Shortcut: WP:SUP

For an overview of Wikipedia in relation to schools, see Wikipedia:Schools FAQ.

This page in a nutshell: Have students contribute to Wikipedia to make your class more interesting, teach them about Wikipedia, wikis and online collaboration, and help the Wikipedia project at the same time.

Everyone is welcome here. If you're a professor, teacher, or student within the college community, we encourage you to use Wikipedia and/or Wikiversity in your class to demonstrate how an open content website works (or doesn't). Many of these projects have resulted in both advancing the student's knowledge and useful content being added to Wikipedia. An advantage of this over regular homework is that the student is dealing with a real world situation, which is not only more educational but also makes it more interesting ("the world gets to see my work"), possibly resulting in increased dedication. Besides, it will give the students a chance to collaborate on course notes and papers, and their effort might remain online for reference, instead of being discarded and forgotten as is usual with paper coursework, or classroom systems which are routinely reinitialized.

WikiProject Classroom coordination exists to provide guidance to educators who incorporate Wikipedia writing assignments into their classes. Post questions for experienced Wikipedia volunteers at the talk page. Instructions for teachers and lecturers and instructions for students are useful resources. There is also a syllabus boilerplate and working paper boilerplate that you may want to use.

Contents 1 Guidelines 2 Contact persons 3 Considerations and suggestions 3.1 Educational template 3.2 Suggested exercises 4 Current projects 4.1 New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, New Jersey (Fall 2007-present) 4.2 University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill Department of American Studies (Fall 2009) (Ongoing) 4.3 University of Michigan (Fall 2009) (Ongoing) 4.3.1 winter 2009 4.3.2 fall 2008 4.4 University of Ljubljana 2006/07, 2007/08, 2008/09 (in Slovene language) 4.5 University of Illinois, Psychology (Spring 2010) (Ongoing) 4.6 University at Buffalo, The State University of New York (Spring 2009) (Ongoing) 4.7 University of Lethbridge (Spring 2009) (Ongoing) 4.8 McGill University (Winter 2009) (Ongoing) 4.9 University of Toronto (Winter 2009) (Ongoing) 4.10 University of Sussex (January-February 2009) (Ongoing) 4.11 University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, Virginia (Summer 2009) 4.12 University of Houston, Houston, TX Mineralogy Project 4.13 University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany - Translation (Ongoing) 4.14 Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, FL Worldwide (Ongoing) 4.15 University of Pittsburgh sociology (fall 2009) 4.16 Rice University, Houston, Texas, United States of America. Arabic 301 (Fall 2009) (Ongoing) 4.17 Portland State University computer Science (fall 2009) 4.18 Earlham College Advanced Cell Physiology (fall, 2009) 4.19 University of British Columbia (Fall 2009) 4.20 Rhode Island College (Fall 2009) (Ongoing) 4.21 Fort Worth Country Day School 4.22 IUPUI Museum Studies (Fall 2009) (Ongoing) 4.23 University of Illinois 4.24 Yale University (Fall 2009) (Completed) 4.25 University of Birmingham UK (Autumn 2009) (Ongoing) 4.26 Keene State College (Fall 2009 and ongoing) 4.27 University of Mississippi (Fall 2009) 4.28 Mid Sweden University course about wikis and Wikipedia (Fall 2009) 4.29 New Bulgarian University (Fall 2009) 4.30 Skidmore College (Fall 2009) 4.31 University of National and World Economy (Fall 2009) 5 Past projects 6 Resources 6.1 Case studies 6.2 Books on how to edit Wikipedia 7 See also 8 References 9 External links

[edit] Guidelines

Please do keep the following guidelines in mind:

