Wikipedia:Outreach Dashboard/Queen Mary, University of London/Research Methods Film

Research Methods (Film) is designed to develop research skills needed to succeed in your degree and beyond in the world of work. It is designed to foster a broad approach to research methods and expertise, rather than to train students in a particular critical approach. The module is also designed to ensure that you attain the higher level graduate attributes, including research capacity, clarity of communication, critical engagement with knowledge, information expertise, and rounded intellectual development, among others. As such, the module is designed to help you acquire transferable skills that will be useful for you once you have completed your degree. In the first part of the module, you will work in small groups to adopt and edit a Wikipedia page on a particular film; in the second part of the module you will work on a proposal for a possible dissertation/research project.

The module involves elements of formal teaching, group-led and independent study, weekly reading and preparation, and peer review; and a range of assessments, including the editing of a Wikipedia page, group and individual presentations, and written assignments. This module is compulsory for single honours students in their second year, and will help you to plan for the FLM304 Film Studies Research Project at Level 6.

Week 1: How to be a good (film) scholar

 * Overview of the course content and module guide
 * Formation of groups on the basis of research interests
 * Introduction to how Wikipedia will be used in the course and key assignments
 * Begin process of selecting a Wikipedia article for adoption, evaluation and eventual editing


 * Training
 * Wikipedia essentials


 * Key milestones

Ensure that you have a workable means of communicating within your group Shortlist some Wikipedia articles that meet the criteria for assignments 1 and 2, according to your group's research interests Begin the Wikipedia training

Week 2: Wikipedia, coding and collaborative research

 * Lecture: Wikipedia as a resource: Good faith collaboration and Neutral Point of View
 * Adoption of Wikipedia page for a particular film (conditions will apply)
 * Start or continue the online student orientation. During this training, you will create an account, make edits in a sandbox, and learn the basic rules of Wikipedia.
 * Create a user page, and sign up on the list of students on the course page.
 * Begin to prepare for next week's group presentation to evaluate your chosen Wikipedia page. You will need to select key issues to evaluate from the following:
 * factual accuracy: dates, figures, assertions of fact;
 * citations: provenance, reliability, objectivity;
 * style: clarity, coherence, layout;
 * précis of page history: overview of main changes/discussion


 * Training
 * Evaluating sources and articles
 * Editing basics


 * Key milestones
 * All students have started the online student orientation, created a Wikipedia user page, and signed up on the list of students on the course page dashboard.
 * All groups need to email a pdf copy of the chosen wikipedia article in its current/pre-edited format, including earliest and most recent edit history to the course convener

Week 3: What your referencing says about you

 * Lecture: Paratextuality, hypertextuality, and the importance of the footnote
 * Workshop: Group presentations (assignment 1)
 * To practice editing and communicating on Wikipedia, introduce yourself to any Wikipedians helping your class (such as a Wikipedia Ambassador), and leave a message for a classmate on their user talk page.

Contributing Images and Media Files Sources and Citations Plagiarism
 * Training


 * Assignment 1 due: group presentation evaluating Wikipedia film article


 * Assignment 1 due: compulsory short group presentation of review of Wikipedia page
 * required assignment [no weighting - immediate informal feedback provided]


 * A group presentation giving a review and evaluation of a Wikipedia article on a specific film (presented in week 3)
 * Assignment due date: Seminar of week 3 (11am, Friday 27 January)

While this assignment does not form part of the overall grade for this module, you will nonetheless be informally assessed on this presentation, and feedback will be provided immediately. In giving feedback for your work, course tutors will take into account the accuracy, clarity, concision and critical evaluation of your presentation.


 * Please note that this assignment is compulsory and attendance at the workshop is also compulsory. Unauthorised absences are not acceptable.


 * Key milestones
 * All students have Wikipedia user accounts and are listed on the course page.
 * All groups have adopted and evaluated their Wikipedia article
 * All groups have begun to reflect on next stages for their editing project, including distributing workload among group members.

Week 4: Using E-resources

 * Lecture/workshop: How to use e-resources for research (Richard Evans academic liaison librarian for film)
 * Richard Evans and his team at the QM library will introduce you to using e-resources and information literacy skills relevant to for your film research, including COPAC; Film Index International; on-line databases; Metalib; SCOPUS, Google Scholar.


 * Workshop: Exploring e-resources, trial searches for scholarly material. Aim to obtain at least three scholarly sources (articles, books, chapters, etc) relevant to your chosen Wikipedia article)


 * Work in your groups to divide up the necessary work for revision and conduct individual research in preparation for editing of the Wikipedia page.
 * You will need to designate specific tasks to specific individuals: working together cohesively and efficiently as a group will allow you to produce the best quality edit.
 * Some of these tasks will include:
 * fact checking and prioritising key areas of the article identified in your evaluation
 * researching appropriate and reliable secondary sources in libraries
 * using e-resources and browsing journal articles and books
 * pasting a bibliography of materials onto the Talk Page of your chosen wikipedia entry
 * skimming and notetaking of these scholarly materials and their key points
 * identifying and selecting relevant elements to work on in the Wikipedia article and discussing these changes with other Wikipedia users
 * drafting the rewriting and writing of new material for the Wikipedia page, including using the correct markup language to do this, via your sandbox or on the main article page/talk page
 * keeping tabs on the word count and ensuring that all members of the group are sharing contributions to the article
 * copy-editing, proofreading and checking of markup. This stage is one of the most important and often the most neglected. Don't forget to designate one or two people to focus specifically on this task, and to make sure that your group as a whole takes responsibility for this stage.
 * Providing a pdf of the final page, together with details of the page history and summary of main changes, and submitting this with an electronic coversheet via qmplus.


 * Training
 * Sandboxes and mainspace


 * Key milestone
 * All students have started editing articles or drafts on Wikipedia.

Week 5: The Art of Editing

 * Lecture: The art of editing, or how to make your writing say what you mean
 * Workshop: discussion of editing plan/activities;
 * revisiting editing etiquette/Wikipedia ethics
 * discussion of using sandboxes
 * each group compiles a bibliography of relevant research and posts it to the talk page of the article you are working on.
 * distribution of tasks to complete the edit of the page


 * Peer Review of other groups' work: give feedback verbally or on other students' talk pages, or on the article talk pages. Remember to offer positive and constructive suggestions, and to follow Wikipedia's principles of good faith collaboration

Week 6: Completing your Wikipedia article edit

 * NO LECTURE this week: GROUP STUDY TIME instead
 * You should now have received feedback from other groups. Use this to complete your Wikipedia edit, and to submit documentation of it in electronic and hard copy.


 * Prepare for an in-class discussion of your Wikipedia editing experience in week 8
 * Over Reading Week, start preparing for your individual research essay projects which you will be focussing on from week 8 onwards

Assignment 2: group editing/writing on selected Wikipedia page (due 19 February)


 * 30% of overall semester grade


 * A group writing activity: editing the selected Wikipedia page to enhance its scholarly value (end of week 6) [30%]
 * Assignment due date: 23:55pm, Sunday 19 February

Your group writing task will be assessed on the accuracy of data, the quality and provenance of research, the clarity and style of writing, and the extent to which the edits represent a clear enhancement to the scholarly quality of the Wikipedia entry. These elements will be assessed using similar evaluation criteria to those employed to review the original Wikipedia page in assignment 1.

Wikipedia activities contribute to 30% of the overall mark on this research methods module.

Article banners
To mark each article the subject of a student project, add the course assignment template at the top of the talk page for each article: That will result in the following banner (which lets other editors know that you're working on it):