Highlights Fall 2017 courses finished up in December and made quite an impact. This term, with 318 supported courses, students edited 7,200 articles, created 635 new entries, and added 5 million words to Wikipedia. That’s equivalent to about 11.5% of the last print edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica! We’re proud of our efforts to scale … Continued
Wikipedia articles are written and maintained by volunteers, all of whom have differing areas of interest and expertise. Volunteers have varying access to source material, so academic sources, that are often restricted behind paywalls, aren’t well represented on the site. Sometimes, however, sources for a particular topic are plenty, but they’re in another language. That’s … Continued
Highlights This month we were excited to formally announce our 2018 Wikipedia Fellows pilot, where subject-matter experts from three of our partner associations—the American Sociological Association, Midwest Political Science Association, and National Women’s Studies Association—will work with us to learn to edit Wikipedia and make substantial contributions to public knowledge via key Wikipedia articles. We … Continued
Dr. Ben Karney was interviewed by Howard Blume on KPFK’s show Deadline LA in March, along with two of his doctorate students, as well as Wiki Education’s Deputy Director and Director of Programs LiAnna Davis. He had a lot to say about the nature of a Wikipedia assignment, and why, as a psychology professor, public scholarship like … Continued
Students have improved a number of different scientific topics on Wikipedia, including conservation biology, voice disorders, environmental policy, medicine, and more! Communicating scientific topics to a general reader, who may not have any scientific background, requires students to master course material and speak with authority on a topic they’re studying. Students are uniquely positioned to translate scientific concepts, as … Continued
Wiki Education’s Executive Director Frank Schulenburg was featured on listener-supported community radio station, WMNF, along with Laura Runge, a professor of English at the University of South Florida, and her student Elizabeth Ricketts. Laura is an instructor in our Classroom Program, and taught with Wikipedia in her course last fall, Jane Austen Bits to Bytes. In the … Continued
When students learn to edit Wikipedia as a course assignment, they make research available to a worldwide audience and improve a resource that millions use daily. Considering that people look to Wikipedia to make behavioral and political decisions, ensuring that the information they find is accurate is an important task. Students have done some great work … Continued
When students evaluate Wikipedia as a class assignment, they learn how to understand the mechanisms of a resource they use every day. More broadly, this process teaches them about knowledge production. Whose knowledge is represented on Wikipedia, and whose is missing? What barriers prevent a more inclusive, equitable knowledge landscape? How should a reader evaluate … Continued
As part of Women’s History Month, we’re looking at how our programs are helping to close Wikipedia’s gender gap. So far, we’ve featured work by students in our Classroom Program, who have improved Wikipedia’s coverage of women directors, women in STEM, women in academia, and more. This week, we’re profiling Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight, a prolific Wikipedian and a participant in our Visiting Scholars program, a … Continued