1. Practice first yourself before setting an assignment. Log into Wikipedia yourself, and spend some time editing. Do this long enough to get some feedback to your work, preferably long enough to also include negative (and, if you are lucky, unreasonable) feedback which will help you understand some of the more problematic aspects of Wikipedia. If you are not happy about associating this with your academic name, you can easily create a pseudonym - but please create an account for yourself.
2. Introductions. When you want to start such a project, please briefly describe what you are doing on this page under the "Current projects" heading, and if you think it is distinctive enough, feel free to leave a note on the Wikipedia:Village pump. Leave some contact information in the event that you need to be contacted about your project. Your wikipedia account's talk page is sufficient if you check periodically for new messages.
3. Keep it real. Please do not encourage your students to create nonsense pages or add junk to articles. Though usually cleaned up very quickly, it still has to be done manually by people who would prefer to engage in more productive work on encyclopedia articles. Furthermore, your students might be blocked from editing Wikipedia for "vandalism." In egregious cases, this will result in your entire school being blocked. If you want your students to 'learn wiki' first, please ask them to read Wikipedia:Help and direct them to Wikipedia:Sandbox for any test or practice edits they wish to make.
4. Testing and avoiding. It may be a good idea—though not necessarily easy—to run your own wiki and use it for experiments first. Use the MediaWiki software which can be installed on Linux, Windows or Mac OS X - see here and here. If some students do not want to submit material to Wikipedia (which forces their content to be licensed under the Free content license, the GFDL), they can use this for their final exercise instead.
   • A simpler option than starting your own wiki is to use one of the many other public wikis.
5. Account names. Please do not create numerical accounts that match your university or school account numbers. While this may be initially convenient, if your students continue to edit Wikipedia, they may well wish to do so under a real name or a more congenial pseudonym. It also becomes confusing for other Wikipedians to review a number of edits made under very similar account names.
6. Read The "Fine" Manual. Encourage your students to take a look at the pages linked from Wikipedia:Help — they should answer many immediate questions.
7. Copyrights. Please do keep Wikipedia:Copyrights in mind. Not everything on the Web is free for the taking, and even that which is may not be compatible with our licensing. This is true for both text and images. Please remember your students will probably work from your own course notes. Be sure that this is acceptable. Furthermore, check who owns your students' course work. If the owner is your institution, check that you have permission to submit it. If it is your students, ensure that you have their legitimate, probably written, consent to require them to add material to Wikipedia.
8. Summarize and analyze. Once you have finished a project, we would very much appreciate reading a description of the results. This could be on a separate page if it is long, or on this page in the "Past projects" heading.
9. No original research. Wikipedia is not the place to publish new ideas, discoveries or articles. We are an encyclopedia, not an academic journal. You should familiarize yourself with our relevant policies, "No original research" and "What Wikipedia is not".
   • Original Research To publish or operate original research projects please consider Wikipedia's sister site http://www.wikiversity.org Projects and publication of original data and research activities are expected to remain within the constraints of evolving policy as with any reputable institution. As a site designed to support learning communities, Wikiversity has much greater flexibility to deal with tailored learning activities and data publication than a prestigious encyclopedia.
10. There are many other wikis, most with editorial policies different from Wikipedia's. Wikipedia is the world's most-visited wiki, and one of the largest. Wikipedia articles tend to rank high in Google Search results. Wikipedia's prominence attracts a large number of first-time wiki editors, some of whom are unaware that many other wikis exist. Because Wikipedia's editorial policies are much stricter than the ease of article editing may initially suggest, many articles by new editors are deleted. Some new editors would arguably be happier editing elsewhere, for example, on wikis catering to particular subject areas, with less-strict requirements for neutrality, verifiability and no original research. Choose Wikipedia only if you want to participate in the creation of a high-quality free encyclopedia, not simply because it's the first and only wiki you have heard of.

[edit] Contact persons

A list of people, by university and town, who are willing to serve as contact people, and can meet others in person to help them set up a course teaching with Wikipedia.

Username	Real name	University	Languages (intermediate+)	City/Region	Email
User:Jan eissfeldt	Jan Eissfeldt	University of Leipzig	de, en, es	Europe	via Wikipedia
User:Guenter_w	Günter W.	University of Salzburg	de, en, (it)	Austria	via Wikipedia

[edit] Considerations and suggestions

Wikipedia policy is a combination of written guidelines with unwritten customs, and can be difficult for a newcomer to fathom. Most Wikipedians will be helpful in guiding newcomers and explaining how we do things. However, for the sake of your class we strongly suggest that you yourself contribute here and become familiar with Wikipedia before sending your students. Your students will be much less likely to encounter problems here if you can give them appropriate guidance.

It is especially important to consider what your students will contribute here. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and has certain somewhat nebulous standards for its topics. A look at what Wikipedia is not is helpful in finding our topic boundaries.

As Wikipedia expands, students may have trouble finding appropriate subjects for which no article exists. Unless you have specific topics in mind that you know are appropriate, try the following, rather than requiring them to create new ones on their own.

