Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Louisiana State University/ENGL 2000 (Spring 2016)

English 2000 is the second of two courses in LSU's Writing Program. Most of the students are in their second year of college. The purpose of the course is to enhance the students' writing skills, with an emphasis on research and argumentation.

The students will spend roughly one month working on several brief Wikipedia assignments. First, they will copyedit an article, improving at least two sentences. Second, they will add at least two new sources, with corresponding citations, to a poorly researched article. Finally, they will write a lead for an article that's missing one.

Week 1

 * 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.
 * Be prepared to take a quiz in class.


 * Choose an article that needs improvements in style and grammar. You can find a list of suitable articles here. Take some time finding a good article to work on, as this will save you time in the long run. For example, some articles have been written by non-native speakers and contain obvious grammatical errors, which should be easy to fix.
 * Add the article next to your name in the course page. Make sure no one else in the class has already claimed the same article.
 * Edit the article, improving at least two sentences. You do not need to change the article's content. In this assignment, you're focusing on style and grammar. Don't forget to briefly explain the changes in the edit summary.
 * Additional advice on copyediting Wikipedia articles is available here.

Week 2

 * Find an article in need of better or additional sources and citations. Use this link to look up suitable articles: Articles needing additional references. Again, taking some time to choose a good article will make for easier work later on. The article should be well developed so that you have plenty of opportunities to add sources without having to add new content.
 * Add the article next to your name in the course page. Make sure no one else in the class has already claimed the same article.
 * Complete the two training modules below.
 * Find two sources using electronic databases or other LSU library resources. Post a list of citations in your sandbox.
 * Find the exact passages in your sources that support the uncited information in the WP article and copy those passages to your sandbox.
 * Integrate the sources in the article, and post on the article talk page briefly explaining your contribution.
 * Here's a very good help page for all your questions: References for beginners.

Week 3

 * Find an article with a missing or insufficient lead section. Use this link to look up suitable articles: Pages missing lede sections.
 * Add the article next to your name in the course page.
 * Draft a new lead and post it in your sandbox for review. I will leave suggestions in your sandbox talk page.
 * Once your lead is approved, add it to the article. Congratulations! You're done with our Wikipedia class project.
 * More information about the lead section can be found here. A one or two-paragraph lead is typically sufficient.