Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/California State University, Fullerton/Gender and Technoculture (Fall 2015)

Our understanding and experience of gender identity, gender expression, the body and desire are influenced by our increasingly technologically mediated world in ways that are surprising, provocative and endlessly fascinating. Throughout this course we will be looking at these inter-relationships and exploring the ways in which these may shape and delimit our ability to work, play, and create with technological forms. We will be asking questions such as: How do technology’s origin myths shape our gendered understanding of it?; What is the relationship between the corporeal body and the much-lauded virtual body of cyberspace?; When might technology’s promise of convenience and personalization become just another form of surveillance and control?; What might collaborative technologies such as Wikipedia tell us about more traditional means of producing knowledge and History?; And, how do new technologies of visibility potentially extend old ways of othering?

Week 1

 * Overview of the course
 * Introduction to how Wikipedia will be used in the course
 * Understanding Wikipedia as a community, we'll discuss its expectations and etiquette.

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Handout: Editing Wikipedia


 * 101 Women Artists Who Got Wikipedia Pages This Week!
 * &quot;Categorygate&quot; or, Wikipedia’s Sexism Toward Female Novelists
 * Wikipedia's gender gap and the complicated reality of systemic gender bias
 * Define Gender Gap? Look Up Wikipedia’s Contributor List
 * &quot;Can These Students Fix Wikipedia's Lady Problem?&quot;

Week 2

 * Create an account and then complete the online training for students. During this training, you will make edits in a sandbox and learn the basic rules of Wikipedia.
 * Create a User page.
 * To practice editing and communicating on Wikipedia, introduce yourself on the user talk page of one of your classmates.

All students have Wikipedia user accounts, are listed on the course page, and have completed the online tutorial.

Complete the online training for students.

Week 3

 * Be prepared to explain close paraphrasing, plagiarism, and copyright violations on Wikipedia.

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Handouts: and

Carefully read Wikipedia's &quot;neutral point of view&quot; policy.

Week 4

 * Explore Wikipedia to find articles that demonstrate either gender, heterosexual, racial, or other Western biases.
 * What biases are evident in these articles? How can you improve them?
 * How are the articles organized?
 * What areas seem to be missing?
 * As you explore, make a mental note of articles that seem like good candidates for improvement.
 * Be prepared to discuss some of your observations about Wikipedia articles in your topic area that are missing or could use improvement.
 * For help selecting an article, refer to WikiProject Feminism's list of open tasks

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Handouts:

Get Professor Ketchum's (AKA: Dalton Hird's) approval of your editing project!

Week 5

 * Discuss the topics students will be working on, and determine strategies for researching and writing about them.


 * Add 1–2 sentences of new information, backed up with a citation to an appropriate source, to a Wikipedia article related to the course.


 * Select an article to work on, removing the rest from your user page. Add your topic on the course page.
 * Do your research! Gather all citations that you will be using to document your corrections and additions.
 * Compile a bibliography of relevant, reliable sources and post it to the talk page of the article you are working on. Begin reading the sources.

Week 6

 * If you are starting a new article, write a 3–4 paragraph summary version of your article—with citations—in your Wikipedia sandbox. If you are improving an existing article, create a detailed outline reflecting your proposed changes, and post this for community feedback, along with a brief description of your plans, on the article’s talk page. Make sure to check back on the talk page often and engage with any responses.
 * Continue research in preparation for expanding your article.

Week 7

 * Make your edits in the live article!!! Be sure you are keeping with Wikipedia's guidelines, particularly Neutral Point of View and No Original Research, both of which can be tricky to catch.
 * Also, be sure to cite all your changes/additions!
 * Be sure to explain each edit in the box provided (called &quot;edit summary&quot;) at the bottom of the editing window!

-- Resources: See the &quot;Citing Sources&quot; handout.

All students have started editing articles or drafts on Wikipedia.

Week 8

 * Demo uploading images and adding images to articles.
 * Share experiences and discuss problems.

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Resources: Illustrating Wikipedia and Evaluating Wikipedia


 * As a group, offer suggestions for improving one or two other students' articles, based on your ideas of what makes a solid encyclopedia article.


 * Expand your article into a complete first draft.

Week 9

 * Open discussion of the concepts of neutrality, media literacy, bias, and the impact and limits of Wikipedia.

Week 11

 * Make edits to your article based on peers’ feedback. If you disagree with a suggestion, use talk pages to politely discuss and come to a consensus on your edit.

Week 12

 * Continue discussing how the articles can be further improved. Come up with improvement goals for each article for next week.

Respond to any concerns, questions or revisions from the Wikipedia community.

Week 13

 * Add final touches to your Wikipedia article.

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Handout:

Week 14

 * Write your 2-5 page reflective essay! :-) Your essay should be 2-5 pages (12-pt font, double spaced) and should be college-level grammar and writing.
 * In this essay you should discuss the following:
 * Describe your Wiki editing experience.
 * What have you learned about how Wikipedia functions?
 * What have you learned about how &quot;knowledge&quot; is produced?
 * How did you come to recognize the biases you helped to correct in Wikipedia?
 * Are the biases in Wikipedia different than biases in other texts (i.e. text books, literary works, photographs, etc.)?
 * How do you feel about Wikipedia as a source of knowledge in comparison to other kinds of texts?

Students have finished all their work on Wikipedia that will be considered for grading.