Working in the real world: what students learn by

editing Wikipedia

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My BIOL 345 course

•  Upper-level non-majors class in ‘Human Ecology’

•  Students created (or improved) Wikipedia pages about local ecology

•  They worked in pairs; draft pages were peer-reviewed by classmates

•  Worth ~30% of their course grade

Pages by BIOL 345 students

Support for faculty and student editors

Wiki Education Foundation •  Course site with week-

by-week activities and resources

•  Template for course creation

•  How-to-edit teaching resources (pdfs, online tutorials)

•  Help desk

•  Assigned support person for your course

Three kinds of benefits Thinking deeply about course material

What do readers want

to know?

How do these topics fit together?

Is this work ‘notable’?

What are the key

concepts?

Three kinds of benefits Information literacy

Better use this review article in

an open scientific journal

A blog isn’t ‘authoritative’.

This page is trying to sell

me something!

Oops, this image is

copyright

Three kinds of benefits Social skills and values

I’m sharing my diagram in

Wikimedia Commons!

Anyone anywhere in the world can read

my article!

I’m getting help from strangers!.

It’s not MY article any more, but it’s a better

article

There are three points of view about this

issue

Name University Email address Department

To find out more about the Wiki Education Foundation, leave your contact information below. We’ll be in touch!

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Here’s something to do in the lunch break (on the table at the back of the room)