Wikipedia:School and university projects

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

If you are a professor or teacher at a school or university or college, 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"), probably 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 that you may want to use.

Contents

[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.
  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 flexibilty 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] 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-syllabi for your course on Wikipedia. See: Wikipedia:School and university projects/Piotrus educational boilerplate.

[edit] Suggested exercises

[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. The basic assignment was to create a new topic or revise an existing topic on Wikipedia. Some results can be seen at the class website. This project has been incorporated into the syllabi of several other professors at NJIT and will be ongoing.

[edit] Amherst College (Spring 2008)

Martha Saxton, Professor of History and Women’s and Gender Studies at Amherst College incorporated Wikipedia into the curriculum of her Women’s History course (1865 to the present) in the Spring 2008 semester. Students participated in improving the gender balance of Wikipedia entries. Since students use Wikipedia as a source, it seemed valuable to work to understand it and improve it, both for the value of intervening with well researched and transparently documented articles, but also as a way to make the research, editing, and bibliographic processes through which scholarship is produced transparent to young historians.

In scrolling through various articles on Wikipedia it became clear that women show up only occasionally as subjects of biographies, and that they are barely integrated into the general historical articles like Early America. Fifteen students, enrolled in her Women’s History course, selected articles that they wished to revise to include the participation and contributions of women. In each case, students did an initial critique of the existing article, laying out what their own interventions would be. Two, for example, decided to work on the article on the Shakers and Mother Ann Lee. One student included material on women in the American Federation of Labor, and another worked on early labor activity. Others worked on topics as disparate as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the California Gold Rush and Social Security. They then worked up drafts of their proposed revisions. Those went through two or more rewrites for brevity, accuracy and balance. The students inserted their final revisions into the Wikipedia articles on May 15, 2008.

Two students from the Spring 2007 course on women in early America took this course as well. They collaborated on an essay describing their experiences of having their articles edited. They categorized the types of edits that occurred and looked into the motivation behind different kinds of interventions, exploring various kinds of biases, their intellectual results, and the implications for a balanced Wikipedia.

At the end of the semester, the students drafted a description of their project and its significance in beginning to create a balanced version of our nation's history. Working together, they produced a declaration outlining the need for the project and its methodology. The endeavor is called the Amherst College Gender Equality Project.

[edit] American University (Spring 2008)

Professor: Chris Simpson

This American University School of Communication project prepares graduate students to research, write, post, and edit carefully referenced new articles. We emphasize incremental contributions to existing Wikipedia articles on selected aspects of public affairs, followed by monitoring subsequent comments and edits. The course also discusses arguments found in Y. Benkler's Wealth of Networks that concern 'social production' and Wikipedia.


[edit] Columbus State University (Spring 2008)

Students in Developmental Biology are collaborating to create an article on Dictyostelium discoideum and its importance as a model system in developmental biology. The goals of the assignment are to create an article of value to the developmental biology community and to give students an opportunity to experience collaborative writing.

[edit] University of Hong Kong (Spring 2008)

For this Spring 2008 assignment, U21/HKU Human Security students (undergraduates) were asked to contribute substantive information on Human security to Wikipedia. The objective of this assignment was to contribute to the comprehensive and balanced coverage of Human Security on Wikipedia. The instructor LMCinHK started a Wikipedia article in 2006, entitled Human security, then provided students with specific parameters for how to edit/expand/cut that article. In order to improve the quality of their submissions, the students this semester will be doing their initial write-ups on a course wiki prior to submitting their work to Wikipedia. The course will end in mid May 2008.

[edit] Gloucester County College, Library & Communications Dept. (Spring 2008)

  • COM101 Information Literacy Alternate Project: Wikipedia article

Offered as an alternate information literacy assignment in the spring 2008 semester in Christine Herz's English Composition class, the assignment was to create a new article or revise an existing article on Wikipedia. The course ends in May 2008. Some of the projects can be viewed from the class website.

[edit] New Bulgarian University, History of Culture Department (Fall 2007/Spring 2008)

Lecturers and students from the History of Culture Department at the New Bulgarian University initiated the "Arts and Culture" Wikiproject in Bulgarian-language Wikipedia. The project aims at the development and improvement of free encyclopedic content in these two fields of knowledge, with special emphasis on the ancient arts, philosophy, religion and culture which bloomed on the territories of Bulgaria and Greece. The team is using the Wikipedia project for written assignments during the courses in Ancient Religion, Ancient Greek Culture and Art, Thracian Culture and Art, Byzantine Art, Art of Medieval Bulgaria, Art of the Renaissance.

A month before the start of the project, a coordination meeting was held, during which basic aspects of Wikipedian philosophy and functioning were presented in front of the students. Participation in the project is voluntary and not limited to the students from the NBU. The project members also obtain technical support from other more experienced Wikipedians. Maintained are a list of the members, lists of red links to prospective new articles, stubs to be expanded, and lists of already written and edited articles and categories.

[edit] Interdisciplinary and Wiki: A Match Made in Heaven (timeframe not specified)

Wikipedia is a very useful resource for teaching interdisciplinarity because it is inherently interdisciplinary. Wikipedia is similar to interdisciplinarity in how both require the contributions of many people from a wide variety of backgrounds in order to present a truly holistic view of any topic. No complete encyclopedia could be written exclusively from the point of view of any one discipline. For example, if Wikipedia were created only by scientists it would be missing important information about history and social issues. Similarly, students of interdisciplinary studies are taught that in order to fully understand real-world situations and issues, one must apply the methods and knowledge of multiple disciplines. In addition, actively working on Wikipedia teaches students how to write intelligently for a variety of audiences and how to work constructively with other editors. Such applied learning is more rewarding and more effective than traditional classroom teaching. It stimulates the students' desire to excel and their interest in what they are doing because they know that their work will be seen by others. The students are forced to think interdisciplinarily in order to contribute meaningful information to such a comprehensive project. Both Wikipedia and interdisciplinary thinking rely on links and connections between traditionally segregated fields. Every properly formatted Wikipedia article links to many others, allowing readers to discover ties between seemingly unrelated subjects. Similarly, interdisciplinarity often involves connecting aspects of different disciplines to form a new and unique area of study.

