed)
- Subject
- Appalachian Studies, Geology
- Course dates
- 2019-01-14 00:00:00 UTC – 2019-05-02 23:59:59 UTC
- Approximate number of student editors
- 40
This course covers the geology, environmental science, energy policy, history, and economic transitions of the Appalachian region.
Timeline
Week 1
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 15 January 2019 | Thursday, 17 January 2019
- No assignments this week
Week 2
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 22 January 2019 | Thursday, 24 January 2019
- No assignments this week
Week 3
- Course meetings
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- Tuesday, 29 January 2019 | Thursday, 31 January 2019
- No assignments this week
Week 4
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 5 February 2019 | Thursday, 7 February 2019
- Assignment - Account creation due
Welcome to your Wikipedia project's course timeline. This page will guide you through the Wikipedia project for your course. Be sure to check with your instructor to see if there are other pages you should be following as well.
This page breaks down writing a Wikipedia article into a series of steps, or milestones. These steps include online trainings to help you get started on Wikipedia.
Your course has also been assigned a Wikipedia Expert. Check your Talk page for notes from them. You can also reach them through the "Get Help" button on this page.
To get started, please review the following handouts:
- Editing Wikipedia pages 1–5
- Evaluating Wikipedia
Week 5
- Course meetings
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- Tuesday, 12 February 2019 | Thursday, 14 February 2019
- Assignment - Wikipedia Training I
Week 6
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 19 February 2019 | Thursday, 21 February 2019
- Assignment - Wikipedia Training II
Week 7
- Course meetings
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- Tuesday, 26 February 2019
- Assignment - Evaluating article in your expertise
Choose an article on Wikipedia where you are very familiar with the topic.
- You should choose something that you're interested in and have opinions about, but make sure that you choose something specific ("Appalachian State University Marching Mountaineers") vs. general ("Marching band") so you don't get overwhelmed.
- Make sure that you are familiar enough with the topic to be able to answer the following questions.
- Make sure that the article doesn’t have any symbols in top right corner
Answer the following questions:
- Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?
Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
Check a few citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article?
Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference or are there a lot statements without citations? Where does the information come from? Are the sources neutral or biased, and if biased, is that bias noted in the Wikipedia entry?
Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?
Check out the Talk page of the article. What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic? Did anything on the talk page surprise you?
Is the article part of any projects (see the Talk page)? If so, which ones and how is it rated (low/high importance, etc.?) If it is not part of a project, just say N/A.
How is the article rated? Does it have any flags on the main page (i.e. The neutrality of this article is disputed, this page needs to be updated, etc.)? Is it marked as a stub (see the talk page to see if it has been marked a stub), or is a full article?
How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way you'd talk about it?
1If appropriate, make a small edit to the page to improve it (add a citation, a link, a clarification, etc.). Don’t delete anything or other editors will get mad. Large edits by new users (i.e. edits that are more than one sentence) will cause experienced editors to get extremely mad.
Go to the Talk page and click Edit Source. Leave a note on the bottom of the Talk page (or in the appropriate location on the Talk page, if there is a lot of material there and it's organized in a specific way) stating what you changed and why. If appropriate, provide a suggestion for improvement or updated information (i.e. provide additional links, note bias, or provide an update), or ask a question to the other editors on the Talk page. Sign your name to your statement simply by clicking the tildes at the bottom of the edit box and then click Publish Changes at the bottom of the page:
Week 8
- Course meetings
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- Tuesday, 12 March 2019 | Thursday, 14 March 2019
- Topics to Edit
Choose an article from the list of available articles on ASULearn. I will then assign it to you via the Dashboard.
Week 9
- Course meetings
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- Tuesday, 19 March 2019 | Thursday, 21 March 2019
- Wikipedia topic to edit
1. Choose an article from the list of articles on ASULearn. You can also choose a different article if it is relevant to the class and needs updating. Check with us first to ensure it is relevant.
You cannot edit these sites for your project:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_justice_and_coal_mining_in_Appalachia
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_issues_in_Appalachia
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_Wars
There's a variety of reasons why these sites are off-limits (we can discuss these reasons as a class or in person), but the main one is that they are too broad in terms of topic. You can use the links in them as a jumping off point if you're stumped for ideas.
2. Use the following graphic to determine if the page you're planning to edit is feasible.
A page is particularly good for editing if it doesn't have a lot of information. Return to the "Finding your Article" module if you need help finding an article that is a good candidate for this assignment.
- If you do not choose a page by the deadline, we will choose something for you.
- If your page choices are inappropriate (i.e. locked or there's already plenty of information there) we will assign you to a similar page that will be more appropriate for an inexperienced student editor.
