Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/University of Alaska Anchorage/LING A201 How English Works (Fall 2020)
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- Course name
- LING A201 How English Works
- Institution
- University of Alaska Anchorage
- Instructor
- David Bowie
- Wikipedia Expert
- Ian (Wiki Ed)
- Subject
- Linguistics
- Course dates
- 2020-08-25 00:00:00 UTC – 2020-12-12 23:59:59 UTC
- Approximate number of student editors
- 25
An introductory course on grammatical structure, with a primary focus on English. On Wikipedia, students will improve an article on a subject related to a topic relating to grammar, such as (but not limited to) an individual or a grammatical term.
Timeline
Week 1
- Course meetings
-
- Thursday, 27 August 2020
- Milestones
Welcome to your Wikipedia assignment's course timeline. This page guides you through the steps you'll need to complete for your Wikipedia assignment, with links to training modules and your classmates' work spaces.
Your course has been assigned a Wikipedia Expert. You can reach them through the Get Help button at the top of this page.
Week 2
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 1 September 2020 | Thursday, 3 September 2020
- Assignment - Wikipedia assignment #1
You have two parallel projects in this course this semester, and one involves working with Wikipedia. You will complete much of it through this site. For this assignment, you need to do three things, in this order:
- Create a Wikipedia account
- Register with the course on the WikiEdu site
- Let me know you have done so
To create a Wikipedia account: Completing this step is different depending on whether you already have a Wikipedia account or not.
If you already have a Wikipedia account, you can choose to use that one (in which case you’re done with this step) or to create a new one to use specifically for this class project.
To create an account simply go to the WikiEdu dashboard, click on the “sign up with Wikipedia” link, and then follow the instructions. If you don't see that link—it's pretty prominently placed on the page—you are most likely already signed in with Wikipedia and will need to log out (there's a link to do so at the top of the page) before creating the new account.
To register with this course on WikiEdu: First go to the WikiEdu dashboard (the link is at the top of this page) and—this is important!—make sure that you’re signed in with the Wikipedia account you’ll use for this project. (Your Wikipedia username should appear at the top of the page.) Click the "join course" link on the right-hand side of the page. Click “find your course” and search for “LING A201”. There will be multiple options; make sure that you click the Fall 2020 one, and in the page that comes up click the button that says “join course”. The passcode you will need is on the Blackboard site for the class.
To let me know you’ve completed this: Go to the assignment dropbox for this assignment (located on the Blackboard site for this course). In the submission box, type your Wikipedia login ID and submit that—and you're done!
- Assignment - Wikipedia assignment #2
This and the next Wikipedia assignment are small projects that run more or less orthogonally to the rest of the series, designed primarily to make sure that you are ready to use library resources before going further with the project.
Completing the Wikipedia assignment series requires you to conduct library research using the Consortium Library’s databases to find resources to use. You may already be prepared to do this, but completing this assignment will allow you (and me) to be certain. These should all be quite simple to accomplish, but if problems come up they can take some effort to fix, so if you run into issues please don't hesitate to reach out to library staff (since they're the ones with the expertise to help).
This assignment has three parts:
- Set up a RefWorks account linked to your UAA ID
- Set up a Consortium Library interlibrary loan account linked to your UAA ID
- Make sure that you have borrowing privileges at the Consortium Library
If you know you've already done all of these, you can skip down past how to do them and go straight to what you are to turn in as evidence that you’ve done the assignment.
(For everything that follows, you should be aware that if you are setting these up these accounts from off campus you may need to log in to your library account at some point; to do this, simply enter your UAA username and password when prompted to do so and continue onward.)
To set up a RefWorks account: RefWorks allows you to have a single location to store pointers to scholarly—and, to some extent, non-scholarly—sources to use in things like research papers. It’s a subscription-based service, but the subscription fee is included in your tuition. If you already use another citation manager such as EndNote or Zotero (or even if you're old-school, and use paper index cards!) you can certainly continue using what you’re used to, but please still create a RefWorks account if you don’t have one already.
Start at the Consortium Library homepage at consortiumlibrary.org. Then find the box headed "Research" and click on the "Citation Tools" link. On the page that comes up, click any of the "RefWorks Freemium" links and, on the next page, find the "First Time?" section and click on the "Sign Up" button. Go through the tutorial and follow the directions. You should now have a functioning RefWorks account.
