Teaching with Wikipedia: Experiences, Lessons and Best Practices

Teaching with WikipediaExperiences, Lessons & Best Practices

Webinar, West Virginia University Libraries, April 2015

Adeline Koh Stockton University

@adelinekoh

Classes I’ve Taught with Wikipedia

Introduction to Digital Writing (Spring 2014)

Lower-level General Studies writing course

Seminar in Feminist Theory (Fall 2014)

Capstone in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies

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Class Wikipedia Projects

Introduction to Digital Writing

Add 500 words to a Wikipedia entry/start a new entry of student’s choice

Seminar in Feminist Theory

Add 500 words to a Wikipedia entry on Feminist Theory/start a new entry of student’s choice

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“It’s empowering and scary.”

Student Reactions to Editing Wikipedia

“I thought I was never supposed to use Wikipedia.”

“Wikipedia has a vetting process?” “It’s amazing to have an effect on the

public”

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Lessons I Learned

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1. You Can’t Begin Introducing Wikipedia

Too Early

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Important

Scaffolding learning about Wikipedia editing throughout the semester

Wiki editing takes place in markup—may be unfamiliar to students

Have students pair up/group for practice rounds

Look at other sample syllabi as model:

http://tinyurl.com/WVUwikipedia

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2. Learn How to Edit Wikipedia Yourself

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Instructors

Take some time to edit Wikipedia yourself, take the tutorials: http://tinyurl.com/WVUwikipedia

Wiki markup takes a little practice to learn, as well as page structures etc.

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3. Work with the Wiki Education Foundation

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Work with Wiki Ed

Get in touch with the Wiki Education Foundation for help

Use the Wiki Education Foundation assignment tool: http://wizard.wikiedu.org/

Design a Course Page on Wikipedia (Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Program:Northeastern_University/Online_Communities_(2015-1-Spring) )

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4. Use the Wikimedia Instructor Handout

Repository

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Handouts Galore

http://tinyurl.com/wikipediahandouts or google “Wikipedia Education handouts”

Includes everything you need: Cheat sheets on Wiki markup, citing sources, references, choosing articles to edit, how to use a talk page, what to do for instructors before semester starts, and many more

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5. How to Deal with Trolls

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How to Deal with Trolls

Encourage students to edit pages which are still stubs, or articles which are non-controversial

Teach them how to recognized “featured articles”

Give them examples of “edit wars”

Edits should be peer reviewed by other students in the class, but don’t need to be “sticky” to count for credit

Teach disengagement

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For More ResourcesI wrote a blog post:

http://tinyurl.com/WVUwikipedia

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