User talk:Cliotropic/WPWH for Educators

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 and  templates so that the talk page will be easier to read.


 * For an excellent example of classroom/Wikipedia cooperation, see WP:MMM. Lady  of  Shalott  00:02, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Conversely, for an example of what not to do, see WikiProject Global Economics. Lady  of  Shalott  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 WP:WMNHIST are likely to create confusion, whether or not they're students.)---Shane Landrum (cliotropic &#124; talk &#124; contribs) 19:14, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

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 – 30%

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.
 * What happened and how does this relate to the course topic and readings?
 * Who did it? When did it happen?  What was it like?
 * What does it mean within a women’s history context?
 * When and where did she live? What is her background? What did she do and how does this relate to the course topic and readings?
 * What are her important ideas, acts and relationships with others you are studying in this class?
 * What is her contribution to her times?

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 and  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 &#124; talk &#124; 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 original research or synthesis. Likewise, the article isn't supposed to have a "thesis". A brief explanation in the lead of why the topic is notable, definitely yes, but not an expression of any particular point of view concerning the topic which the article will advance. Per WP:Neutral point of view, Wikipedia articles never do this. It's one of the Five Pillars. I'd suggest pointing your students to Manual of Style (lead section) for guidance on how to write a lead. Manual of Style (layout) has general layout guidelines and many WikiProject have specialised style guides for topics within their scope which you'll find at Category:Style guidelines of WikiProjects. What makes a good academic essay invariably makes a bad Wikipedia article, likely to end up tagged with Essay-like, Editorial, or Original research. – Voceditenore (talk) 10:08, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
 * 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)