[edit] Educational template

We have a template that can be easily copied and adopted to create a wiki-syllabus for your course on Wikipedia. See: Wikipedia:School and university projects/Piotrus educational boilerplate.

[edit] Suggested exercises

• Try having students start a requested article or expand an existing one:
  • Wikipedia:Requested articles
  • Wikipedia:Most wanted stubs
  • Wikipedia:Most wanted articles
  • Special:Shortpages
  • Special:Randompage
  • Wikipedia:Requests for expansion
  • Template:Opentask
• Tell students to fix spelling, factual, grammatical, and other errors.
  • Wikipedia:Cleanup
  • Wikipedia:Pages needing attention
• Tell students to add wikitext markup, links, and standard sections to poorly-edited articles (i.e., to wikify articles):
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikify
• Have students translate articles into English from another language.
  • Wikipedia:Translation into English.
• Students could translate our featured articles into other languages or write their own.
  • Complete list of language Wikipedias available
• Have students contribute to a subject-matter area that has generally been neglected.
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias
• Students could work on the collaboration of the week.
• Students could help with the projects at one of the Wikiportals (pages organizing projects on a broad subject area)
• Students could add citations to existing pages, thus helping to improve the credibility of Wikipedia while they learn the significance of citing sources. (Wikipedia:Citing sources and Wikipedia:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards.)
• Fork selected problem articles into a local Wiki for a class so students can edit them collaboratively. The resulting revisions can then replace or be incorporated into the original Wikipedia articles.
• Students can participate as help desk volunteers, developing skill by answering questions from other Wikipedia users, and of course ask questions of their own:
  • Wikipedia:Help desk
    • Note: in many cases, answering Help desk questions amounts to looking up the relevant Wikipedia policy or manual article. Students can learn much about how Wikipedia works by studying questions and answers on the Help desk, and learning how to look up the answers. In fact, teaching students how to answer Help desk questions would be a good way to teach them to be Wikipedians.
  • Wikipedia:Village pump
  • Wikipedia:Reference desk
• For many courses of study, related WikiProjects exist. Students may obtain guidance from Wikipedians with similar interests, and find lists of open tasks in one or more WikiProjects corresponding to their majors. Just a few examples:
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Maps
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Free Software

[Please add more.]

[edit] Current projects

Students are invited to add {{EducationalAssignment}} to the Talk page of articles which are created or get significant changes due to an assignment. The ending date and link to the project are optional: {{EducationalAssignment|date=YYYY-MM-DD|link=Wikipedia:School and university projects#PROJECT}}

This article is currently or was the subject of an educational assignment.

This article is currently or was the subject of an 2008-01-01 educational assignment. Further details are available here.

[edit] New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, New Jersey (Fall 2007-present)

An assignment was created by Davida Scharf, Director of Reference and Instruction at NJIT's Van Houten Library and tested in both online and face-to-face junior-level technical communication classes taught by Prof. Carol Johnson in the Fall of 2007 and Prof. James Lipuma in 2008 and currently. Students are asked to create a new article or revise an existing one on Wikipedia. They are asked to consider the audience they are addressing, as well as the context, as expressed in branching in and out and categorization, We developed a rubric for assessing student work. Contact us for details. This project has been incorporated into the syllabi of several other professors at NJIT and will be ongoing. See our presentation at the Merlot Conference in San Jose, California, August 2009.

[edit] University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill Department of American Studies (Fall 2009) (Ongoing)

Freshmen students in Professor Foster's course on American Indian Law, History, and Literature will be expanding and creating new Wiki content related to five major areas of American Indian law and history through small groups. Individuals in each group will focus on particular sections under the major areas. This will be an on-going assignment.