[edit] Commonwealth of Learning's Wikieducator (timeframe not specified)

Wikieducator is a community resource supported by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) for the development of free educational content. COL is an intergovernmental organisation created by Commonwealth Heads of Government to encourage the development and sharing of open learning and distance education knowledge, resources and technologies.

The WikiEducator is an evolving community intended for the collaborative:

  • planning of education projects linked with the development of free content;
  • development of free content on Wikieducator for e-learning;
  • work on building open education resources (OERs) on how to create OERs.
  • networking on funding proposals developed as free content.

[edit] ITESM Campus Toluca - Advanced English (Ongoing)

Due to the sucess of using Wikipedia to get students to write in my Advanced B class (Fall 2007 - see past projects),I have decided to continue using Wikipedia in my other advanced English courses. The more exciting is the use of Wikipedia for an advanced class I will be teaching to teachers here (one of ITESM's goals is to increase the percentage of courses we offer in English). Please look at Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects/ITESM_Campus_Toluca for a description. These teachers will contribute more extensively than Advanced B did (as they should, they are academic professionals) both about their home country and the material they teach. An outline of the assignments they will do on Wikipedia is on that page.

Also on that page, is a very short description of what I will do with my Advanced A class. Due to pedogogic contraints, I cannot devote a lot of time to explaining Wikipedia to these students, and Im not quite as sure how this will work. Im going to play it by ear but I have devoted 4 class days to getting to write articles about Mexican towns using a template I and other Wikipedians have devised.

See Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects/ITESM_Campus_Toluca/Navigation_bar which has links to pages associated with these classes.

Anyone who wishes to adopt/mentor my students (or help me in ANY way!) can contact me via my talk page.

Thelmadatter 21:29, 26 July 2007 (UTC)Thelmadatter

[edit] Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal (Spring 2008)

Virgilio A. P. Machado is teaching another offering of a course in logistics to mostly industrial engineering undergraduate students. Their assignment (Portuguese) is to learn wiki and write articles related to logistics in the Portuguese Wikipedia. Two students from Greece registered for the course, so the project is also being developed in the English Wikipedia. Projects ends July 31, 2008.

[edit] University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, Virginia (Spring 2008)

Professor Mara Scanlon is teaching a Long Poem seminar and her students have been working on a collaborative article in a stand alone MediaWiki to frame the history and significance of this poetic genre. As of April 1st, 2008, they created the Long poem Wikipedia article and are currently working on formatting it correctly, citations, and various other details. Jgroom (talk) 09:22, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] University of Karlsruhe, Institute for Geography and Geoecology (Spring 2008)

Graduate students in a geography class with Dr Christophe Neff "will analyse the content of wikipedia articles concerning the geography of southern France with special focus to Leucate, Corbières and (MTE) Mediterranean type ecosystems (and botanical articles concerning mediterranean plants). Furthermore they will compare the different wikis (en,fr, de, es etc.)". [1] Splash - tk 13:37, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Mercyhurst College Institute for Intelligence Studies (Spring 2008) (Ongoing)

Professor Kristan Wheaton teaches an Intelligence Communications course twice yearly, part of which includes a publication assignment. In Spring 2008, he assigned a dozen students to contribute new articles on topics he preapproved in the areas of intelligence reform, analytical techniques, etc. He plans to continue these assignments in the future, having found the experience effective in teaching online collaboration, publication, and research skills. See Professor Wheaton's blog for a list of the articles and his feedback on the assignment. --Pat (talk) 02:25, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Savannah College of Art and Design (Spring 2008) (Ongoing)

In Spring 2008, students in Professor Lambin's undergraduate level Historic Preservation Law class took on the task of expanding on the Wiki content related to historic preservation law. There is a tremendous body of relevant historic preservation case law out there, but, for the non-practitioner, it can be challenging to find and interpret. It is hoped that these new expanded articles will make this information more readily accessible to preservationists. Students were able to choose from a range of pre-approved articles. Some students will create new articles, while others will expand on existing content such as articles on major pieces of historic preservation legislation, including the National Historic Preservation Act. This will be an on-going assignment and will take the place of the final research paper. In Winter 2009 it will take the place of the final research paper. To learn more or to provide comment, contact Professor Lambin in Talk. A list of completed articles is coming soon.

[edit] Planned projects

[edit] The University of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia (March 2008)

The University of Sydney's School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering will begin an undergraduate project in 2008.

[edit] Past projects

[edit] Texas A&M University (Spring 2008)

Lecturer: Adrienne Brundage

Our Forensic Entomology course worked in groups to prepare and post articles relative to Forensic Entomology. Students were required to throughly research each subject before posting, then monitor comments and edits for a grade. Please direct any questions, comments or suggestions to me. I am hoping to make this a yearly project that evolves as the semesters progress.

This year's project went very well. While some students did drop the ball (as is common with any project given in a course), most of the students enjoyed the project immensely. The idea that they were writing for a very large audience drove them to put more work into the project than they would have otherwise (and thus complain about the amount of work they were putting in more than they would have otherwise). They also got to experience feedback in many forms from someone other than me. I think that may have been the greatest challenge and lesson they learned--not everyone will bend over backwards to spare their feelings, and they are unable to control what everyone says about their work. I also required that they take ALL feedback, good and bad, into account. This was tough for many, but it made them better writers.

