Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Colgate University/The Secret Sex Lives of Plants (Fall 2020)

What do a dozen roses, a peach pie, and a multi-billion dollar allergy industry all have in common? They all result directly from plants having sex – lots of sex. In spite of this, most people don’t think of plants being especially sexy or even having a gender. In this course we’ll explore the secret sex lives of the green world around us. We’ll learn how to tell the sex of a plant and where plant babies come from. We’ll discuss how plants get around, both metaphorically and physically. Over the course of the semester we’ll learn how sex is determined in plants and under what conditions sex or gender might change. We will also think about when it pays for plants to have sex with themselves, how to attract those buzzing matchmakers, and how or when plants wait for Mr. or Ms. Right.

Wikipedia is the first stop for information for everyone from undergraduates to law makers. Because of the nature of content creation on Wikipedia, it suffers from similar biases that humans have. The bias we'll concern ourselves with is plant blindness. There are pages upon pages about sex in furry things with eyeballs, but much less about sex in plants. Making information available that is representative of the diversity in the natural world is an important task. You'll take on one small piece of this communal task during the course of this class. Enjoy!

Week 2
This week, everyone should have a Wikipedia account.

Welcome to the timeline for your Wikipedia assignment. 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

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 4
Evaluate an article using the guidelines provided

What's a content gap?

Ecology

Environmental Sciences

LGBT+ Studies

Science Communication

Species

Exercise
To earn credit for this training, please complete this exercise

Add a citation

By the end of the week, have a list of at some potential topics that interest you. At this point, aim to have a diverse list that includes both general phenomena and specific species.

If you are feeling stuck, you might look through the topics on the course schedule, links to former student projects, check out the wikipedia pages of species that have popped-up on Instagram, or investigate some of your favorite plants.

Week 6
To earn credit for this training, please contribute an image to an article

You should have at least 5 potential topics that interest you. This might include two options from the class list and three (or more) of your own. Some of your topics may be a specific species for which there is little or no information regarding its reproduction.

Week 7
Submit a list of the final ranking of your potential topics. For your new suggestions, include a sentence about what you might add to the wikipedia page. I'll optimize topics across the class and let you know what your term-project topic is.

Thinking about Wikipedia

Week 8
To earn credit towards your grade, all trainings from previous weeks must be completed by Wed the 14th.

Week 9
Reach out to your Wikipedia Expert if you have questions using the Get Help button at the top of this page.

Resource: Editing Wikipedia, pages 7–9

Everyone has started reading and annotating their sources and drafting notes for their article.

Nominating your article for Did You Know

Week 11
You should have a draft of your article by the end of this week (albeit perhaps a lousy one!)

Exercise
Add links to your article

Now's the time to revisit your draft and refine your work. You may do more research and find missing information; rewrite the lead section to represent all major points; reorganize the text to communicate the information better; or add images and other media.

Week 13
Review groups:

Kylie, Jake, Elena, and Jacob

Aidan, Hayley, Caroline, Elisabeth

WITHIN YOUR REVIEW GROUP, read two other articles and respond to them in the talk page. Make sure you use the wikipedia grading rubric on Moodle and check out the common errors page.

Your peer reviews should be both kind and substantive. The quality of your advice will be reflected in your own project grade. So it behooves you to give real points of improvement, not just &quot;hey, looks great!&quot;. It is also an important way to reflect back on your article. What similar points of improvement do you see in your own work?

Guiding framework

Every student has finished reviewing their assigned articles, making sure that every article has been reviewed.

Week 14
You probably have some feedback from other students and possibly other Wikipedians. Consider their suggestions, decide whether it makes your work more accurate and complete, and edit your draft to make those changes.

No need to write to them directly. You are responding within your article draft. If you choose not to take their advice, make a note in your sandbox or talk page thanking them for their thoughts and noting why you chose to go a different direction.

Resources:


 * Editing Wikipedia, pages 12 and 14
 * Reach out to your Wikipedia Expert if you have any questions.

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

Continue to expand and improve your work, and format your article to match Wikipedia's tone and standards. Remember to contact your Wikipedia Expert at any time if you need further help!

Week 15
It's the final week to develop your article.


 * 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!

Guiding questions

All Wikipedia work is done by noon on Dec 16th