The areas of inquiry are:

1. Indian Country Jurisdiction

2. Supreme Court rulings on Native American Issues

3. Congressional legislation affecting Native Americans

4. Rights Reserved by Native American Tribes under the U.S. Constitution

5. Native American Demographics, Social Statistics and Economic Data

A good example of our past projects is the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. Feel free to contact Professor Foster in Talk if you have suggestions and advice, as we are all 'noobs' to this process.----Tolfoster (talk) 02:41, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] University of Michigan (Fall 2009) (Ongoing)

Currently, students in the graduate course in physical organic chemistry (40 students) are adding content to the following sites: host-guest chemistry, Hammett equation (modifications), tunneling in kinetic isotope effects, strain/transannular strain, Walsh diagrams, salt bridges, cheletropic reactions, hypervalent molecules, A-values, A-1,3-strain, self-healing polymers, and solvents/solvent effects. The new sites will be unveiled in early December. Questions to Ajm mich. Ajm mich (talk) 15:24, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] winter 2009

In Winter 2009, a graduate course in the organic chemistry of macromolecules (12 students) added content to anionic polymerization, gel permeation chromatography, fire-safe polymers (new site), shape memory polymers, step-growth polymerizations, and covalent organic frameworks (new site). Questions to Ajm mich (talk) 02:08, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] fall 2008

In Fall 2008, a graduate course in physical organic chemistry (26 students) added content in the area of transition state theory, asymmetric induction, chiral lewis acid, benson group increment theory, the hammett equation, the taft equation, halogen bonding, hyperconjugation, and pi-interactions. Questions to ajm_mich (talk) 14:38, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] University of Ljubljana 2006/07, 2007/08, 2008/09 (in Slovene language)

Around 100 articles have been put onto the project page Slovene literarary historians by three consecutive generations of students in prof. Miran Hladnik's seminar on Slovene literary history. Similar projects where students write articles for Wikipedia to obtain credit points are Slovene literary articles in other Wikipedias, Slovene children literature, Slovene authors of children's literature, Books and Wikisource project Slovene literary classics.

[edit] University of Illinois, Psychology (Spring 2010) (Ongoing)

Students in Kara Federmeier's Cognitive Psychophysiology course will be creating or editing pages covering major Event-related brain Potential (ERP) components used to study neural and cognitive functioning. Pages will include the morphological and functional characteristics of each component, describe some of their uses and contributions, and provide references to reputable scientific reviews. Questions to Dr. Federmeier.

[edit] University at Buffalo, The State University of New York (Spring 2009) (Ongoing)

Master of Library Science students in Dr. Judith Robinson’s LIS 518 Reference Sources and Services course will revise stubs in the category Library and Information Science using reference sources introduced in the course. Questions to Dr. Robinson
Lisrobin (talk) 16:58, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] University of Lethbridge (Spring 2009) (Ongoing)

Senior Neuroscience students in Dr. Deborah Saucier's NEUR 4850 (Neuropsychopharmacology) course will revise stubs in the area of drugs and behaviour. Students will have to expand the stub to ensure that it answers questions related to the neural target of the drug, its method of action and basic pharmacology. References to basic research will be provided. Questions to Dr. Saucier
User:dsau001 (talk) 8 January 2009

[edit] McGill University (Winter 2009) (Ongoing)

Masters' level students will revise and expand the article Augmentative and alternative communication. The project page can be found here Wikipedia:School and university projects/AAC --Poule (talk) 14:15, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] University of Toronto (Winter 2009) (Ongoing)

The students in EEB 356 at the University of Toronto are updating and improving sixteen wiki pages that deal with home and garden insects. This project will be conducted between January 22 and February 12, 2009. The professor says they will be monitoring their progress and a grade will be assigned based on the quality of the final entries and the contributions of each of the group members. They note that the students are only working on entries that seem in need of improvement. The professor is registered on Wikipedia as EEB356Prof (talk · contribs) Details added by §hep at 04:35, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] University of Sussex (January-February 2009) (Ongoing)

Undergraduate level students on the Molecular Medicine degree programme in the Common Medical Problems course will add to stubs associated with human cardiovascular medicine and physiology. Relleh22hctac (talk) 00:29, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, Virginia (Summer 2009)

An assignment will be created by Teresa Coffman, Associate Professor of Education at UMW. Graduate students taking an Instructional Design and Technology course will revise an existing topic on Wikipedia as it relates to educational technology. Feel free to contact Professor Coffman in Talk if you have suggestions and advice, we are very new to this process. --Teresacoffman (talk) 21:55, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] University of Houston, Houston, TX Mineralogy Project

Mineral term papers from undergraduate geology majors can be uploaded to the appropriate wikipedia entry. Emphasis is made on citations and literature search in the peer reviewed literature, that is outside the internet mostly.