Project Website Course Website


[edit] University of Pittsburgh (Spring 2008)

Students of Social Change in United States (with professor Salvatore Babones and teaching assistant Piotr Konieczny) will be using Wikipedia for written assignments with the aim of creating content related to 1) deindustrialization and Neighborhoods of Pittsburgh.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 22:35, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Assignment completed, the article diff before and after.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 19:06, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] University of British Columbia (Spring 2008)

The University of British Columbia's class SPAN312 ("Murder, Madness, and Mayhem: Latin American Literature in Translation") contributed to Wikipedia during Spring 2008. Our collective goals were to bring a selection of articles to "Featured" status (or as near as possible). In the end, we contributed three featured articles, seven good articles, and one B-class article:

See also:

The project coordinator was User:Jbmurray. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 17:09, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Truman State University (Fall 2007)

[edit] Interdisciplinary Studies

Scott Alberts, an associate professor of Statistics at Truman State University, is using Wikipedia for a project in his Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies course (IDS 175). The course examines the 'discipline,' of Interdisciplinary Studies, and the nature of what makes disciplines distinct. In addition, the class will examine topics through several interdisciplinary lenses, and try to look at them beyond disciplinary boundaries. Also, the students are forced to think interdisciplinarily in order to contribute meaningful information to such a comprehensive project. The class is also using contract grading in which students sign a contract saying exactly what grade they would like to receive and how much work they would like to do.

[edit] Wiki Labs

In Dr. Alberts' “Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies” course there are six wiki-labs. Students of the course are required to complete Labs 0, 1, 2, and 3. Labs 4, 5, and 6 are an option for the contract grade.

  • Lab 0: Welcome to Wiki

Students are asked to explore Wikipedia and find the shortest or most interesting path from “Death Star” to “Kevin Bacon,” and create a clever username for their account.

  • Lab 1: Set Up Yourself

By setting up their user page, students become more comfortable with using Wikipedia. Students add to their page the Truman State University userbox, and a Babel box. The final step to this project is to link the students’ page to Dr. Alberts’ Page and vice versa.

  • Lab 2: Be Active; Get Busy; Don’t Hurt Yourself
  • Lab 3: Work Collaboratively

The class must work together to work on 3 pages: the Truman State University page. Interdisciplinary page, and the contract grading page.

  • Lab 4: Write a Real Article
  • Lab 5 and 6: Focus. Choose one or more of: Make an article "good," join a Project, or work on reverse links or other special pages.


[edit] Barcelona University and Washington University in St. Louis (Fall 2007)

Wikipedia:WikiProject History and Archaeology of Central Asia

As part of the courses History and Archaeology of Asia (256118) taught by Sebastian Stride the University of Barcelona, and Ancient Civilization of the Old World, taught by Michael Frachetti at the University of Washington Saint Louis.

Students are required to edit or write articles concerning the History and Archaeology of Central Asia.

Each student will have a separate Wikipedia account, and will work in collaboration with at least one other student, preferably from another university. Students will be expected to write or edit the articles in either catalan, french, english, italian, russian or spanish. Discussion will take place on the english language version of each article but will not necessarily be in english.

Supervisors: We, Michael Frachetti and Sebastian Stride will take care of introducing studends to Wiki and ensuring they and the project are working within the bounds of Wikipedia guidelines. However, being ourselves novices, any help and suggestions are welcome!

Start date: The project begun in Fall 2007

Status: At that moment it has led to no editing other than that on the project pages. Please direct any comments to our user talk page or to the project talk page.

[edit] Technion - Graduate seminar on detection and estimation (Winter 2007-2008)

A graduate-level seminar on theory and applications of statistical signal processing, specifically detection and estimation theory, took place in the Technion in the winter 2008 semester (Jan.-Apr. 2008). Among other tasks, each student was assigned a topic for which there was no article in WP, or a short article needing a major rewrite. The student wrote a concise article (1-2 printed pages), which was reviewed by the course staff and then incorporated into WP by the student.

Pages created/expanded so far:

[edit] University of Washington (Fall 2007)

Art History: Northern Baroque Art

The Northern Baroque Art class is undertaking the editing of the new article Marie de' Medici cycle, about a series of paintings commissioned of Peter Paul Rubens by Marie de' Medici for her home at the Luxembourg Palace in Paris.

Until November 9th, students will add entries to the article with complete references, as well as making edits to the article for readability and accuracy.

[edit] Ohio University (2007)

Student teams from classes in Introduction to Sociology and Research Techniques are working to expand current articles in the Sociology WikiProject, and adding new pages on topics that are similarly basic to the discipline.

Students have created their own Wikipedia login IDs and have been encouraged to make some basic edits to their user page, to practice editing at the sandbox, and to familiarize themselves with wikipedia the resource, as well as Wikipedia the community.

Student groups are performing literature reviews, beginning with textbooks and review articles. For more depth we are working to identify the most appropriate primary texts, both books and peer reviewed journal articles. A major emphasis in this literature review and writing process to find at least two high quality sources that can provide templates for the overall discussion of a topic, and to flesh out that topic with published research from the field of sociology.

  • Course staff: Professor Howard T. Welser; Htw3.


[edit] University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Associate Prof. Andrew Collin's [1] immunology class of 2007 are editing articles related to immunology. These edits have been outlined on an external wiki and are currently being moved to the English wikipedia. Contributers include user:Acute angle. The class's contributions were publicized in The Sydney Morning Herald in October 2007. [2]

[edit] The College of Idaho (Winter Session 2008)

Students in Professor Steven S. Maughan's history course, The Terror: Language, Radicalism, and Violence in the French Revolution, 1789-1799, will work to critique and improve biographical entries on notable French Revolutionary figures. Each will create her or his own Wikipedia login ID, will become familiar with wikipedia as a community and as a knowledge resource, and will refine and expand a biographical entry drawing on high-quality scholarly sources.

