Wikipedia:School and university projects/2011 past projects

University of Hull - Scarborough Campus - Applied and Interactive Theatre 2 - October/November 2010 + October 2011
Students in their final year of a BA at the School of Arts & New Media explore the concept of open content and the read/write web while learning about contemporary performance arts related to applied and interactive theatre. They do this by creating and/or editing Wikipedia entries about some of the key practitioners and established works in the area of applied and interactive theatre, with a special focus on specific aspects from Steve Dixon's book Digital Performance (London and Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007). The coordinating tutor for this assignment is Toni Sant. Students taking earlier versions of this class in the previous semester contributed to existing Wikipedia entries as well as new ones, including: Annabeth Robinson, Jon McKenzie, The Hamnet Players, Paul Sermon, Intima Virtual Base, Critical Art Ensemble, and Electronic Disturbance Theater. For more context within which the students operate in this class see the official web page for the Applied and Interactive Theatre 2 module.

Southern Lehigh Middle School- American Government and Civics, 8th Grade - Nov, 2010 through Jan 2011
The purpose of the assignment is to increase students knowledge in specific topics that have been discussed in the classroom by participating in the process of editing articles within Wikipedia that are associated with their studies of American government and civics. Contents for the project will be up to date shortly, being a subpage of Jmfullerton (talk) 18:18, 16 December 2010 (UTC). Until then details are listed at https://wikiedit.wikispaces.com/.

7th Basic Ornithology Course, Pune, India
The 7th Basic Ornithology Course, is being conducted from end-December 2010 to mid-February 2011 by the Ela foundation and Zoology department, Abasaheb Garware College of Arts and Sciences, Pune, Maharashtra, India. The course is an extra-mural certificate course for the general public.
 * As a gesture of support, the Course has pledged to improve three bird articles on Wikipedia before the Tenth Anniversary of Wikipedia on 15 January 2010. The improved articles will be loaded onto article space on 15 January 2011. The species selected by Dr Satish Pande, the course mentor, are :
 * Bonelli's Eagle.
 * Grey Heron.
 * Common Myna.
 * Based on the experience above, the course is considering adding improvement of bird articles as part of the concluding assignment for all students. The project is being mentored by User:AshLin. The duration of this improvement project is from 03 January to 15 January 2011.

AshLin (talk) 07:21, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Spring 2011)
An assignment for the undergraduate INLS 200 (Retrieving and Analyzing Information) at the School of Information and Library Science, taught by Phillip M. Edwards (User:Pmedward), is scheduled during Spring Semester 2011. The basic assignment is to create a new topic or revise an existing topic on Wikipedia, and drafts of the students' articles were also used as the focus of two peer review activities. The assignment was graded using a rubric based on Featured article criteria, and the learning outcomes from the course included students being able to: Identify and select information sources that are appropriate for answering research and personal questions, taking into account the needs of the searcher (or someone the searcher is working for), the capabilities and limitations of particular sources, and the intended uses of the information being retrieved; Clarify and refine search queries and strategies based on the (real-time) feedback received from search tools; Critically evaluate information sources for quality/accuracy/credibility; Synthesize search results into a form that others with similar needs can use as a resource; Reflect upon their attitudes and practices for the purposes of self-assessing their performance as information-savvy citizens. This project will be running from 10 January 2011 to 27 April 2011, and the complete assignment description and rubric are also available for reference. This project was also active during Spring Semester 2009.

Pmedward (talk) 17:08, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

University of Applied Sciences Mainz, Germany (Summer semester 2011)
This is a project involving advanced Legal English courses in the MA program Commercial Law at the University of Applied Sciences Mainz taught by Prof. Stephanie Swartz-Janat Makan in the Summer Semester 2011. It will be carried out both with full-time LLM students as well as with professionals doing a part-time LLM study course at our university. While learning more about the common law system and expanding their English legal vocabulary, they will be asked to contribute to Wikipedia, first by editing an article of their choice and then by creating a new article or expanding on an existing one. There will be individual as well as group contributions, and the final grade is based on a portfolio handed in at the end of the semester with proof of both offline as well as online contributions. The project will take place over the course of 12 and 15 weeks and each assignment must be fulfilled within the given time period in order to receive credit. For full details, see University_of_Applied_Sciences,_Mainz,_Germany_-_LLM_English_Project

