Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Georgetown University/Intro to Women's and Gender Studies (Fall 2019)

An introduction to the scholarly field of Women’s and Gender Studies is first and foremost an induction into ways of seeing and understanding power, privilege, and identity in social and political contexts. Our course will begin with a focus on threshold concepts that will enable you to critically understand and personally reflect on your own and others’ identities as constructed and shored up by a variety of social and political factors, and in relation to differential distributions of power and privilege. We will then delve into more focused explorations of topics and texts. Our approach will focus on popular media and representation as a primary way in which stereotypical images and attitudes are circulated and perpetuated. We will also examine ways in which feminists can and have reclaimed platforms and mediums in order to mitigate these harmful dominant views.

This course aims to equip you to change the world for the better because together we will develop ways to understand and clearly articulate how oppression and inequality operate, and how we might envision change. Many of the topics we will cover involve bearing witness to and acknowledging injustice, violence, and suffering. Mindful of the emotional impact of such topics, we will tend to feminist praxis as a mode of problem-solving, and we will learn how to participate in the larger project of creating incremental change toward greater equity and justice.

Learning Goals

Students will:

1) Learn key “threshold” concepts that structure feminist and social justice analysis and activism.

2) Develop a personal understanding of one’s own identity in relation to power and privilege.

3) Learn to critically analyze media messages and images in ways that challenge commonsense understandings of gender, race, ability, nation, power, and knowledge.

4) Learn how to contribute to Wikipedia’s public knowledge database in a manner that helps enhance more equitable representation.

5) Effectively articulate a problem of your choosing in writing, supported by research.

Week 3
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

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.)

This week, everyone should have a Wikipedia account.

Exercise
Evaluate an article

Thinking about sources and plagiarism

Week 5
https://tools.wmflabs.org/enwp10/cgi-bin/list2.fcgi?run=yes&projecta=WikiProject_Women&quality=B-Class

https://tools.wmflabs.org/enwp10/cgi-bin/list2.fcgi?run=yes&projecta=WikiProject_Women&quality=Start-Class

https://tools.wmflabs.org/enwp10/cgi-bin/list2.fcgi?run=yes&projecta=WikiProject_Women&quality=C-Class

Choose your topic / Find your sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red/Activists#United_States

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red/Missing_articles_by_occupation/Suffragists#United_States

What's a content gap?

Biographies

Women's Studies

Exercise
Add a citation

Copyedit an article

Week 7
if you haven't already, make sure you complete this module before you start writing in your group sandbox

Week 8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons

Week 9
Resource: Editing Wikipedia, pages 7–9

Everyone has begun writing their article drafts.

Thinking about Wikipedia

Week 10
Guiding framework

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

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.

Resources:


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

Week 11
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

Exercise
Add links to your article

Now's the time to revisit your text 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.

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 13
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

Week 14
Everyone should have finished all of the work they'll do on Wikipedia, and be ready for grading.