The assignments, based on templates provided for past Wikipedia course projects, will be completed by mid-Feb. 2008.

[edit] University of Toronto (Winter 2008)

Students in Danny Heap's Computers and Society course CSC 300 in the 2008 winter session are improving sets of Wikipedia articles pertaining to current course material dealing with how computers effect society. The main topics of this course to be handled are history of computers, ethics, professionalism, privacy, intellectual property, computers and work, the net, trust in cyberspace, censorship, and computers and development.

[edit] University of California, Davis (Fall 2007)

Phoebe Ayers worked with Dr. Ken Verosub to teach a freshman seminar on Wikipedia. Topics included an introduction to the site, policies and community, doing research, copyright and copyleft. One major assignment included comparing Wikipedia articles with the equivalent article in Encyclopedia Britannica, in the model of the Nature study. Send questions to phoebe: phoebe / (talk) 22:32, 15 April 2008 (UTC).

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

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. The basic assignment was to create a new topic or revise an existing topic on Wikipedia. Some results can be seen at the class website.

[edit] University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky Fall of 2007

Associate Professor Dr. Tom Mueller teaches a course entitled Soil Use and Management. This semester, the students are working on a Project where they are required to make submissions to Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by SoilMan2007 (talk • contribs) 19:15, 2 December 2007


[edit] The College of Idaho (Fall 2007)

Students in Professor Steven S. Maughan's history course, Europe in the Nineteenth Century, will work to critique and improve biographical entries on notable European historical figures. Each will create her or his own Wikipedia login ID, will become familiar with wikipedia as a community and as a knowledge resource, and will refine and expand a biographical entry drawing on high-quality scholarly sources.

The assignments, based on templates provided for past Wikipedia course projects, will be completed by Dec. 2007.


[edit] University of Pittsburgh (Fall 2007)

Dr. Stuart W. Shulman's class on Digital Citizenship is going to improve the article on digital divide. User:Piotrus is assisting.

The project has ended. While the article has not reached a GA level, it has been improved close to it (before after). Thanks to all who contributed (including of course many editors unaffiliated with the project!).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 12:48, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] ITESM Campus Toluca - Advanced B English Course (2007)

Leigh Thelmadatter's English as a foreign language class made contributions to the English and Spanish Wikipedia sites as the focus of an academic writing and cultural adaptation class. Students were encouranged to edit and create articles about their home country. In most cases, this country is Mexico; however, other Latin American countries are sometimes represented in the class. For this reason, students were required to work with the appropriate WikiProject for their country. This course was also the subject of a research project on the part of the teacher concerning "authentic" writing assignments and their value to very advanced EFL learners.

Pages that were contributed as final projects include Amecameca Cosmovitral Amboró National Park Plan of Tuxtepec Mexico 68 Mythology of MexicoChabelo Manuel AcuñaTenango del ValleIxtapan de la Sal Atlacomulco Amar te duele and San Mateo Atenco.

Thelmadatter 21:29, 26 July 2007 (UTC)Thelmadatter


[edit] Oberlin College (Spring 2007)

Elizabeth Colantoni, a visiting assistant professor of Classics at Oberlin College, used Wikipedia in her undergraduate level course "The Eternal City: Ancient Rome Built, Imagined, and Remembered." Each student in the course evaluated a Wikipedia article about an ancient Roman monument as part of a research project. Articles were evaluated for accuracy, having up-to-date information, being too short or overly verbose, having useful and active links, references to print media, and whether it provided, on the whole, a good source for someone who wants to learn about the monument. Students were encouraged to edit the articles to improve any perceived short comings. If there was no article, students created a short article. Articles involved in the project had their talk pages tagged with an identifying template. The project concluded in May 2007.

  • "Oberlin College history class told to use controversial site", Cleveland Plain Dealer article [3]

[edit] Northwestern University (Spring 2007)

Anise K. Strong, a visiting assistant professor of Classics at Northwestern University, made Wikipedia contribution a central part of her general Roman Civilization class of 115 students. Each student in the course edited or originated a Roman history "stub" article on Wikipedia, ranging from the province of Gallia Aquitania to the house of Julia Felix in Pompeii. Each article contained references to at least one primary source from the ancient world (including images), one encyclopedic source, and one scholarly book or article. Each student also evaluated and commented on two-three other related student-written articles on their discussion pages. The project concluded on May 18th, 2007. You can go to click here for the full list of articles.

[edit] University of East Anglia (Spring 2007)

Nicola Pratt, is using Wikipedia as an assessment tool in her Introduction to the Contemporary Politics of the Middle East, which is a Masters' level course in the School of Political, Social and International Studies. This is a pilot project, funded by the University of East Anglia as part of its teaching fellowships scheme. The project aims to improve the teaching and learning experience of Masters' level students. Engaging with Wikipedia should help to develop student awareness of the contested nature of knowledge production, as well as of rigour and balance in writing. As part of this project, students will be editing, on a weekly basis for eight weeks, Wikipedia articles related to issues in Middle East politics. The second part of the assessment is that students will write their own articles for Wikipedia. My challenge is to develop appropriate assessment criteria for grading their efforts.

