Wikipedia:Student assignments: Difference between revisions

This is an information page. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines; rather, its purpose is to explain certain aspects of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect differing levels of consensus and vetting.

Shortcuts WP:ASSIGN WP:STAS WP:STUASG

This page in a nutshell: When students edit Wikipedia as part of an assignment, it should improve Wikipedia – without any serious violations of content norms. This page contains advice to all parties involved.

Student assignments can help improve Wikipedia, but sometimes they cause the encyclopedia more harm than good.

.

Instructors are expected to have a good working knowledge of Wikipedia and should be willing to help address

develop, contact with the instructor can become necessary.

Established editors should welcome student editors, and students should learn to communicate via the normal Wikipedia channels, such as on

user talk pages

. If editors contact an instructor they should try to be helpful. Likewise, if an instructor receives constructive feedback on a classroom assignment, they should be responsive.

Improving medicine and health topics often requires particularly careful use of sources.

Good assignments are based on a knowledge of Wikipedia's norms (known as policies and guidelines). When knowledgeable instructors, competent students, and good ambassadors collaborate based on those norms, an assignment has a good chance of succeeding. To keep things on the right track, a grading system and assignment that are aligned with these norms are necessary. Students should be willing to put in the effort to leave a quality contribution.

Students and instructors participating in assignments can feel overwhelmed by multiple policies and guidelines,

).

When experienced editors encounter the results of a poorly performed assignment, they can feel overwhelmed by an onslaught of multiple content or format issues in articles they care about. They might also feel as if they are acting as unpaid and unthanked

consensus

on disputed material.

Wikipedia takes pride in being

"the encyclopedia that anyone can edit"

, and the Wikipedia community is based on volunteers who attempt to follow the norms of the site. When students edit to meet the requirements of a class (which might not align with the norms of Wikipedia), rather than out of a voluntary desire to execute Wikipedia's mission, this dynamic changes. Because of this fact, Wikipedia justifiably expects instructors to take responsibility for their students' work, both for the students' sake and for the good of the encyclopedia.

Course pages, user pages, and user names

Each classroom should have a

address (which will not be disclosed unless you reply to received emails or use Wikipedia to send an email).

Some editors use their real life names as user names, to identify themselves on Wikipedia, whereas others choose never to reveal personal information. For each class project on Wikipedia, instructors should give thought as to whether or not students should edit under their real names. Some instructors require their classroom to publish under their real names, so as to encourage taking responsibility for text and to mimic academic journals. Doing so can, however, create a permanent online record of plagiarism, if that unfortunate circumstance occurs. Students editing controversial subject areas under their real names may also, very rarely, experience harassment outside of Wikipedia because of their actions, even if they have done nothing wrong. Further information can be found at Wikipedia:On privacy, confidentiality and discretion and Wikipedia:How to not get outed on Wikipedia.

Each student editor should register his or her own editor account. Under no circumstances should more than one student

.

Advice for students

First, welcome to Wikipedia! Wikipedia welcomes new editors, and we hope you will want to stick around after your class is over. Writing and editing here is an expression of encyclopedism using an open and free wiki. You will find that editing Wikipedia will feel quite different than writing a typical term paper, particularly because you will likely have to work with editors who are not fellow students in your class.

Wikipedia has its own

, below, and please take it very seriously!

If you plan to edit an existing article but you want to practice with test edits first, then copy and paste the article into

Experienced editors might give you advice or might revert your contributions with an

-based arguments on the talk pages.

Wikipedia is a collaborative environment that depends upon communication. If you think editors are being an impediment to fulfilling your assignment requirements, then please say so to an ambassador (privately if helpful) or at the

Teahouse

. We hope your experience will be pleasant. Happy editing!

Advice for instructors

Ideally, you're already an experienced editor. If not, there are materials available and people willing to help you learn. Available people might include another instructor who has experience with Wikipedia assignments, an ambassador (see the links in that section below), or someone at the

if you would like assistance. Please do your due diligence to understand Wikipedia before you craft an assignment. We thank you in advance!

The volunteer community here can be very welcoming to new student editors, but they are also limited in their ability to deal with new issues that suddenly develop, as can happen when many students show up at the same time. Often, volunteers have a niche area they contribute to, which may coincide with your class assignment. Because there may be many eyes on the articles where students work, and because you cannot control what Wikipedia editors will do, or when they will show up to make edits of their own, careful attention to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines from the start of the course will improve your students' experiences – and may save you from aggravating and time-consuming incidents just at the time when you are submitting your grades.

