Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/California State University, Sacramento/HIST 192z - Global Feminisms (fall 2021)

In this in-person (!) seminar, we will be discussing cutting edge scholarship on women’s movements in the twentieth century. Through focused reading, we will learn how women in the United States and around the world challenged sexism, demanded political power, and reshaped their societies. In the second half of the semester, students will conduct focused research on a specific female activist and share their knowledge publicly by writing for Wikipedia.

Week 1
Welcome to your Wikipedia assignment's course timeline. This page guides you through the steps you'll need to complete for your Wikipedia assignment, with links to training modules and your classmates' work spaces.

Your course has been assigned a Wikipedia Expert. You can reach them through the Get Help button at the top of this page.

Resources:


 * Editing Wikipedia, pages 1–5
 * Evaluating Wikipedia

This week, everyone should have a Wikipedia account.

Week 3
Create an account and join this course page, using the enrollment link your instructor sent you. (Because of Wikipedia's technical restraints, you may receive a message that you cannot create an account. To resolve this, please try again off campus or the next day.)

Week 10
Women's Studies

Week 11
This week you will have some in-class time to do the preparatory work necessary to edit your Wikipedia article. This work will include:

1.  Reading through and evaluating your assigned Wikipedia article.

2.  Copy the Wikipedia article over to your group's sandbox (more information about how to do this will be given in class).

3.  Leaving a short (couple of sentences) message for other Wikipedia editors on your article's talk page informing of them of some of your planned edits.

4.  [If time allows] Beginning to look for an additional, peer-reviewed secondary source about the feminist you have been assigned.

Week 12
All the teams in this class will be adding to their Wikipedia article by drawing from scholarly sources. In addition to the monograph you read in class, all teams are required to find and cite one additional peer-reviewed source. The most likely candidates are journal articles, essays in an edited collection, or other monographs. While we are not meeting this week, before you and your teammates leave for the Thanksgiving break, you need to identify the additional source that you will use; share it with each other; read it, and take notes of possible material to include in your Wikipedia article.

Week 13
Resource: Editing Wikipedia, pages 7–9

This week we will dedicate the entire class period to team work on your Wikipedia pages. In the first half of class, you need to create a detailed plan. Ask the following questions:


 * 1) Have you identified any factual errors in the existing page?  If so, what are your plans for correcting them?  Who on your team will be responsible for correcting these errors?
 * 2) Are there any existing parts of the page that are missing a good citation?  Do you have any citations that you can add to support the existing content?  Who on your team will be responsible for finding and adding these citations?
 * 3) Is the existing page structure well-organized, or does it need adjusting?  Will you need to add any new headers to the article?  Where will they go? Who on your team will be responsible for defining the new page structure?
 * 4) What new content do you plan to add?  Who on your team will be responsible for writing a first draft?  (Maybe different team members will take responsibility for different parts of the new content, or maybe one person will write the first draft and another person will peer review and edit.)

In the second half of class you should start drafting your contributions in a Word document. If you feel ready to begin making changes in the Sandbox, go ahead, but remember to only have one team member working in the Sandbox at a time.

Week 14
Everyone in class will be assigned another team's Wikipedia page (in their Sandbox) to peer review.

First, complete the Wikipedia training on peer review for what types of issues to look for.

Second, read through the Wikipedia page assigned to you. IMPORTANT NOTE:  Unlike what it says to do in the Wikipedia training slides, you should leave your peer review comments on the Talk page for the Wikipedia Article Sandbox.

Third, complete the Wikipedia training on moving group work live so you have the skills you need to complete this task in class.

In class:  discuss the suggestions you received from the professor and from your peer reviewers with your teammates. Make any necessary or desired changes. Check and double check your grammar, punctuation, and style. Finalize your Wikipedia page in your team's Sandbox.

Now that you've improved your draft based on others' feedback, it's time to move your work live - to the &quot;mainspace.&quot;  Resource: Editing Wikipedia, page 13

Read Editing Wikipedia page 15 to review a final check-list before completing your assignment.

Don't forget that you can ask for help from your Wikipedia Expert at any time!

Once your Wikipedia article has gone live, make sure one of your teammates goes to the Canvas page and submits the URL for the weekly assignment.

Reflective Essay and Final Presentation
Your final assignment of the semester is designed to encourage you to reflect on what you learned from the experience of editing Wikipedia articles, to compare the challenges of writing for a scholarly versus a public audience, and to share the results of your labors with the class. This assignment has two parts:

Reflective Essay (due before class meeting)
In 3-5 typed, double-spaced pages, write a reflective essay on the experience of writing for Wikipedia and comparing it to the experience of writing for a scholarly audience (book reviews). Reflective essays should be written in the first person. While this is a less formal type of writing than others, please do make sure to write in complete, grammatically correct sentences with a coherent structure or flow to your essay.



Please respond to the following prompts in developing your essay:


 * What do you see to be the primary differences between writing a scholarly book review and a Wikipedia entry?  Which type of writing do you personally prefer and why?
 * Did your Wikipedia  contribution address a major equity gap?  If so, which one(s)?  Are there any challenges unique to building up Wikipedia's coverage of historically underrepresented or marginalized populations?
 * Did the Wikipedia assignment affect your understanding of how information is constructed and shared?
 * How do you now understand historians' role (including your own) within today's information landscape?

Final Team Presentations (in class)
In a roughly 5-7 minute presentation per team, tell the class about the choices you made in editing your Wikipedia article. During the presentation, plan to display your Wikipedia entry on the screen for the class to see. You can use the below prompts to help structure your presentation (though you may include other information as you see fit:


 * Summarize your contributions: summarize your edits to the page and why you felt they were a valuable addition to the article. How does your article compare to earlier versions?
 * Feedback: Did you receive valuable feedback from peer reviewers or from other Wikipedia editors, and if so, how did you respond to and handle that feedback?
 * Critiquing articles: What did you learn about Wikipedia during the article evaluation? How did you approach critiquing the article you selected for this assignment? How did you decide what to add to your chosen article?

Everyone should have finished all of the work they'll do on Wikipedia, and be ready for grading.