To set up an interlibrary loan account: Start at the Consortium Library homepage at consortiumlibrary.org. Find the box with the heading "Services" and click on the "Interlibrary Loan" link. On the page that comes up, log in using your university username and password and enter any information you are asked for. You should now have a functioning interlibrary loan account.
To make sure you have borrowing privileges: The simplest way to do this is to ask yourself the following question: Are you a student who holds a UAA Wolfcard? If yes, then excellent—you’re all set. (There used to be a whole process to go through to activate Wolfcards for library use, but they’re automatically usable at the library now upon issuance. By the way, if you’re a UAA student who qualifies for a Wolfcard but don’t have one yet, you should get one—they're useful to have.) If you’re a visiting student or somesuch and don’t qualify for a Wolfcard, you should review the Consortium Library's page on borrowing and library cards and contact the library’s circulation department to ensure that you have library borrowing privileges.
If you run into problems: For any issues with these (e.g., you can’t log in with your UAA username and password, you know from experience your Wolfcard doesn't work at the library, or whatever) you should contact the Consortium Library staff for instructions on how to proceed. (They may direct you elsewhere or they may be able to help you on the spot, depending on the nature of the issue.) To contact a librarian for assistance, use any of the methods listed at ask.consortiumlibrary.org, or walk in while the library is open and talk to someone at the circulation desk. Note that in a very few cases (it’s happened twice in the decade or so I’ve been having students complete this sort of assignment in my classes) you will find that you simply aren’t allowed borrowing privileges at the Consortium Library; if this is the case for you, you are exempt from that part of the assignment, as long as you contact me before the assignment deadline so that we can set up a way for you to complete later assignments successfully.
What to turn in: Since there are three parts to this assignment, you would expect that there are three things that you need to provide evidence for—but as it turns out you actually only need to turn in two things, because the third effectively takes care of itself.
- For the RefWorks part, sign in to your RefWorks account. (To get there, follow the instructions above to where you get to the RefWorks Freemium page, and then log in there.) You will, by default, go to a page with your name near the upper right-hand corner. Export that page as a PDF or take a picture of it, making sure your name is included in the image.
- For interlibrary loan, sign in to your interlibrary loan account. (You can get there by following the instructions above and logging in.) Click the “Your ILL Acct” link, and simply export the page that comes up as a PDF or take a picture of the screen, making sure your name is included in the image. (This page may include some information I have no right or interest in seeing, such as your address or phone number. Please feel free to redact all information but your name and UAA ID number.)
To turn these in: Simply go to the appropriate assignment dropbox on the Blackboard site for the class, and submit both PDFs/images there. Be aware, though, that this is an all or nothing assignment—if you turn in all of the information that is required, you receive full credit for it, but if you don't turn in everything that’s required (including if you turn in one item but not the other), you get none.
Week 3
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 8 September 2020 | Thursday, 10 September 2020
- Assignment - Wikipedia assignment #3
Completing the Wikipedia project for this class requires you to conduct library research using the Consortium Library’s databases to find articles to use. Therefore, this is the second of two Wikipedia assignments that don't necessarily deal directly with the overall project, but rather are designed to make sure that you are ready to use the library resources you will need to complete it.
By the time you're working on this, you will have been taught how to use the library's academic databases. The gold standard for linguistics is the Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts database, but access to that has been eliminated due to budget cuts; therefore, you will need to use a set of more general (but less useful for linguists) databases: ProQuest, Academic Search Premier, and Google Scholar.
For this assignment, you are to conduct scholarly database searches to find a single example of each of the following things. (Note: You do not have to actually get copies of these—for some of them, you almost certainly wouldn’t be able to do that by the deadline anyway—but rather you need to get enough information about them to be able to create a list of citations.)
- My PhD dissertation. (Please make sure that you find my dissertation, not an article I have written.) A complication: There are a lot of David Bowies who have published in a lot of different fields—but you’re looking for me. Also, further complication: There is a David Bowie who is not me and has published in the field of educational linguistics; I have never published anything that relates to the use of language in the K–12 school context, however.