  • "Students assessed with Wikipedia", BBC article [4]

[edit] Brandeis University [[5]](Spring 2007)

Dr. Liane Curtis, Resident Scholar at the Women's Studies Research Center [[6]] taught “Women and Music, Past and Present: Style, Identity, Culture.” Students each wrote five articles about historic (and a few contemporary) women composers. These articles include

Expanding previous articles

[edit] University of Hong Kong (Spring 2007)

For this Spring 2007 assignment, U21/HKU Human Security students (undergraduates) were asked to contribute substantive information on Human security to Wikipedia. The objective of this assignment was to contribute to the comprehensive and balanced coverage of Human Security on Wikipedia. The instructor LMCinHK) started a Wikipedia article in 2006, entitled Human security, then provided students with specific parameters for how to expand that article. Students are evaluated not only on their written contributions, but also on the effectiveness of their editing. The idea is for students to learn from the advice of their own teammates, but to also benefit from the editorial feedback of fellow Wikipedia contributors. The course ended in mid May 2007.

[edit] Cory Doctorow's USC COMM499 Class to Focus on Wikipedia Editing (2007)

Cory Doctorow's COMM499 course at had a project based on editing Wikipedia articles [7]

According to Mr. Doctorow, "The assignment went very well. About 1/2 of the students REALLY got into it, making TONS of edits and really contributing. The key is to put every student's edits up for the whole class to see and discuss at each lecture." You can listen to the class podcasts at:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/UscComm499Pwned

and hear them going over each student's edits at the start of class.

[edit] Amherst College (Spring 2007)

Martha Saxton, Associate Professor of History and Women’s and Gender Studies at Amherst College incorporated Wikipedia into the curriculum of her Women’s History course the Spring 2007 semester. While Wikipedia has been subject to criticism by some historians as a resource, it seemed timely to have students participate in improving the quality and scope of Wikipedia entries. Since students do use it as a source, it seemed valuable to work to understand it and improve it, both for the value of intervening with well researched and transparently sourced articles, but also as a way to make the research, editing and bibliographic processes through which scholarship is produced transparent.

One of her areas of research is women in pre-Civil War North America. In scrolling through various articles on Wikipedia it became clear that women show up only occasionally as subjects of biographies, and they are barely integrated into the general historical articles like Early America. Four students, enrolled in her Women’s History course, selected articles that they wished to revise to include the participation and contributions of women. Two decided to work on the article on Puritanism, another chose indentured servants, and a third chose to revise the section on the Wampanoag Indians of Massachusetts. In each case, students did an initial critique of the existing article, laying out what their own interventions would be. We decided to limit those interventions to materials relating to women as they had already read substantial material on early American women in the course and had a sound basis on which to do further research. They then worked up drafts of their proposed revisions. Those went through two rewrites for brevity, accuracy and balance. The students inserted their final revisions onto the Wikipedia articles on April 3, 2007.

The final class project was to revise along the same lines the article on the Revolution. Students had read a number of works on women’s experiences in the Revolution and divided up assignments among themselves to further research and cover the experiences and contributions by Whig women, those of Loyalist women, Native American women and African American women.

[edit] Wayne State University (Winter 2007)

User:POL SLA 3750 WSU W2007 has the following text on his/her/their userpage: "Polish & Yugoslav Cinema Class at Wayne State University (WSU) Winter 2007 semester." The user is contributing to Polish/Yugoslav films. Possibly a class project of some kind. Course has ended according to the last edit on its talk page.

[edit] University of Minnesota (Spring 2007)

Twenty-three students in an introductory composition course at the University of Minnesota have written new articles (or significantly expanded stubs) on topics related to nature or the environment. A write-up of the project can be found at instructor's talk page. Students generated articles in their userspace, moving them over to the mainspace on April 27, where they edited the articles collaboratively in four-person groups. The project ended May 9.

[edit] MIT -- "Music 1900-1960" (Cuthbert) -- Music and Theater Arts (Fall 2006)

Further information: User:Mscuthbert

New articles and substantial expansions of articles on works and composers. Some modified or created articles include:

Particular emphasis was placed on improving the use of music analysis in Wikipedia articles, which generally lags far behind what would be found in other music encyclopedias.

[edit] University of Iowa (2006)

Professor Marshall Poe of the history department at the University of Iowa is having his students in two classes use wikis for collaborative research and has assigned them the task of writing and editing Wikipedia entries related to class content. In both classes, the wiki software used is Confluence. Students have been asked to register with related WikiProjects (Wikipedia:WikiProject Russian history and Wikipedia:WikiProject World History). The classes will end in December, 2006.

[edit] University of Leiden, The Netherlands (2006)

Psychodynamic Perspective Heuves
Clinical psychology is “a field that is concerned with the application of psychological science to the assessment and treatment of mental disorders” (American Psychological Association, 1991). In clinical psychological research factors that are causally involved in the occurrence, maintenance, and treatment of mental disorders are studied. In evidence-based clinical practice this knowledge is applied in the treatment of different forms of psychopathology in various settings. The major aim of this MSc program is to provide students with a theoretical background for clinical psychology research, assessment and interventions. This includes the acquisition of knowledge and skills relevant to the assessment, diagnosis and treatment of psychopathology. Students acquire advanced research skills by participating in a clinical psychology research project. Completion of the MSc degree will prepare the student for subsequent academic degrees, including a PhD.The curriculum of the basic master program Clinical Psychology consists of a variety of courses and a master thesis. Psychodynamic Perspective This course provides the student with state-of-the-art knowledge of recent developments in psychodynamic theory. Presentations of key concepts in psychodynamic research and theory, such as: psychoanalysis and attachment, mentalization and object-relations, neurobiology of emotional development. Recent developments in psychodynamic assessment and treatment: Developmental Therapy, Transference Focused Psychotherapy and Mentalization Based Treatment. Students have a basic understanding of central concepts in psychodynamic theory. Students are able to search and evaluate psychodynamic databases. Students will write under supervision several entries for an internet encyclopedia. Since March 2006 students have added or edited to more than 20 entries in the field of psychoanalysis. The project is supervised by Dr Willem Heuves, assistant professor at Leiden University.

