“I was hesitant about shaking up a popular class that had worked well for years, but one statistic finally convinced me. … And this assignment quickly took on a much deeper significance than a research paper.” Dr. Stephennie Mulder at University of Texas at Austin decided to scrap the research paper for her Fall 2018 … Continued
Khyati Soneji has been improving the Wiki Education Dashboard for nearly a year now. She joined our open tech project as an Outreachy Intern in 2019 and is now mentoring another intern for a new project. Recently she attended the SWASTHA meetup in Mumbai along with our 2019 Google Summer of Code intern Amit Joki, … Continued
Based on your course or discipline, completing a Wikipedia writing assignment can achieve so many meaningful outcomes: from helping close the gender gap, to documenting dying species or languages, to researching important new scientific discoveries. There are also plenty of learning objectives and selling points that we see fulfilled over and over again, no matter … Continued
As of late last week, there are 6 million encyclopedic articles on the English Wikipedia. Milestones like this serve as a reminder of how far this resource, which we all have at our fingertips, has come. This event is also an opportunity to acknowledge and appreciate the continued commitment of the Wikipedian community to share … Continued
Looking for inspiration for your course this spring? These instructors are raving about how easy it is to adapt the Wikipedia assignment to their own disciplines. Sign up on the Dashboard today and follow their roadmaps! Archaeology: Dr. Kate Grillo published an article last year about the value of a Wikipedia assignment in archaeology courses. … Continued
Facebook announced a new policy last week banning “deepfakes”, or digitally altered videos, from its platform. Not surprisingly, thousands turned to the Wikipedia page about deepfakes to understand more. Thanks to University of Southern California students from Helen Choi’s course last fall, the page provides some helpful context. In the last few years, the world’s … Continued
Our favorite (and also busiest!) time of the fall term has rolled around again. During these last few weeks before the holidays, students move all their final edits live, resulting in thousands of words added to Wikipedia overnight! It’s fascinating to see the breadth and depth of interesting new content that suddenly appears. As instructors … Continued
Information Services and Instruction Librarian Melissa Kahili-Heede and Dr. Richard Kasuya led their students at the John A. Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in a Wikipedia writing assignment last term that changed the way they worked with both students and faculty. This was the second time they’ve had medical … Continued
As is often the case when teaching with Wikipedia, Dr. Heather Sharkey adapted her original vision of a Wikipedia writing assignment based on what inspired students about the task. The result is a great story of collaboration, archiving of local history, and pride. Dr. Sharkey conducted her first Wikipedia writing assignment using our resources and … Continued