Please ensure that your class follows the above advice for course pages, user pages, and user names; please make these requirements to receive assignment credit. Ambassadors can help you set up a course page and provide feedback on assignment design. At your course page please include a {{course assignment}} template that specifies the term and links to the course page. Your students should post it on the article talk pages they plan to improve. When new articles are written, please ensure that your students also place that template on the article talk page.

Your assignment and grading rubric should reinforce (and certainly not contradict) Wikipedia's norms, and your class should improve the encyclopedia. Wikipedia has its own "

but allowing a small portion of the most dedicated students to attempt these outcomes, after careful review by the instructor or ambassador, may be rewarding.

Encourage your students to engage with basic Wikipedia processes and standards. Make sure they understand the advice above for students, perhaps by making this information page assigned reading for a quiz.

, which is also linked to in the student section above.) Please ensure that your students understand that plagiarism and copyright infringement are not allowed, and establish with your ambassador what to do if cases develop.

Have students post specific suggestions for improvement (not just compliments) directly on the talk pages of their peers' articles, and not offline. Incorporate responding to feedback into the grading rubric. Reward students who give good advice on Wikipedia. Reward students who seek out advice from experienced editors (such as at

peer review

) and then make improvements to the article based on that advice. If an active WikiProject exists around the content you'll be assigning your students to edit, encourage students to notify editors there. Penalize students who do not address the points that were raised by non-student editors.

Consider encouraging your students to work in a sandbox and know that it is an option to have their assignment graded there. Please don't allow students to publish articles that do not improve Wikipedia. Base their course credit instead on the sandbox version, and not at the burden of the volunteer editing community.

Thank you for introducing your students to Wikipedia, ensuring that they fit in well here, and helping them leave behind a positive contribution for many readers!

Advice for editors

Depending on how classes are organized, students may have different priorities than established editors do (class grades rather than improving Wikipedia; making a few changes and not coming back). Editors sometimes encounter large numbers of student edits in a short period of time, and can find it difficult to get students to pay attention to editorial advice. As always,

apply, but student editors should be treated in the same way any new editor is treated, without any special considerations that other editors do not receive.

If you see problem edits, explain your concerns on article or user talk pages. Make edits you consider appropriate, as you would in the case of other new editors. You are entitled to revert content or move it to the talk page, or to nominate for deletion if appropriate, especially when there are serious policy violations. (A student can always request that an

the pages they are working on. Once you have politely expressed your concerns, you are not obligated to keep repeating the advice.

You are never obligated to be an unpaid teaching assistant. Please do not let student projects diminish your enjoyment of editing. Do not feel badly about reverting edits that justifiably should be reverted. Student grades are not your responsibility, nor is any other aspect of teaching the class, unless you personally choose to involve yourself. If you do not want to fix all of the problems on a page, feel free to leave it for other editors to do, rather than becoming stressed by the effort of doing it alone.

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When students become interested in editing cooperatively, it can be a genuine pleasure to work with them. If you see a valuable student editor, please consider giving them {{The Excellent New Editor's Barnstar}} by placing {{subst:The Excellent New Editor's Barnstar|1=Put your message here. ~~~~}} on their talk page. Likewise, if you have reason to single a class out for praise, also consider posting at the noticeboard.

Advice for ambassadors

     For a list of current regional ambassadors, see here.

You represent the editing community. Please help your students understand Wikipedia in a welcoming manner, so that student experiences are enjoyable and their contributions improve the encyclopedia. Please establish a good working relationship with the instructor (perhaps by collaborating on the course page) so that you can help improve the assignment (even if only for future semesters), and make sure that it does not contradict Wikipedia's norms.^[11] Early in the process, discuss with the instructor how you will notify them if plagiarism occurs or has likely occurred. You might also decide to give advice to students on article talk pages (or in peer reviews) to incorporate your suggestions into the assignment.

Although we all hope things will go smoothly, there is the chance that problems with copyright violations or student unresponsiveness to concerns will develop. Talk with the instructor about what possibilities exist if a student's contribution receives a poor reception, including grading the assignment from a sandbox. If non-student editors contact you with concerns about the class's editing, please be prepared to respond promptly, and please take those concerns seriously. Help editors, in turn, understand the class. Please facilitate the advice given in, and the general spirit of, this information page. Award the barnstar mentioned above if it is deserved. Thank you for volunteering to serve as a liaison between Wikipedia and a classroom!