University of Applied Sciences Mainz, Germany (Summer semester 2011)
This is a project involving an advanced Business English course in the full-time MA Business program at the University of Applied Sciences in Mainz taught by Prof. Stephanie Swartz-Janat Makan in the Summer Semester 2011. While expanding both their academic and business-oriented vocabulary, students will be asked to contribute to Wikipedia, first by editing an article of their choice and then by creating a new article or expanding on an existing one. There will be individual as well as group contributions, and the final grade is based on a portfolio handed in at the end of the semester with proff of both offline as well as online contributions. The project will take place over the course of 15 weeks and each assignment must be fulfilled within the given time period in order to receive credit. For more details see: MA Business English Project

Lincoln School Costa Rica
High school chemistry students from Lincoln School will be improving chemistry articles by expanding stubs, adding references and citations and wikifying. This is an on going project started in the Spring of 2011.

Instructor : User:ScienceMsG

Project Page:here

Project End Date May 2012

La Metro, Design and Audiovisual Communications School, Argentina (Fall 2011)
As a part of the Social Communication course at La Metro, Design and Audiovisual Communications School, students are assigned the task of improving or creating selected Communications related articles.

There will be approximately 15 groups of 2 students each. They will be expected to expand or create their article to the best level as close as they can in order to approve the subject. Instructor: User:nicolas.longo

Durham School of the Arts YA Novels Project (Spring 2011)
As part of the English I curriculum taught by Roseclearfield, students will be improving and (when notable) creating pages for young adult novels and other bildungsroman in an effort to reduce teen vandalism of these vulnerable pages, as well as to provide students with an authentic writing assignment. The project will begin on February 7, 2011, and end on March 14, 2011. This project was presented at the AACE-Ed Media Conference in 2009. The project page can be found here: User:Roseclearfield/Durham_School_of_the_Arts_YA_Project_Page.

===University of Maryland A. James Clark School of Engineering, Biology for Engineers Wikipedia Project (Spring 2011)=== In this class project, 15 teams of 7-8 first-year engineering students are expected to contribute a new article or substantially extend an existing article in the areas of biology, biomolecular engineering or bioengineering. The suggested, although not mandatory, focus of the articles is cellular and molecular biology, biomolecules, metabolism and their applications to engineering. Teams are expected to use peer-reviewed scientific literature as their primary source of information. Each article will be peer-reviewed twice by two other teams. Teams are expected to incorporate suggestions from these reviews to improve their article and post a final version by May 10, 2011.

Nature Conservation Foundation Wikipedia initiative to improve articles on Indian wildlife/conservation 2011
Starting with a wiki-workshop being coordinated by User:Prashanthns during their Annual Refresher on February 28, 2011 at BR Hills in South India, scientists and students at Nature Conservation Foundation plan to improve articles on Indian Wildlife through better referencing, improving and updating information, adding distribution maps and uploading photographs from their fieldwork onto Wikimedia Commons. This will be an ongoing event through 2011. If participation is good and articles do get improved, it is likely to be continued. For full project details and follow-up, visit School and university projects/Nature Conservation Foundation - Improvement drive on articles on Indian wildlife/forests

University of Canberra National Institute of Sport Studies
A graduate student connected with the department is going to sporadically hold workshops between 2011 and 2010 for sport administrators to learn how to use wikis. An outline of the materials can be found at UCNISS/Sport Wiki Academy. These workshops are being run with assistance from the department.

Alverno College -- Advanced Media Studies -- Spring 2011
Undergraduate students from the Communication & Technology department will participate in WikiProject Lights Camera Wiki to create short, informational videos to illustrate articles. Student videos will be less than 2 minutes long and will address architecture, dance, heritage, music, parks, sports, or wildlife.


 * Update, May 2011: Videos have been added to the following articles Alpine skiing, B-boy, Basilica of St. Josaphat, Chipmunk, Disc golf, Greendale, Wisconsin, Italian cuisine, Modern dance, Pitch (baseball), and Quinceañera. (Videos by Alverno College Advanced Media Studies).

California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo – Surface Chemistry of Materials – Spring 2011
Advanced undergraduate (and a few graduate students) will write short articles about current topics in surface science. The students will work in small groups, and will post their articles on their user pages. At the end of the quarter, after getting feedback from me, they will post their articles in article namespace.

Brigham Young University Dept of Germanic and Slavic Languages -- Summer Term 2011
Advanced speakers of Russian will translate articles needing translation from Russian to English and English to Russian. Finished products will be checked by native speakers and posted from User:RUSSRMS.

