teaching with wikipedia: experiences, lessons and best practices
TRANSCRIPT
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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