- Any scholarly peer-reviewed article I have written without any co-authors. (Note the complications above. If the article you find deals with English as spoken in Alaska, Maryland, or Utah, or deals with the intersection of language and religion, aging, or cognition, though, that’s definitely me.)
- Any scholarly peer-reviewed article I have co-written (i.e., with co-authors).
- Any scholarly peer-reviewed journal article by Anne Charity Hudley, with or without co-authors. (Charity Hudley also published, early in her career, under the name Anne Charity; those are acceptable. Charity Hudley writes for both scholarly and lay audiences; please take care that you select something of hers that’s peer-reviewed, and appears in a scholarly journal—books or book chapters will not be accepted.)
- Any scholarly peer-reviewed article co-written by Naomi Shin and Ricardo Otheguy. (If there are other co‑authors, that’s fine—just make sure Shin and Otheguy are both authors.)
- A newspaper article about some aspect of pronunciation you find interesting. (Yes, newspaper. Neither magazine nor scholarly articles are acceptable for this one.)
You are to create a bibliography listing those six items, in the order listed above—please do not alphabetize them. I don’t care what bibliographic style you use (APA, MLA, Chicago...), as long as the one you use gives all of the usual bibliographic information (authors, date, title, and, if applicable, name of the containing source, pages, or publication details) and you are consistent. Then you are to submit the citation list to the appropriate assignment dropbox in the Blackboard site for the class, and at that point you’re done. (Please do not submit the articles themselves, abstracts of them, or anything else—this is purely an exercise in using scholarly databases to find information on a topic.)
Your grade is calculated as follows: If you complete all of these correctly, you—naturally enough—get full credit. If you get one of them wrong but still turn in a response for each of them (e.g., if you submit a citation for an article I’ve written rather than my dissertation for the first item on the list), your score will be reduced by 20%. If you make such errors for more than one of the items but still at least make an attempt at all of them, you will receive 60% credit for the assignment. If you omit citations for any of the required entries, however, you will receive no credit for the assignment at all—so please do count your entries carefully before turning them in.
Week 4
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 15 September 2020 | Thursday, 17 September 2020
- No Wikipedia assignments this week
Week 5
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 22 September 2020 | Thursday, 24 September 2020
- 22 September readings
- 24 September readings
- Editing Wikipedia (especially pages 1–5)
- Evaluating Wikipedia
Week 6
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 29 September 2020 | Thursday, 1 October 2020
- Assignment - Wikipedia assignment #4
Complete these training modules by the deadline listed in the syllabus. Please make sure that you're logged in when you go through them, because otherwise I won't see that you've done them. (If you complete them, you will receive full credit; completing some but not all by the deadline will result in half credit, except that skipping either of the plagiarism-related items will result in no credit.)
Week 7
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 6 October 2020 | Thursday, 8 October 2020
- No Wikipedia assignments this week
Week 8
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 13 October 2020 | Thursday, 15 October 2020
- Assignment - Wikipedia assignment #5
Exercise
[[../../../training/students/evaluate-wikipedia-exercise|Evaluate an article]]Complete the training and then do the exercise (including the “optional” part of it, no matter how it’s labelled). Make sure that you're logged in when you do all this, because otherwise I won't see that you've done them.
Completing all of this by the deadline will result in receiving full credit; partial credit will not be awarded for this assignment.
Week 9
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 20 October 2020 | Thursday, 22 October 2020
- No Wikipedia assignments this week
Week 10
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 27 October 2020 | Thursday, 29 October 2020
- Assignment - Wikipedia assignment #6
Exercise
[[../../../training/students/choose-topic-exercise|Choose a topic]][[../../../training/students/finalize-topic-exercise|Finalize your topic/Find your sources]]This one’s slightly complicated, so be careful;
At or before the deadline for the assignment listed in the syllabus, do the following (preferably in this order):
- Complete the training titled “Finding Your Article”.
- Complete the exercise titled "Choose a Topic”, but in addition to using your sandbox to list 4 or 5 possible articles you can add citations to (see below for guidelines), send me a message via Blackboard listing them, including both titles and URLs
Then, as soon as practical after I send your assigned article to you (within a week after your submission, hopefully sooner), you are to take the steps outlined in the exercise titled “Finalize Your Topic/Find Your Sources” to assign your article to yourself. (This means that the deadline for finalizing your topic is actually a few days later than the listed deadline for the assignment, but all the other parts of the assignment are due by that date.)