Towson University: American Editors Project -- Spring 2011
Known as the “Wikipedia Editing Project,” the assignment for this project was for undergraduate students enrolled in Editing (ENGL 416) to expand on twenty American editor stubs in Wikipedia. Graduate students enrolled in the advanced Editing course (PRWR 617) were assigned to serve as project managers. They helped to guide, troubleshoot, and provide editorial “expertise” and support for the undergraduate students. The instructor, User: Mportolano, served as editor-in-chief and was the professor for both editing classes. Detailed information on this project can be found on the Towson University American Editors Project page.

University of Kiel, Walther Schücking Institute for International Law, Kiel, Germany - Peaceful Settlement of Disputes in International Law (Spring 2011)
This is a short project started for the first time in Spring 2011 as an additional project for international law students. During the project students will work on selecting, translating, proofreading and editing texts relevant to the peaceful settlement of disputes and linking this topic with other relevant wikipedia entries on international law. User:KateWSI

Pasadena City College, Shatford Library: LIB 104, Technical Services, Spring 2011.
The purpose of this research and writing assignment will be for the class to collectively contribute to the improvement and expansion of the Wikipedia stub entitled: Library technical services. The class will be divided into five groups, with each group assigned two topics from this list:

1.     Acquisitions 2.     Authority Control 3.     Bindery 4.     Book Repair 5.     Cataloging 6.     Classification 7.     Computer Systems 8.     Interlibrary Loan 9.     Processing 10.    Serials & serial control

This project is managed by User:LIB104

Amherst College (Spring 2011)
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 2007 and Spring 2008 semesters, and is continuing this project in Spring 2011. Students will participate in improving the gender balance of Wikipedia entries by contributing to the Amherst College Gender Equality Project, an endeavor launched by four students from the Spring 2007 course.

Boston College Biology (Fall 2011)
As a part of the BI481, Introduction to Neuroscience course at Boston College, students are assigned the task of improving selected Neuroscience stubs. The Society for Neuroscience has recently begun an initiative to update and improve incomplete neuroscience related articles here on Wikipedia. The students in this course will play an important role in this initiative through this assignment.

There will be approximately 25 groups of 4 students each. Each student will have a separate Wikipedia account, and each group will significantly expand upon an existing incomplete article (stub). They will be expected to expand their article to the level as close to Good Article as they can.

Supervisors: I, Joseph Burdo will take care of introducing students to Wikipedia and ensuring they and the project are working within the bounds of Wikipedia guidelines. The full project page is found here.

Important dates: The project will begin on September 9th, 2011, and end on December 7th, 2011.

Erasmus MC Minor Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and Hand Surgery
This assignment is part of a ten week minor for third year medical students. The minor is primarily organized by the department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery but is in collaboration with many related medical fields. Couples of two students select a topic of a list created by staff surgeons and researcher from the departments. The assignment is to make a new entry or add specific content to an existing page. Topics are generally more rare medical conditions or interventions. During the course, students receive information about, amongst others, Wikipedia, medical writing and 'levels of evidence'. Each group is supervised by the staff surgeon or researcher who suggested the topic and who is an expert in that specific area. The entries are first developed on the Wiki tool in Blackboard. Only when the supervisor and the course instructor find the content of sufficient quality, it will be transferred to Wikipedia. There will be approximately 12 groups of 2 students each. Each student will have a separate Wikipedia account.

Supervisors: I, Ruud Selles will supervise the course.

Important dates: The project will begin on September 1 and end on Oktober 27th, 2011.

University of Manitoba Biology of Birds
As a part of the fourth-year Biology of Birds (BIOL 4216) course at the University of Manitoba, students are assigned the task of improving or creating selected bird species pages. The full project page is found here.

Important dates: The project will end on October 14th, 2011.

International School of Prague -

 * See also: School and university projects/ISP

Cooperation in preparation.--Juandev (talk) 19:15, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Macquarie University class project Urban Planning in Australia
Our class was asked to contribute to Wikipedia by editing an article that already exists for an assignment, which is part of our Environmental Decision Making subject for our Masters degree at Macquarie University. However, we went one step further and created a whole new article called Urban Planning in Australia. We felt this topic was an essential edition to the Wikipedia website. The contributions are from myself and two other classmates. If any one has any advice after looking at our page (which is still under construction until 25th September 2011)it would be much appreciated. Our page will be completed by on assignment due date of 26th September 2011.