For more information please contact: Dr.Willem Heuves[heuves@fsw.leidenuniv.nl]

[edit] Penn State University (2006)

General--purpose wiki(s) for student--based class descriptions, student organizations, peer advising, and a number of other topics beneficial to the university. Gchriss 20:20, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Detailed at [8]

This formal request has been declined by the University, and should not be confused with a seperate commercial venture titled "Penn State Wiki." My thoughts on the matter may be found in this letter. The Pennsylvania State Undergraduate Student Government is now defunct, but the issue remains open for public consideration. Thanks, GChriss <always listening><c> 01:21, 30 August 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Cornell University (Fall 2006)

Further information: User:Susato

An end of term project for a senior level engineering course on downstream processing. Eleven students created or expanded articles on unit operations and equipment for production of purified biosynthetic pharmaceuticals and refined food ingredients. Warm-up assignments included creating a user page, editing text in an existing article, and adding a citation to an existing article. Students were assigned to review each others' work on the article discussion pages; the resulting public reviews were too brief and general. Markups in MS Word with changes tracked proved more useful. Some Wikipedia regulars visited the articles and left feedback, usually as summary tags - these were extremely useful. At this writing the project is likely to repeat next year, with additional warm-up exercises in image management (a major challenge), categorization, and citation. susato 23:07, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] University of Art and Design Helsinki - Media Lab Helsinki (Fall 2006)

Further information: User:Teemu

In the first course exercise of the "Brief History of New Media" course students were asked to choose an article from the Wikipedia that was related to the theme of the course and improve it. Students made research and expanded the articles. The research and changes made to the Wikipedia article were also documented in another report that was delivered for the teachers.

The following articles were expanded:

The exercise brief is online (PDF): http://mlab.uiah.fi/briefhistory/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/exercise1.pdf

The course blog: http://mlab.uiah.fi/briefhistory/

[edit] Yale University (Fall 2006)

Further information: User:Ragesoss/HIST 236

Students in HIST 236, "History of Modern Science in Society", researched and wrote history of science-related articles for inclusion in Wikipedia. The following articles were either created or expanded:

I've also created a page of advice and instructions about using Wikipedia for humanities and social sciences writing assignments: User:Ragesoss/Assignments

[edit] Indiana University (Fall 2005-Summer 2006)

In two sections of CMCL C121, "Public Speaking", groups of 4-5 students will be given an article from Wikipedia which matches their team presentation topic. They will be asked to verify the information in the Wikipedia article using non-internet sources (that is sources which are not exclusively on the internet). They will then submit which bits they have been able to verify, not verify, or refute. The instructor is considering giving the students extra-credit for adding their references and/or correcting mistakes on wikipedia. If this is done, an introduction page will be created for the students explaining what they can do. In addition, I will list the relevant pages here for observation. --best, kevin •••Kzollman | Talk••• 02:57, September 9, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] University of Pittsburgh (Summer 2006)

A Group Project about Cleft Palate and Craniofacial Disorders/Syndromes is being carried out by professor Ellen Cohn of the University of Pittsburgh School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences. Feel free to direct any questions to User:Piotrus who is an assistant. The project will end by August, and should result in more then a dozen of new articles or improvements to existing one onthe above subjects.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 15:39, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

During the projects the following pages were created by the students:
And the following pages were expanded:

-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus  talk  22:12, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] St. Cloud State University (Spring 2006)

Matt Barton, an assistant professor of English at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, has decided to start a Rhetoric Portal in his rhetorical theory class. [15]

He previously assigned and coordinated the creation of the Rhetoric and Composition Wikibook. Liblamb 18:32, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] University of Hong Kong (Spring 2006)

For this Spring 2006 assignment, U21/HKU Human Security students (undergraduates) have been placed in teams to contribute substantive information on Human security to Wikipedia. The objective of this assignment (which comprises 25% of the final grade) is to create a comprehensive and balanced Human Security Wikipedia article. The instructor (LMCinHK) started a Wikipedia article entitled Human security then placed students in teams with specific parameters for how to expand that article. Each team is responsible for a different facet of human security on which to elaborate and students are evaluated not only on their written contributions, but also on the effectiveness of their editing. The idea is for students to learn from the advice of their own teammates, but to also benefit from the editorial feedback of fellow Wikipedia contributors. The course will end in mid May 2006.

Background information about the course and specific instructions given to students are reproduced on my user page <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:LMCinHK> (although I have withheld the student names in order to protect their privacy.) My thanks to Piotr Konieczny / Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus and Kevin Zollman / kzollman who both kindly agreed to allow me to adopt some of their student instructions from their respective university project web pages located at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects/Pitt-Societies-2005> and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects/Indiana_CMCL>. --LMCinHK 07:19, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] University of Tartu, Estonia (Spring 2006)

In Spring Term 2006, Professor Wolfgang Drechsler taught a seminar-style class on e-Governance: problems and issues (in English), in which the Wikipedia was a topic. The main written assignment was likewise a Wikipedia new article or change (preferrably about an e-Gov topic), according to the standards, which all students carried out. They were allowed to do so on the English, German, or Estonian wikipedia.

[edit] University of Maryland (Spring 2006)

Projects for Dr. Kent Norman's spring semester 2006 graduate course, Seminar in Human Performance Theory: Human/Computer Interaction, at the University of Maryland, College Park involved the creation of several articles:

It should also be noted that as a joke, one of the students wrote an article on the Wroon, which was deleted as Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense after an article for deletion debate; see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wroon.

