Before the main conference begins, we’re delighted to invite the community to something a little different: a hands-on Wikipedia workshop and edit-a-thon, led by two of Wikipedia’s most experienced Wikipedia contributors and educators.
Wikipedia is the world’s largest encyclopedia — and, we’d argue, the world’s largest open educational resource. Every article, photograph, and piece of content is freely licensed and open for re-use. For those of us in Open Education, it’s been there all along: a massive, collaboratively-built body of knowledge that hundreds of millions of people turn to every single day. But how many of us have actually contributed to it?
This workshop is an invitation to find out.
What’s on
Phoebe Ayers (longtime Wikimedia Foundation trustee and Wikipedia contributor; and MIT Librarian Lfor EECS, IDSS, and Math; Research Data Management Services) and Andrew Lih (author of The Wikipedia Revolution, Wikipedia educator and current Wikipedian in Residence at MIT) will lead a three-hour session covering:
- An introduction to Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikimedia as an Open Educational Resource
- Teaching with Wikipedia: how to use it meaningfully in your courses and curricula
- Contributing to Wikipedia: text, photographs, and more
- New tools for visualising and exploring Wikipedia’s content
- A spotlight on how MIT OpenCourseWare is being used and built upon by the Wikipedia community
- Hands-on editing practice — with support available for beginners and experienced editors alike
Practical details
Date: Tuesday, 6 October 2026
Time: 1:00pm–4:00pm
Location: 14S-130, The Nexus, Hayden Library, MIT campus — map here
Bring a laptop for the hands-on portion
Registration is required — 44 seats, free to attend
OEGlobal 2026 conference registration is not required. All are welcome — including complete beginners.
Attendees are asked to follow the Wikimedia Foundation Universal Code of Conduct.
Register here: 
Wikipedia as an open educational project -- hands-on workshop and edit-a-thon - LibCal - MIT Libraries
Are you planning to come?
Have you taught with Wikipedia, or used it in Open Education contexts?
We’d love to hear your experiences in the thread below!
(Feel free to connect here with others who’ll be at the session.)