University of South Florida class project Piracy in the Atlantic (ongoing)
We will be adding an article, "Piracy in the Atlantic World" to Wikipedia. This article will reflect students' research interests after reading a number of books relating to Piracy in the late-17th and early-18th centuries. Ideally, this article would be expanded by other classes at other universities who are doing research in this area. Each article is student written and reflects how the rise of the Atlantic World model has added depth and sophistication to the kinds of questions scholars ask about pirates. The first generation of this page was created by Prof Philip Levy's Pirates Seminar, Fall, 2011.

Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Institute of Tropics and Subtropics –

 * See also: School and university projects/ITS

Cooperation in preparation.--Juandev (talk) 15:43, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Linfield College - Psychology 181 (Introduction to Abnormal Psychology) Group Project - Fall 2011
This past year one of the major professional organizations, the Association for a Psychological Science (APS), launched a Wikipedia Initiative (APSWI). As a result, students have been assigned to work in small groups to learn how to edit and communicate in Wikipedia and ultimately select a specific topic on which to focus (either adding a new topic or making substantial improvements to stub articles). The project will end December 8th, 2011. More information can be found at User:Tatompki/Introduction to Abnormal Psychology Wiki-Project

SUNY Environmental Science and Forestry - EST 361, History of the American Environmental Movement - Fall 2011
As a final project for this course, students were asked to write a research paper on an historical or contemporary American environmental advocate, organization, campaign or issue. For extra credit, students were given the option of thoughtfully and appropriately incorporating material from their paper into an already-existing or new Wikipedia entry on that topic. The project will end December 16, 2011. DASonnenfeld (talk) 18:09, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

University of Washington Bothell (Winter 2011)
Students of a senior level course in conservation biology taught by | Martha Groom are augmenting and adding pages based on their case study research. This is a continuation of a similar effort done in 2009, and to efforts in two other courses taught multiple times over 2006-2010.

York College, City University of New York - Psychology 253 (Industrial/Organizational Psychology) Group Project - Spring, 2012
This spring my students will be learn to edit Wikipedia, search for potential new article topics in I/O Psychology, research, write and post those new articles. I will have approximately 8 groups working on different topics. Dr Ashton (talk)

Washington University in St. Louis - Biology 4030 (Biological Clocks) - Spring, 2011
This experience is described in a journal article:

University of Houston, Houston, TX – Mineralogy Project (Fall 2011)

 * Fall/ Winter 2011: garnierite, perhamite, geigerite, partheite, chrisstanleyite, schreyerite, carnallite, ullmannite, jarosewichite, murdochite, delafossite, maricite, lorandite, warikahnite, donnayite-(Y), satterlyite, dollaseite-(Ce), baddeleyite, alforsite, bornite, perovskite, coffinite, dickite, zanazziite, hübnerite, huttonite. --Chris.urs-o (talk) 11:16, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

University of Michigan - Undergraduate Level Chemistry
In the winter of 2011 undergraduate chemistry students worked in groups to improve a named reaction page. The pages that were worked on are Appel reaction, Ritter reaction, Jones oxidation. These students copyedited the entry, created an animation illustrating the general mechanism, overviewed the history of the reaction and identified key spectroscopic features. MichChemGSI (talk) 14:02, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

University of Michigan - Graduate Level Chemistry
For a complete list of pages please refer to User:UMChemProfessor

In the winter of 2011, students in the graduate course on polymer chemistry (10 students) are adding content to the following sites: Cationic_polymerization, Polyfluorene, Polymer_brush, High Refractive Index Polymers (new site), and Plasma_polymerization. The revised/new sites will be unveiled in April 2011. Questions to UMChemProfessor (talk) 16:28, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Polytechnic of Namibia, Windhoek – Information Competence (2010-2012)
First-year students used their sandboxes to either create or improve an article about Southern Africa. Main module objectives were: Acquiring the syntax capabilities to edit Wikipedia, evaluating the reliability of sources, mini-research on a local topic. We restricted students to obviously notable concepts (geography, historic events, political office holders, requested articles). Acceptable work ("pass") was incorporated in main space after the respective course has ended.

This project is temporarily suspended and will not run in 2013. The reason is that we could not manage the fast growth of this course, and the implications this had for the Wikipedia community. The evaluation of the 2012 student work is still backlogged, you can help us if you have some time to spare. --Pgallert (talk) 17:51, 5 February 2013 (UTC)