In another class, Thinking and Problem Solving, groups of 3-5 undergraduate students created five articles as team projects:

In preparation for writing the articles, all students performed a simple edit on some article of their own choice. In class, students discussed the pros and cons of writing articles on Wikipedia. A short report on lessons learned will be available at the Cognitron website. During fall 2006, these students were asked to complete online a brief follow-up questionnaire about the projects.

[edit] Harvard Extension School (Spring 2006)

For a class on the "history and aesthetics" of electronic music, students' final projects included "A substantial article, or series of edits, to Wikipedia on some aspect(s) of electronic music." The list of participants and contributions is coordinated at User:Electroclass.

[edit] University of California, Irvine (Winter 2006)

Jeffrey Barrett, Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science, will allow students to write/rewrite two wikipedia articles in the areas of Philosophy of Science or Epistemology instead of writing a seminar paper in his graduate level "Epistemology of Science" class offered in the Winter term of 2006. I am auditing this class, and have offered to be a liaison for any students working on this project. At least two students have suggested interest. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 00:09, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dartmouth et al (2005)

A group of Dartmouth undergraduates were recently encouraged to contribute new articles to Wikipedia. Some of the contributions were perfect; others were quickly listed on Votes for deletion (VfD, now Articles for deletion, AfD). More details can be found on WikiEN-l, and a subpage of the teacher's userpage.

[edit] Oregon State University (2005)

[edit] Chilwell School (Autumn 2006)

This was not so much a project as a different approach to a familiar problem - which exploits the multi language support available in Wikipedia. The problem was trying to teach technical subjects where a small number of students had no effective skills in the language the class was using. An approach that was tried was to "buddy" the student and then supply parallel work where one of the students was using the English page whilst the new student used their own language. They could type their work in their language. Students who were stuggling in most lessons could show off their ICT skills by creating work without being held back by language skills. The two students could collaborate and appreciate (albeit not read) each others work. Victuallers 14:05, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

  • references - Background and example (in this case ICT based) material is [3]
Moved from Current Projects. Project concluded and sucessful.

[edit] University of Hong Kong (Fall 2005)

In what has become a project nearly every semester, Andrew Lih's (User:Fuzheado) class in new media is covering WTO topics, and has been editing the following articles:

Project will be concluded on November 30, 2005.

[edit] Georgia Institute of Technology (Fall 2005)

Three classes of English 1101 spent a good portion of the semester drafting an entry on print culture for Wikipedia. Throughout the semester we've read a variety of texts on print culture and worked in small groups to draft versions of the article. We have posted an article and will be editing it. We will also be observing and discussing in class the edits other users make. You can see our drafting efforts at our test site using MediaWiki. We also used pbwiki to draft some of the article. Project will end sometime around 12/09/05.

[edit] Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (Fall 2005)

As part of BAI530, a Leadership course in the Bachelor of Applied Information Systems Technology program, students are required to participate in group community service projects of at least 10 hours of work. This semester (Fall 2005), five students opted to use those 10 hours contributing to Wikipedia. Some of the articles they contributed to include:

[edit] University of Virginia (Fall 2005)

December 2005. Students in one section of an undergraduate (fourth-year) engineering thesis course have been asked to contribute a Wikipedia article (or expand an existing stub) on the expertise acquired in their major assignment this semester: writing an engineering research proposal. The proposal includes a literature review and rationale section, from which they can draw material suitable for a Wikipedia article.

They have been asked to read the available Help resources on creating good Wikipedia articles. Each has submitted a letter to me (the instructor) stating that they understand that they are licensing their work under the GFDL (those who did not wish to do so can submit the article to me instead of posting it). Comments welcome (use my user talk page). Bryan 21:24, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

The following articles have been posted (so far):

Here is a link to the assignment. Bryan 22:38, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] University of Vienna (2002, 2005)

See /Vienna 2002-2003 and /Vienna 2005-2006.


[edit] University of Washington (Seattle, Spring 2005)

Course Webpage

The undergraduate class Society and the Oceans (SMA/ENVIR/SIS 103) includes a project to make a Wikipedia contribution on the Puget Sound, Puget Sound environmental issues, South Maury Island environmental issues, the live food fish trade or the aquarium fish trade.

Update. The course appears to have ended in the first half of 2005. There is little activity on the related articles.

[edit] Teletraffic engineering (2005)

See Wikipedia:Deletion_policy/Teletraffic_Engineering for discussion.

  • specifically, there are some issues about the quality and verifiability of the work submitted. The project appears to have been started around early 2005 and has ended by now, but some users are still cleaning up related articles as of summer 2005.

[edit] University of Georgia / Memento (Fall 2005)

An English class at the University of Georgia rewrote and added a lot of material to Memento (film). The article was expanded, but many of the class's contributions were original research and needed to be cleaned up. See Talk:Memento (film). Rhobite 21:57, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] University of Tokyo (Japan, 2004-2005)

First-year doctoral students in chemistry, as part of a course in academic English writing and presentation for nonnative speakers of English, prepared Wikipedia articles in their areas of expertise. Several times each semester, students drafted articles of about 200 words each and sent them by e-mail to the instructor, who corrected them. The drafts were then discussed in class, with the focus mainly on grammatical and other language issues. Later, the students uploaded their corrected articles to Wikipedia and notified the instructor by e-mail that they had done so, and he checked the articles one more time online and made additional editorial changes. Among the more than 100 articles that the students created or expanded were Beryllium oxide, Fluorescence resonance energy transfer, and Sonogashira coupling; a complete list appears on the instructor's user page.

[edit] ELP 127 (Summer 2004)

User:Kaisersanders has been teaching English to foreign business students, these being:

Contributions to Wiki Pages by ELP 127 Students:

and appears to have finished around 30 July 2004.

