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Open Learning with Wikipedia

Addressing Gender Disparity Online

*EAP = English for Academic Purposes

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Instructors who use Wikipedia at the U of L

(Treaty 7)

Jördis Weilandt

Instructor and Educational Developer

joerdis.weilandt at

uleth dot ca

@BaltischesJuwel

Lisa Lambert

Political Scientist and

Sessional Instructor

lisa.lambert at uleth dot ca

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POLI SCI 2019

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3: we utilized Wikipedia education dashboard, a safe classroom space that guides students through the steps of editing in Wikipedia without needing to work in the live spaces right away.

Both Lisa and I read inspiring articles on Wikipedia in Classrooms and really like the Wikipedia published resource of case studies, in which university professors introduced the why and how they taught with it in their courses.

While preparing for the Wikipedia assignment as well as when teaching the course, Lisa and enjoyed the opportunities to pair the Wikipedia work with more general discussions about our teaching and our openness in approaching it with joy, curiosity and a true interest in the academic growth of our students whom we look to support through engaging means and the lowering of barriers to success in our courses.

Here you can see a screenshot of Lisa’s third year course Wikipedia Education Classroom Dashboard. It not only shows you how many students were engaging in the assignment, but also provides you with a quick overlook into the results of the student work. As the description of her course assignment shows there is an information gap regarding elected women politicians, which is what motivated Lisa to design a task that would allow her students to create impactful course work when either editing existing Wikipedia biographies of women politicians or writing articles about them from scratch.

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POLI SCI 2019 Student Feedback

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POLI SCI 2019 Student Feedback

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Academic Goals

Use Wikipedia to

Address gender disparity online;
Build and enhance academic skills relating to critical digital literacy, research, critical thinking, factual writing, and professional communication;
Join an online open knowledge-building community.

Picture credit: Arièle Bonte via Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/PA4zOzlLTaI CC-0

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EAP Spring 2021 and 2020

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EAP Spring 2021

Syllabus

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EAP 2020 Term Student Feedback

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“Wikipedia is perhaps best seen as a distinct source of information from other online media.[…]. With its emphasis on continuous co-creation of information purporting to lead to crowd-sourced authenticity and accuracy, Wikipedia has understandably come to play a prominent role within everyday information seeking behaviors.”

Quote from: Selwyn, N., & Gorard, S. (2016). Students’ use of Wikipedia as an academic resource—Patterns of use and perceptions of usefulness. The Internet and Higher Education, 28, 28–34. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2015.08.004

While it may justified to caution students towards the unthinking use of Wikipedia as a preliminary and preparatory source of information for academic papers, it certainly has great value to consider implementing work with the encyclopedia into classrooms of all academic disciplines since it can be a means for students develop more solid academic skill sets relating to digital literacy, research, critical thinking, factual writing and professional communication.

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Gender bias on Wikipedia. (2020). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gender_bias_on_Wikipedia&oldid=935073293

O’Connor, S., White, A., Thomas, S., & McAndrew, E. (n.d.). You can’t be what you can’t see. – Wikimedian in Residence. Retrieved January 15, 2020, from https://thinking.is.ed.ac.uk/wir/you-cant-be-what-you-cant-see

Selwyn, N., & Gorard, S. (2016). Students’ use of Wikipedia as an academic resource—Patterns of use and perceptions of usefulness.

The Internet and Higher Education, 28, 28–34. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2015.08.00

Vetter, M. A., McDowell, Z. J., & Stewart, M. (2019). From Opportunities to Outcomes: The Wikipedia-Based Writing Assignment. Computers and Composition, 52, 53–64. CC-BY-NC-ND. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2019.01.008

Wade, J., & Zaringhalam, M. (2018). Why we’re editing women scientists onto Wikipedia. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05947-8

Weilandt, J. (January, 2020). EAP: Women in Wikipedia. Retrieved January 15, 2020, from https://kpu.pressbooks.pub/uofleap/

Wiki Education Foundation, EXBROOK, other contributors as. (2014). English: A full-term sample syllabus for the Wiki Education Foundation’s Classroom Program that incorporates many of the best practices for running major Wikipedia assignments. Wiki Education Foundation. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Syllabus,_A_12-week_assignment_to_write_a_Wikipedia_article_(Wiki_Education_Foundation).pdf

Case Studies, How instructors are teaching with Wikipedia (Wiki Education Foundation).pdf. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Case_Studies,_How_instructors_are_teaching_with_Wikipedia_(Wiki_Education_Foundation).pdf

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