Wikipedia Project

The Wikipedia Project has been one of the most rewarding, often challenging, but always interesting assignments I have facilitated in the classroom. The goal is for students to pick an existing article (or in many cases, create a new article), make improvements, and present their journey as wiki-editors to the class at the end of the semester. Because my classes are grounded in African American history and literature, we work closely with the WikiProject African diaspora. I generally spend eight weeks on the project and students begin the assignment around mid-semester. Because this project can be a bit intimidating for students, I spend a lot of class time scaffolding the necessary skills. Furthermore, we make great use of the Wikipedia dashboard. It is truly a guide for myself and the students and it introduces them to Wikipedia–its policies, setting up an account, making edits, peer reviewing other articles, and crafting a reflective presentation about their experience.

This project has been one of the most sustainable and valuable assignments, and students have remarked about how impactful it is to be able to collaborate on increasing open access to knowledge about underrepresented African American history, culture, and literature. Some have remarked about the ability of knowledge creation to outlive them.

screenshot of Rudolph Fisher's Wikipedia Page
Rudolph Fisher’s Wikipedia Page

My undergraduates have created and edited over 40 articles, totaling nearly 1500 overall edits and I continue to be proud of the work that they have done. You can learn more about Wiki Education on their website. I was featured as a guest contributor for WikiEdu and you can read about my experience teaching the project here.

Selected Articles Edited

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