• copied from below:
  • As part of a school project at the University of Houston, I have constructed an article on the mineral bararite. I don't believe there was any reasonable article before, but now I have adapted one of my term papers (which got a 96). To supplement this new article, I also started a page about ammonium fluorosilicate. Cryptohalite still needs an article, but I might help put one together from the material I acquired when studying bararite. I hope I did a good job turning my term paper into an encyclopedia article. Johnny Mineralogist (talk) 04:46, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

My mineralogy professor is Jonathan E. Snow. Johnny Mineralogist (talk) 04:48, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

there is also Bityite ... these look like great articles. I emailed Dr. Snow for more info. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 01:28, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany - Translation (Ongoing)

This is a short project that has been repeated every semester since summer 2006 in the context of a few translation classes (German to English). These classes are exclusively for students in the English Department; most of them are teacher trainees. During each project period of two to three weeks students work on selecting, translating, proofreading and editing texts. Learning how wiki software and Wikipedia work is also a part of what we do. We'd love to coordinate this work with other groups. --OberMegaTrans (talk) 21:42, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, FL Worldwide (Ongoing)

Students taking MGMT 412 (Airport Planning and Design), starting in the fall of 2009 will expand on the information contained on Wikipedia related to Airports, how new and existing facilities are planned and designed considering both United States Federal Aviation Administration and International International Civil Aviation Organization protocols. Students are required to create a course-relevant topic that did not exist or improve one in need of substantial improvement. The goal of this project is to foster student learning about the core concepts related to airport planning and design, develop an ongoing source of information for future classes, and how to present them to laypeople.

[edit] University of Pittsburgh sociology (fall 2009)

SOC 0317 (Global Socities) will have several groups, 5 student each, improving an article on Wikipedia related to sociology of the family, with the end goal of nominating it for a Good Article status. The course will last from late early September to late December. Course page: Wikipedia:School and university projects/User:Piotrus/Fall 2009. Course instructor: User:Piotrus. Results will be reported in December.

[edit] Rice University, Houston, Texas, United States of America. Arabic 301 (Fall 2009) (Ongoing)

Advanced Arabic students will translate the Rice University article into Arabic. --Aobjectpoet (talk) 19:17, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Portland State University computer Science (fall 2009)

CS 345 (Cyberculture: The Internet and Popular Culture) Several groups, 2-4 students each, will create a Wikipedia article of at least 750 new words with the goal of obtaining Did You Know status. The course will last from late September to early December. Course instructor User:Lenshapir. Course page: Wikipedia:School and university projects/CS345.

[edit] Earlham College Advanced Cell Physiology (fall, 2009)

Students in the Advanced Cell Physiology course at Earlham College will be editing pages relating to the cell cycle and its control as part of their course assignments. There are six students, each of whom will expand an existing article (stub). The expectation is that students will bring their article to the Good Article standard.

Dates: Students will begin their work October 1 and will complete their work by December 15, 2009.

Course Instructor User:Digbymom.

[edit] University of British Columbia (Fall 2009)

Undergraduate students in FNH 490 (Topics in Food, Nutrition & Health) are creating or improving articles in Wikipedia related to a variety of topics in nutrition. Students will be working in groups of 4 or 5 on a topic of their choosing. The course runs from Sept to Dec 2009. Course instructor: User:Drbethsnow.

[edit] Rhode Island College (Fall 2009) (Ongoing)

In Fall 2009, students in Professor [Mikaila Mariel Lemonik Arthur's] Comparative Law and Justice (Sociology/Anthropology/Justice Studies) began creating a Wiki resource on comparative legal systems. Each student is responsible for collecting information from disparate sources on a single country over the course of the semester. If successful, this project will be continued in future semesters. The Fall 2009 course runs from August-December 2009. Course Instructor: User:Mlarthur. Course Page: Comparative_law_and_justice.

[edit] Fort Worth Country Day School

A project that appears to be based around expanding articles found at Category:History_stubs. See: http://www.scribd.com/doc/19241521/Wikipedia-as-Venue-for-Historical-Res

[edit] IUPUI Museum Studies (Fall 2009) (Ongoing)

As part of the IUPUI Museum Studies collection care and management course FA09-IN-MSTD-A416/A516-18435, students have been given the following two assignements that must be completed in Wikipedia.

