Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Indiana University of Pennsylvania/History 395 Introduction to Historical Methods (Spring)

For this assignment you will be asked to do a series of Wikipedia edits drawn from different types of secondary sources.

Week 1
This is our wikipedia assignment. All of you probably use Wikipedia when you are reading something (and if you are not, you should be), and it is time for you to give something back. There are three purposes to this assignment. One is to review what you already know about identifying and analyzing historical sources. WThe second is to work on fitting information into a larger historical context. Third is for you to learn how to edit Wikipedia, so in the future when you see something that needs to be fixed or added to you can do it.

You will each be making at least 2 edits to Wikipedia (feel free to do more, if you want). Each edit will involve adding something to the text of a Wikipedia article (or creating one), and including an in-line citation (references) and adding that source to the bibilography (further reading.)

Resources:


 * Editing Wikipedia, pages 1–5
 * Evaluating Wikipedia

Week 2
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.

Week 4
You will be working in groups to do a comparison between a Wikipedia article and one from a “real” encyclopedia.This will be done on D2L/Zoom

Week 8
This week you will be selecting your sources and starting to think about what to do with them. You will need at least two sources, and ideally they will be from at least a two different periods and types of history. In general, it is easier to do this assignment if you stay away from the more obvious topics. What useful information could you really add to the artilce on George Washington or the Battle of Kursk? There should be lots of things you can add to, however. By the end of the week you should have your two sources and at least some idea what articles you are going to put this information into.

Week 9
Adding to a wikipedia article usually involves finding a gap in an article and then going out and finding some sources use to fill it. In this case we are doing it backwards. You are starting with sources and trying to figure out what you can say with them. Both of these are pretty standard ways of doing research, either starting from a question and looking for sources, or starting from sources and figuring out how to fit them into larger contexts. You will also need to learn how to read the (secondary) sources you are using carefully. Every article includes re-statements of general knowledge (which Wikipedia does not need) and facts that are too specific to fit in an encyclopedia. You need to learn to identify the major things that the author is saying that other people will find useful. You can look at my sample edits for examples.

Week 10
This week we will be moving on to the next part of the class the research project. If you want you can keep adding to your edits on Wikipedia. You should be keeping track of your edits, however, and seeing if they get reverted.

Week 13
This week I would like each of you to submit a short essay in which you evaluate how well you and two other students in the class did. What edits did you make? Were they reverted and if so why? How much did you  (and they) contribute to Wikipedia, and how much did you learn from the assignment? How much better are the articles you edited because of what you did? Please rank the three contributions (yours and two other students) from 1-3 in terms of which you think added the most to the articles. Your grade for the Wikipedia assignment will be based mostly (80%) on the quality of your edits. (How much did you add, and how helpful was it?) and in part (20%) on this evaluation essay.'''This will now be due April 28, on D2L

'''