What’s of interest? The Wikipedia Project - Ben Pettis
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Last semester, I tried running Wiki Education’s “Wikipedia Assignment” for the first time. I was blown away by how well the project worked, and look forward to incorporating it into future classes that I teach as well. Students really enjoyed being able to create something that reached a wider audience than just their instructor, and it was a great opportunity for everyone to contribute their skills and expertise to improve small pieces of the wider information landscape.
For the past several years, I had been loosely aware of Wiki Education, a non-profit organization which helps bring Wikipedia into classroom settings by supporting students and teachers. On some of the email listservs that I am subscribed to, I was used to seeing calls for instructors to apply to teach using Wikipedia in their classes. This had been somewhat of an intriguing idea for me and something that I was certainly interested in, but I was never quite sure how I was going to go about actually incorporating it. Then, in the summer before my first semester teaching at the University of Richmond, I found myself scrambling to get things ready to teach Data and Society. This class is one that the department already had on the books, so I had plenty of material to build upon. But simultaneously, it was one that had a lot of flexibility in terms of how each individual instructor approached it. As I was pondering what I wanted to do, I had the distinct thought, “you know what, let’s just try this Wikipedia assignment thing.”
I had never actually been a Wikipedia editor myself, so I knew that I would be taking on a significant learning curve myself. But in all honesty, what finally pushed me over the edge was the realization that this would provide some proven structure in a class that I had otherwise never taught before. By bringing in assignments and Wikipedia training modules which Wiki Edu had already helpfully written and compiled, I would be saving myself a large chunk of work, allowing me to focus my attention on all the other aspects of the class.
And now that that first semester has come and gone, I can look back and say that I am so glad that I decided to incorporate Wikipedia into my teaching. I’m teaching Data and Society again this Spring, and I am really looking forward to seeing what this new group of students does with Wikipedia.
Where is it?: https://benpettis.com/blog/wiki-project
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