Collections Management Systems Analysis

Students will analyze three Wikipedia articles, the Smithsonian’s public database (SIRIS), and information on local public sculpture published by Indiana’s Save Outdoor Sculpture (SOS) project. Students will prepare and publish this written analysis using your individual Wikipedia “talk page.” The completed assignment should have a word count of 1,000-1,200 words. Your analysis should include ten internal Wikipedia links, and address conceptual issues for at least three relevant Wikipedia categories.

Final Project

The final project for the class is to write and publish two Wikipedia articles on sculptures contained in or related to IUPUI’s collection. The project has several components: A) Object Selection and Research. B) Drafting and Refining. C) Presentation and Feedback. Students will present their work in progress during class on 10/20, 11/3, 11/10, 11/17, and 11/24 (roughly 4 students each day). D) Publishing Article.

Wikipedia articles must be completed by the beginning of class on 12/1. When your articles are finalized, email a link to the instructors and print a copy of each article to turn in. Please note that articles posted on Wikipedia are subject to editing, relocation, and removal—print your article as soon as it is posted.

Outcomes

Students will explore ways in which Wikipedia can be used as a content management system (CMS) to help care for outdoor sculptures. Further, students will explore ways in which Flickr can be used as a digital asset management system.

Wikiproject Page

Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedia Saves Public Art

[edit] University of Illinois

There appears to be a project going on associated with Joe Grohen's writing class: student subpages.

[edit] Yale University (Fall 2009) (Completed)

Students in Macromolecular Structure and Biophysical Analysis have been assigned the task of writing an article for Wikipedia. This effort is part of a long standing graduate and upper level undergraduate course taught by the Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry. The decision to include a wiki based class assignment reflects the growing use of Wikipedia as a resource. As all involved are novices, the efforts this year will be limited. 6 groups of 3 students each have been given the task writing a defined subsection of a new entry entitled RNA Tertiary Structure. The expectation is that the article will meet the highest standards for content, integration with existing RNA subtopics , and Wikipedia style.

Course instructors are Andrew Miranker, Anna Pyle, Don Engelman and Xiong Yong. Instructor in charge, and overseeing this assignment is User:MirankerAD

[edit] University of Birmingham UK (Autumn 2009) (Ongoing)

Students in the Department of French Studies' Translation Circle are expanding the Lisieux page by translating the corresponding French page. This is an extra-curricular activity, but if successful the project will be expanded. Project leader: User:Tyleree

[edit] Keene State College (Fall 2009 and ongoing)

A group of students in Professor Estrella’s course on Latin American Literature Novels will be revising and creating the information contained on Wikipedia related to Latin American Literature. Questions to aestrella

[edit] University of Mississippi (Fall 2009)

A first semester writing course will be updating film pages. Students first study the five pillars of Wikipedia, review film pages, review Wikiproject Film, propose edits on the discussion pages of a particular film, and then make those changes. Project leader: User:BobCummings

[edit] Mid Sweden University course about wikis and Wikipedia (Fall 2009)

The worlds first university-level course devoted to wikis and Wikipedia is given by Mid Sweden University in cooperation with the Swedish local chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation during fall 2009, and will also be offered during June-August 2010. The course is a distanse course named Informatiks A, Wikipedia - writing, reliability and technology, 7.5 ECTS credits. See Press release August 30 2009 and english translation of the syllabi. The language of instruction is Swedish. Responsible teacher: User:Mange01.

[edit] New Bulgarian University (Fall 2009)

After the special prize for contributions to Bulgarian webspace, awarded to Bulgarian Wikipedia, the BG Site competition founder, Mrs Justine Toms, adopted the idea to encourage her students in New Bulgarian University to contribute to Bulgarian Wikipedia with articles in the field of online media, public relations and communication. On November 30, a short lecture was given to the students and potential wikipedians, and the page of the WikiProject "Online media and PR" was launched on December 4. Participation in the project is voluntary, and those students who get involved are asked to create or significantly improve at least three articles in the field until January 15, 2010. Two experienced Wikipedians and BG WP sysops, Spiritia and SilentShout, will support and mentor the project participants.

