Brief introduction to Wikimedia, and overview of classroom Wikipedia assignments -- benefits, best practices, pitfalls and gains. (Updated May 2014). Thanks to LiAnna Davis and Jami Mathewson at WMF for their help and content (quotes, education project slides).

1. Teaching with Wikipedia
Phoebe Ayers
UC Davis Libraries
May 8, 2014

2. Overview
• Introductions
• How Wikipedia works
• Types of assignments
• Learning outcomes
• Best practices and caveats
• Making it happen
• Discussion/Questions?

3. Introductions
• Who I am
• Who you are:
– Area of teaching
– Wikipedia experience?
– Planning a Wikipedia assignment?

4. Taipei, Wikimania 2007
How Wikipedia Works

5. Imagine a world in which every
single human being can freely
share in the sum of all
knowledge.
- Wikimedia’s vision statement

8. Wikimedia is global
Wikimedia chapters, 2013 (dark blue = founded)

9. Wikimania, Haifa 2011

10. What is Wikimedia?
12 projects
280 languages
31 million Wikipedia articles
21 million media files
• 80,000 active editors
• 100s of local meetup groups
• 40 local/national level chapters
• 200 employees at the Wikimedia Foundation, San
Francisco
• 1,130,000 individual financial donors (in 2011-12)
• 500,000,000 readers/month

11. • Free [to use and reuse]
• Volunteer-written
• Supported by readers
• Everyone can participate
• No top down editorial control:
• Community curated work
Overview

12. • Neutrality (NPOV)
• Verifiability (references!)
• Notability
• Encyclopedic treatment
• … and many, many style guidelines
Core editorial policies

13. Wikipedia editors

15. Wikipedia and education

16. “At present, Wikipedia hovers at the fringes of academia, like
an uninvited guest, [yet] Wikipedia's aims are eminently
academic…
Still, everybody uses it, in one way or another, even if they
might want not to admit to the fact. Above all, our students
use it, openly or otherwise (as they are often explicitly told
not to cite Wikipedia articles in term papers), but without
necessarily knowing how it works. They are told that
Wikipedia is bad, but they are not often told why; and of
course, they find it an incredibly useful resource.”
-- Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jbmurray/Madness
Inviting the uninvited guest

17. “ I liked the idea that students would be
engaging in a real world project…
Here they would be writing for a public
audience, also one that almost uniquely was in a
position to write back, to re-write and comment
upon what they were writing.”
-- Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jbmurray/Madness
Why teach with Wikipedia?

18. "I’d rather spend 30 hours putting work into a
project that will be available for public consumption
upon its completion than putting 10 hours into a
project which gets graded, returned, and then
either thrown out or forsaken and forgotten.
Turning in a paper and getting it back with a letter
on it is far less rewarding than submitting an article
onto one of the world’s most renowned knowledge
bases for all to see.“
– Student in the Wikimedia Education
program
Why teach with Wikipedia?

19. Sample assignments
• Research
– referencing articles
• Writing
– Copyediting articles
• Critical thinking
– analyzing articles, reflecting on their own
Wikipedia usage, comparing to other
sources

20. Sample assignments, cont.
• Graphical communication
– creating technical illustrations or videos
• Language classes
– translating articles
• Explanatory writing in other contexts
– Contributing to Wikibooks, Wikiversity,
Wikivoyage: textbooks, travel guides

21. • Writing skills
– Expository and encyclopedic writing
– Editing other people’s work
• Research skills
• Critical thinking
• Media and information literacy
Learning outcomes

22. • Know Wikipedia
• Don’t over-scope or tackle
controversies
• Leave adequate time
• Plan evaluation strategies
• Involve Wikipedians & be transparent
Best practices

23. • Wikipedia is a working environment
• Do your student’s skills match the task?
• Do you have time to manage this
assignment?
Pitfalls

24. • Student contributions may be
removed
– Grade worries
• Is your project adequately
documented on Wikipedia?
More pitfalls

25. • Students’ work impacts tens of
thousands
• Real-world writing, editing,
collaboration and technology skills
• Lifetime impact of understanding
Wikipedia and being a critical reader
But many gains

26. "If I had to pick one main advantage of a
Wikipedia assignment, it would be the peer
editing between Wikipedians that often doesn’t
take place with traditional assignments. The
feedback from other users and students in my
class really helped me improve my articles."
– Student in the Wikimedia
Education program
Gains, continued

27. Making it happen
• Wiki Ed Foundation and Wikimedia
Education program resources
http://education.wikimedia.org
• Past classes & assignments
• Wikipedians! (local and remote)
– Campus ambassador program

28. Wikipedia Education Program

29. On-Wikipedia course pages

30. Learning to edit
• Online:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:HELP
• In-person: May 16 and May 23, 1-3pm, Shields
Library

31. Thoughts?

32. • What kind of assignment would work
in your course?
• Benefits/challenges?
• What support would you need?
Discussion

33. • Phoebe Ayers, psayers@ucdavis.edu
• Jami Mathewson
jami@wikiedfoundation.org – US Education
Program coordinator at the Wiki Ed
Foundation
• http://education.wikimedia.org
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:SUP
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Courses
Contacts