Guidelines for selecting an article: It needs to be one that deals with some aspect of grammar (which could be an issue of grammatical conventions, or theoretical morphology or syntax, or an individual associated with grammar in some clear way—basically, I’m suggesting that you cast a wide net here), and it needs to be something that could do with more citations (since, at core, what you’re going to be doing is adding citations to articles, whether that’s because you add citations to existing items that need them, or you add new information that is backed by citations you include).
Completing all of this by the deadline(s) will result in full credit, and partial credit will not be awarded. I do have a "hold harmless" approach to this assignment for a student who puts in the work but doesn't get it quite right: If it turns out that you send me a list of articles that will not work for the project, you will still receive full credit (as long as they are actually related to grammar in some way, of course!), and I will work directly with you to find something more suitable.
An additional resource, should you need it: Editing Wikipedia, page 6
Week 11
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 3 November 2020 | Thursday, 5 November 2020
- No Wikipedia assignments this week
Week 12
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 10 November 2020 | Thursday, 12 November 2020
- Assignment - Wikipedia assignment #7
Complete the training modules and read the guidelines above; please make sure you are logged in when you do this, so that I can see you've completed it. Doing this by the deadline will result in full credit, and partial credit will not be awarded.
I would suggest that by this point you should be actively working on figuring out where you will add documentation to your assigned article and what that documentation will be, and depending on where you are in the process you might wish to already start working on drafting your edits. (Before doing so, you may wish to skip ahead and complete the next Wikipedia assignment.)
Week 13
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 17 November 2020 | Thursday, 19 November 2020
- No Wikipedia assignments this week
Week 14
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 24 November 2020
- Milestones
There is no Wikipedia assignment this week due to Thanksgiving break. However, by this point you should definitely have the sources you're going to add to your assigned article lined up. If you're feeling motivated (or even if you'd simply like to get it out of the way quicker) you can feel free to go through the training in next week's Wikipedia assignment and start adding in your sources now.
Week 15
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 1 December 2020 | Thursday, 3 December 2020
- Assignment - Wikipedia assignment #8
Exercise
[[../../../training/students/add-to-article-exercise|Add a citation]]Complete the training module and read through the exercise above by the deadline in the syllabus. Doing so will result in full credit; partial credit cannot be earned for this assignment.
Note that you are not required to add any citations yet—you will ultimately have to add three to an article, but that can wait a bit. The exercise associated with this assignment, however, gives some useful ideas for how to go about it.
Week 16
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 8 December 2020 | Thursday, 10 December 2020
- Assignment - Wikipedia assignment #9
[[../../../training/students/thinking-about-wikipedia-discussion/thinking-about-wikipedia|Thinking about Wikipedia]]Go through the module aove, and write a brief (up to 400 words) reflection on the assignment. Begin your essay by stating the title of your assigned article, and then answer the following as completely as you can, given the length limit:
- How did you find your assigned article?
- Do you feel you learned anything about that article’s topic?
- If yes, what was the most interesting thing you learned? If not, why do you think the assignment series didn’t result in that?
- How easy or difficult was it to find sources that you could use to strengthen the article?
- What do you think made it so easy or hard?
You should submit your response to the appropriate assignment dropbox in the Blackboard site for the class. Answering all of these questions as thoroughly as you can given the length limit will result in full credit; answering some but not all of the questions will result in half credit.
- Assignment - Final Wikipedia assignment
[[../../../training/students/add-to-article-exercise|Add a citation]]You are to complete this assignment by adding three citations (and any additional or changed text that might be necessary to go along with them) to your assigned article on Wikipedia. By doing that by the deadline in the syllabus (which is the date listed and the time that assignments are normally due), you will receive full credit; adding some new sources but not the required number will receive half credit.
Please make sure you are logged in when you make the changes (or I won't be able to verify that you actually completed the assignment) and that you actually publish them to Wikipedia.
(I really feel like there should be more to write here, but I can't think of what it is.)