[edit] Skidmore College (Fall 2009)

Students in a seminar on Classical and Romantic Music have been editing and in some cases creating Wikipedia pages. Students chose a musical work and were the responsible for working on up to three related articles: the work, the genre of the work, and the composer of the work. Through initial bibliographic searching, students generated a bibliography that concentrated on recent, relevant, and authoritative sources. Students used this to edit the bibliographic sections of the Wikipedia articles, hoping to improve the bibliographic foundation for readers and for others making future edits. Research in these sources was followed by assessment and critique of the Wikipedia articles. Issues such as organization, the need for (expanded) coverage of some aspect of the life or works of the composer, of the genre or of the work, factual inaccuracies, and improved citations were all raised as possible edits. Each student presented a broad plan for their editing work. Students drafted their edits off-line before actually editing. Students were instructed to leave a 'summary of edits' and to discuss their rationales on the Talk pages. Works researched in the project were: Mozart, Don Giovanni; Haydn, Nelson Mass; Sor, Variations on a Theme by Mozart; Rossini, Barber of Seville; Chopin mazurkas; Chopin nocturnes; Liszt, Sonata in B Minor; Tchaikovsky, Swan Lake; Dvorak Serenade; Rimsky-Korsakov, Sheherazade; Debussy, Preludes; Debussy, Suite Bergamasque. The project ran from November 1 through December 15, 2009. Responsible teacher: User:Jonesville05.

[edit] University of National and World Economy (Fall 2009)

Freshmen from the Political Sciences specialty area of the University of National and World Economy, Sofia, Bulgaria, will take part in the Political Philosophy WikiProject in the Bulgarian Wikipedia. Under the guidance of their assistant Nikolay Krstev and two experienced wikipedians, Spiritia and Alisa Seleznyova, every volunteer from the course shall develop at least one new article in the field, or substantially improve an existing stub. The project is open to further involvement of other contributors.

[edit] Past projects

[edit] Resources

[edit] Case studies

• Robert E. Cummings, Lazy Virtues: Teaching Writing in the Age of Wikipedia, Vanderbilt University Press, 2009 (reviews)
• Hladnik, Miran. Slovene student projects in Wikipedia and Wikisource. Paper at the Third regional Wikimedia conference in Belgrade, December 19.-21., 2008.[1]
• Kristine L. Callis, Lindsey R. Christ, Julian Resasco, David W. Armitage, Jeremy D. Ash, Timothy T. Caughlin, Sharon F. Clemmensen, Stella M. Copeland, Timothy J. Fullman, Ryan L. Lynch, Charley Olson, Raya A. Pruner, Ernane H.M. Vieira-Neto, Raneve West-Singh, Emilio M. Bruna (2009) Improving Wikipedia: educational opportunity and professional responsibility. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 24(4):177-179.

[edit] Books on how to edit Wikipedia

• Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, published January 2008. ISBN 978-0596515164
  • Note: For two free copies of the book, contact the author via email - see his user page.
  • Also note: This book is now available on Wikipedia at: Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual

• How Wikipedia Works, published September 2008. No Starch Press. Available online at http://howwikipediaworks.com. ISBN 978-1593271763 (please contact phoebe with questions). Includes a section on using Wikipedia in the classroom.

[edit] See also

Wikiversity has learning materials about Wikiversity:School and university projects

• Wikibooks - wiki textbooks and particularly Guidelines for class projects
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia in academic studies
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia as an academic source
• Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia
• Category:Wikipedia articles as assignments
• Wikiversity Free learning communities, projects, and materials.
• Wikipedia Signpost coverage:
  • Wikipedia classroom assignments on the rise (26 December 2006)
  • Interview with the team behind one of the 2,000th featured articles (14 April 2008),Featured content from schools and universities (5 May 2008): Coverage of WikiProject Murder Madness and Mayhem, a teaching project at the University of British Columbia
• Advice on Using Wikipedia in Colleges and Universities by User:Jbmurray (assistant professor in Latin American Studies at the University of British Columbia and Wikipedia administrator)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• HSC students to get Wikipedia course (Australia, Sydney Morning Herald, 2008)
• College Students Work On Wikipedia
• Once shunned by academics, Wikipedia now a teaching tool
• Prof replaces term papers with Wikipedia contributions, suffering ensues and [2]
• Wikipedia project is a class act
• BBC article on using Wikipedia as part of a university masters course.
• Wikipedia: A scientific and educational opportunity in EcoTone blog
• Eduzendium - a similar wiki coursework initiative at Citizendium