User talk:Cliotropic/WPWH for Educators
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Best Practices
What works well in assigning Wikipedia editing for students? Let's put our heads and experience together and figure out. Add a sub-topic below if you have other questions.
For long blocks of text (like assignments), please surround them with {{Collapse_top}} and {{Collapse_bottom}} templates so that the talk page will be easier to read.
- For an excellent example of classroom/Wikipedia cooperation, see ]
- Conversely, for an example of what not to do, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Global Economics. LadyofShalott 00:05, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
Community pages for students
As I've been thinking about teaching students to edit Wikipedia, I've wondered about how to best introduce them to the community and collaboration aspect of it. Does it work better to have a separate talk page for the class to ask and answer one another's questions and/or request peer review? (Sudden influxes of many new editors on the talk page for
Guidelines and Grading Criteria in Assigning Wikipedia Articles
Writing a Wikipedia article was an assignment in my undergraduate history class. Here's the directions on the assignment from my syllabus (comments/recommendations for improvement are welcome):
Individual Project in Interpreting History: Building a Wikipedia Entry
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Students will also complete an individual project that either a) develops a biography of a Kentucky woman whose life was impacted by or was a critical influence on the civil rights movement, or b) explores in depth a political event involving women that is a key part of the Kentucky civil rights movement but is not examined closely in the course. Students will build and refine an general encyclopedic entry of not less than 1,000 words. This article will be published in Wikipedia. It should draw on high-quality scholarly sources, use Wikipedia Style Guidelines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_style_guidelines), and adhere to the three fundamental principles of the Wikimedia Foundation: neutral point of view, verifiability and no original research (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Simplified_ruleset). Students should also request a peer review of the entry from the Wikipedia editor community (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Peer_review). Each student must craft a carefully prepared prospectus, consisting of a 1 page description of the project and a bibliography of primary and secondary sources no later than the afternoon of October 7th. Each student should meet with me by appointment to discuss her/his proposed project topic before preparing the prospectus. Each student will create her or his own Wikipedia login ID, will become familiar with Wikipedia as a community and as a knowledge resource. The final project must be published on Wikipedia and completed before the Thanksgiving break. Late projects will lose 5 points for each day they are late up to three days; no entries will be accepted after 5 pm on November 27. Writing about Events: You may choose to focus on an event central to women in a local community or significant at a state or national level – either way these questions offer a way to get started:
Writing about People: You might examine a woman’s life within the context of a national event or you might examine the effect that that person had on a particular local or statewide movement – either way, these questions may help get your investigation going:
It also helped to have a criteria sheet as part of the syllabus so that they could see up front what was expected. They were expected also to use the criteria list as a self-assessment of their work after it was posted in Wikipedia.
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Your comments and suggestions for improvement are welcome. See more about the class and syllabus at the SAWH Teaching wiki. Randolph.hollingsworth (talk) 16:14, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- Randolph, this is great. I've taken the unusual step of editing your comment to add {{Collapse_top}} and {{Collapse_bottom}} templates so that it's easier to read the talk page.
- I especially like the grading-criteria rubric; it seems very specific and clear about your expectations. What did you find worked well about this assignment, and what would you change about the wording for the next time you offer it?
- Also, I hadn't previously seen the SAWH teaching site; I'm going to add that to the subproject page because I think it could be useful for others. ---Shane Landrum (cliotropic | talk | contribs) 16:58, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- I wouldn't advise students to write a "conclusion" as outlined here. Wikipedia articles don't have conclusions because they aren't supposed to be essays or contain ]
- thanks! I removed the sentence re concluding paragraph and the word "thesis" from "thesis statement" - these directions might be misdirect someone else's students writing for Wikipedia if they use the rubric verbatim. Since we spend a lot of time in class looking at historical writing and looking for the author's open or hidden thesis statements, I didn't have a problem with including "thesis" in the phrase "thesis statement" but I understand where you're coming from... thanks for improving the rubric. Randolph.hollingsworth (talk) 18:22, 3 April 2011 (UTC)