Choosing a topic

As you are getting to know your way around Wikipedia, and deciding which topic you want to write on, you will notice that wikilinking allows readers to easily access text in other articles by clicking on the link. Consider when adding text whether you are adding the content to the right article; if the content you want to add fits better in another article, readers can get there via a link. As an example, in the article Jumping Frenchmen of Maine some information about George Miller Beard and the startle response is needed so the reader can understand the topic, but detail about Beard and the startle response is expanded in the articles George Miller Beard and Startle response. Take care not to add content to the wrong article, as you may be duplicating work that has already been done, or you may be spending time generating content that will be moved or deleted if it's in the wrong article. Be more cautious about removing existing content than adding it, and if you are removing more than a few lines it is a good idea to explain why on the talk page. Some students entirely replace the existing text and metadata such as categories; this is almost never a good idea, and likely to lead to reversion of all their edits.

If you are starting a new article, the subject needs to pass the test of

is needed. If you are considering creating a new article, it is generally a good idea to run it past your campus ambassador (if you have one), or your online ambassador – or both.

Plagiarism and copyright infringement

Students and other new editors sometimes mistakenly believe that as long as added text is cited to its source, copying that text (or closely paraphrasing it) is acceptable. It is not. Plagiarizing could earn you an "F" in the course or being thrown out of the university; copying too closely can also be copyright infringement. If you are editing under your real name, the plagiarism can follow you for life. Students should realize that a potentially large number of persons may be silently observing all edits on a Wikipedia page, and consequently there is actually a very high probability that someone will notice plagiarism.

Some established editors are reluctant to "blow the whistle" on student plagiarism because of the consequences that can result for the student, and believe that it is the professor's or the ambassador's job to review articles for plagiarism and copyright infringement. However, it is just as probable that another editor will come along subsequently, and pursue the misconduct at any time, and so it is in the instructor's interest not to leave any problems unresolved.

The following pages are helpful reading:

• Let's get serious about plagiarism
• Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing
• Wikipedia:Copyright violations

Editing medicine and health topics

Wikipedia has unique sourcing and style guidelines covering health information. Health and mental health-related content in any article (not just medicine, biology and psychology articles) must be supported by independent "secondary" sources, such as expert

.

Students editing health-related content should read these pages that explain how to write and organize medical articles, how primary, secondary and tertiary sources are used in health-related content, and where to find ideal sources:

• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles for general guidelines on how medical information is organized.
• Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) for information about sourcing guidelines specific to medicine and health-related content.
• Dispatches: Sources in biology and medicine for a tutorial on how to locate appropriate sources.

One way students can have a more rewarding Wikipedia experience in adding health information to an article is to begin by posting a list of sources they plan to use to the article's "talk page" (via the tab at the top of the article) before they start writing content from those sources; that will allow experienced editors to guide them towards optimal sources and comment on the appropriateness of the planned article expansion.

The WMF has supported the development of the Education Program extension to help automate course page development, and the WMF has sponsored a US and Canada education program for several years. In 2013, the WMF funded a transition organization (the Wiki Education Foundation) with a grant.

Examples of instructors doing assignments that have worked include User:Brianwc, who has successfully run a multi-semester program at a law school. User:jbmurray had his students take articles up to good and featured status. User:Biolprof had their graduate students peer review each other's contributions multiple times, to help ensure quality contributions were left behind.

An example of a thorough course page design is at Education Program:Saint Louis University/Signal Transduction (SP13), which can be adapted from User:Biolprof/Signal Transduction Spring 2013. Wikipedia:Canada Education Program/Courses/Present/North American Environmental History (Tina Loo) has also been cited as a positive example.

Please ask at the

. Thanks!

• Education Program Online volunteer log
• Wikipedia:USEP/Courses/JHU MolBio Ogg FA13/Student banner
• Wikipedia:Participation by academic projects
• Here, for a list of old classroom projects
• Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Courses/Trophy case
• Wikipedia:Historical page for school and university projects
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Classroom coordination, a historical project
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/How to edit

Internal links

• Comments from jbmurray (talk · contribs), an academic and Wikipedian
• Comments on who is in charge of the WMF Education Program as of December 2012

External links

• The Last thing Wikipedia Needs Is 1000 New Editors in the Same Intro to Psychology Course by Daniel Luzer, Washington Monthly, April 9, 2013. A case study of a student project gone wrong.