[edit] Columbia University School of the Arts (New York City, Fall 2004)

Open Source Culture: Intellectual Property, Technology, and the Arts is an interdisciplinary graduate seminar offered in fall 2004 at the Columbia University School of the Arts. For more information on this project, see Wikipedia:School and university projects/Open Source Culture.

Update. The course appears to have ended in the 2004. There are no edits since December 2004.

[edit] Bad Mergentheim Business School (Spring 2004)

International Management Class: We studied Customer Experience Management (CEM), a new marketing concept in our class and as an outcome of this, all 19 students shared their insights into CEM at Wikipedia, so others can quickly get into CEM as well. We hope that our texts are easy to understand and do welcome any changes or further contributions.

The results can be found at: Customer Experience Management (CEM)

As one contributor to another, (and without anywhere else to write this) can I encourage the students in this project to create a login, so that there is somewhere than we can provide helpful feedback and advice on this project. DJ Clayworth 16:30, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Update. The course appears to have ended in the 2004. There are very few 2005 edits so far.

[edit] Norwegian School of Management (Norway, spring 2004, continuing)

I am tasking the students to create an account for themselves, edit some pages (in the English or Norwegian version of Wikipedia,) and reflect on their experience. The English assignment page is at User:Espen/gra6821 (there is also one in the Norwegian version. The list of participating students (created by the students themselves) is at User:Espen/gra6821/stud6821 (as well as in the Norwegian version.) The students are Master level business school students, the course title is Technology Strategy and Strategic Technology, and the topic for the lecture and assignment is collaborative software. I will underscore the importance of Wikipedia culture, NPOV, and so on, and use the experience to drive a discussion about what makes collaborative software work (or not.) Espen 11:48, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Update. The course appears to have ended in the first half of 2005. There is little activity on the related articles.
Update again - this assignment has been run in a number of classes, both in the English and Norwegian versions of Wikipedia. Mixed results - not many pages added by students, more in the Norwegian than the English version, but some students take off and become contributors, and all learn how to edit. Espen 21:01, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] University of Hong Kong (2003 - 2004)

14 July 2003: User:Fuzheado "teaches at the University of Hong Kong and is using Wikipedia to help teach his normally very structured students a lesson about the chaos and joy of collaborative editing." Several numerical accounts have been created for the students. The class at the Journalism and Media Studies Center is called You've Got Mail: Interactive Media, News and Communication

Designed for advanced undergraduates, the course examines the interactive technologies that are increasingly influencing the way people communicate, share news and create relationships. The course will look at how and why people are using interactive games, Kazaa’s peer-to-peer technology, web cameras, chat rooms, talking avatars, wireless and other technologies. It will also challenge students to assess the usefulness of new technologies and forecast how they will impact society and different cultures.

Students have been broken into groups of roughly seven people each, and asked to contribute to a specific topic related to Hong Kong or Chinese culture. The topics include: Lamma Island, Dim sum, Mongkok, Chinese tea culture, Chinese white dolphin, MTR, Beaches of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Tramways, Victoria Peak, Ecology of Hong Kong, Education of Hong Kong, Newspapers of Hong Kong, Apple Daily.

There may be a tendency for Wikipedians to keep their "hands-off" these sections as they're being produced by students. Please don't! Preserve the dynamic of Wikipedia - keep your hands in it, and treat them as any other Wikipedians. Part of the experience is to work with strangers to collaboratively edit, each person pitching in what experience they have -- grammar, editing, rewording, links, context, statistics, etc.

UPDATE: CNN International Tech Watch aired a segment this morning on the Wikipedia and our student project. See CNN TechWatch videos for a streaming video of the segment. -- Fuzheado 05:35, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC)

  • Spring 2004, FOSS0001: Media in Contemporary China, will be using Wikipedia to create articles on some media organizations in China, such as: China Youth Daily (newspaper), Caijing (magazine), News Probe aka Xinwen Diaocha (a news programme of China Central Television), Sina.com (web)

[edit] University Saarland (Germany, 2003-2004)

Institute for Information Science

Materials that were generated during the German course Knowledge Representation and Information Retrieval WS2003/2004 were integrated in de.wikipedia by the lecturer and (hopefully) the students. Details about the articles can be found on the course-page and on [16].

[edit] Portland State University (Spring 2003)

Spring 2003: Bart Massey taught another offering of his ongoing combinatorial search class. His difficulty in finding an acceptable course textbook after a number of years of trying led to the idea of having students create content on Wikipedia that reflected the course materials, for future use.

The experiment was a mixed success. Some useful Wiki pages were created (e.g. combinatorial search, constraint-satisfaction problem). Some other pages were edited to reflect new content (e.g. best-first search). While Bart was not aware of this page or its guidelines at the time, he believes that they were mostly followed. In particular, he tried to edit all the inserted material for content and style (although failing somewhat at the latter).

Ultimately, much of the material collected was created offline on the course Wiki and elsewhere, and has never been incorporated into Wikipedia. This is a shame: if some other Wikipedian wanted to assist with this, that would be great. Otherwise, Bart will get around to it sometime before the next course offering: the project is currently moribund.

(For what it is worth, Bart agrees with the comments of Fuzheado above: Wikipedians, please do not be shy about helping clean up these pages. They could still use editing and addition.)

External Link: Bart's PSU CS 443/543 Combinatorial Search course page.

[edit] Other projects

[edit] Resources

[edit] Case studies

  • Lakhani, Karim R. and Mcafee, Andrew P. (2007) Harvard Business School Professors use Wikipedia as a Case study. Harvard Business School Accessed January 2007.

[edit] See also

Wikiversity

[edit] References

  1. ^ BABS - Staff Profile of Andrew Collins
  2. ^ Wikipedia project is a class act - web - Technology - smh.com.au
  3. ^ here

[edit] External links