- If you need help thinking of an appropriate page, ask! We are always happy to help.
Week 10
- Course meetings
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- Tuesday, 26 March 2019 | Thursday, 28 March 2019
- Assignment - Sandbox - idea and reference collection due
Step 1: Getting started
- Open your sandbox in Edit mode and make a header that says “Copy/Paste of [insert article title here] for editing.” Highlight your header and choose Paragraph > Page Title to get it into the correct format.
- Open the article you want to change in Edit mode. (References and other templates will break if you copy from Read mode.)
- Copy the page but don’t include the references. Including the references tends to mess up the formatting significantly. Paste it into your sandbox.
- Click Publish Changes (should be blue – if it is gray it means that you didn’t change anything on your page).
- A box will pop up. In the Edit Summary box, write “copied [article insert name] for later editing” and then click Publish Changes again – this will ensure I only grade the relevant parts of your sandbox history.
- Re-enter Edit mode in your sandbox. You will see that the numbered references (if there are any) are in a weird format. Make a new header called References just above the numbered references. Highlight your References header and choose Paragraph > Heading to get it into the correct format.
- Click Publish Changes. In the Edit Summary box, write “reference header”
Step 2: Additional Sources
Open up your Talk page on your sandbox.
In your Talk page, compile a list of 5 or more relevant, reliable books, journal articles, government documents, or other sources. You can use the relevant guides from Wikipedia (below) to help you get sources for your page:
Under each source, discuss how you plan to integrate it into the page. Click Publish Page at the bottom of the page.
Things to remember to address:
- grammar and spelling - don't embarrass yourself by having sloppy syntax
- layout in your section - is it consistent with WIkipedia's rules?
- are your statements clear and flow well with the existing material?
- is there bias in your statements?
- are your sources reliable and varied?
- are you statements properly cited?
- have you unintentionally plagiarized something? (feel free to ask me or Tom for help with paraphrasing specific things; we are happy to do that) - be very careful about plagiarism; Wikipedia has bots that will flag plagiarized material and if it finds plagiarized material will automatically erase your entire page once you put it on the mainspace!!!
Some of my students in the past have considered "drafts" to be the same as rough outlines... do not be those students!!! You want a finished product here that will ready to go out for peer review by Wikipedia editors before making it live
Week 11
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 2 April 2019 | Thursday, 4 April 2019
- keep working on Sandbox
Week 12
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 9 April 2019 | Thursday, 11 April 2019
- Sandbox must be complete
You will be graded on everything you have completed up through 4/11/19.
These include:
- at least 5 new sources and how you plan to incorporate them (list these on your sandbox's talk page).
- proper editing etiquette within your own sandbox (i.e. use of edit summaries)
- grammar/spelling/clarity/tone of your edits in the sandbox
Week 13
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 16 April 2019 | Thursday, 18 April 2019
- no assignments this week
I will be grading your work and providing suggestions for improvement.
Week 14
- Course meetings
-
- Thursday, 25 April 2019
- Assignment - incorporate your work into Wikipedia page
It is now time to incorporate your work into the main Wikipedia page. Use the edits from me and from the Wikipedia editor to improve your work, and then update the actual Wikipedia page. Be sure to explain everything you did (and why) on the Talk page, and use the Edit Summary each time you edit something.
You will be graded on:
- how you have improved your work based on the comments from me on your sandbox and/or talk pages (see also your sandbox grade sheet for additional details), and other editors reviews. Depending on how well you did on your first draft in your sandbox, this part will either be a lot of work (if you had a lot of things to address) or hardly any work at all (if you did a great job the first time around).
- how well you have conformed to the guidelines for a Wikipedia article (tone, citation style, editor etiquette on Talk pages, etc.)
Week 15
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 30 April 2019
- Assignment - Reflections on writing for Wikipedia
Answer via ASULearn:
What did you learn about Wikipedia during the first article evaluation assignment (the one where you looked at something that interested you) that you didn't realize before? Did it make you look at the topic in a new way?
Provide a summary of your edits for the first article you critiqued and why you felt they were a valuable addition to the article. Did your edits remain throughout the semester or have they since been removed by someone else? If they were removed by someone else, what reasons were given?
Did you receive feedback from other Wikipedia editors outside of this class for your researched article for class, and if so, how did you respond to and handle that feedback?
Based on your experiences with other editors (not other students, but total strangers), do you think that you have contributed a better understanding of your topic to the general public? If you did not receive comments from other editors, just say "N/A" here.
What did you learn from contributing to Wikipedia? Was it harder or easier than you thought it would be?
How does a Wikipedia assignment compare to other projects you've done in the past for other classes?