Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Foundations of Academic and Professional Writing--ELS (Spring 2020)

Designed for high intermediate ELS students to review and practice accurate grammar, effective sentence and paragraph structure, punctuation, and word choice. Short weekly writing assignments utilizing students’ own research and other course work, with extensive revision required. As a final project, students learn to evaluate Wikipedia articles and then either write a new article or significantly add to an existing one, practicing planning (including posting planned additions/edits on the article's Talk page), peer reviewing, revising, and editing.

Week 7
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.)

Then do these two trainings. (These are graded in terms of whether you've done them or not.)

This week, everyone should have a Wikipedia account.

Week 8
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.

Please read these resources before moving on:


 * Editing Wikipedia, pages 1–5
 * Evaluating Wikipedia

Thinking about Wikipedia

Exercise
Evaluate an article

What's a content gap?

Week 9
Thinking about sources and plagiarism

Exercise
The exercise below is a nice new task created by Wikipedia in which they walk you through adding a citation in your Sandbox with an article and source that they paste in there. Alternatively, if you want to try fixing a real one in Wikipedia, there are two ways to do it:

1. Fix a random [citation needed] at this page (findable through Community Portal on the main Wikipedia page, then click &quot;Check and Add References&quot;);

2. Even cooler, use &quot;Citation Hunt,&quot; in which you can also fix a random article OR search for articles related to topics you like that need citations or have dead links that need fixing. Go see how it works!

Add a citation

Exercise
The overall project will be to make a substantive contribution to Wikipedia, either with a new article or additions/changes to an existing one (usually a Start, Stub, or C-class article). It is difficult to define &quot;substantive,&quot; but you should plan to add material from at least 3 new, already-published, reliable sources (&quot;new&quot; to the Wikipedia article that is; they maybe be from a few or several years ago) such as scientific articles, textbooks, or news articles. (If there is substantial information in a source that is already cited in the Wikipedia article that you think should have been included, we can talk about it.)

We have seen in class how to find articles that need work, but here is the handout again: Finding Wikipedia Articles That Need Work

Also, you may choose a topic for a new article. First, look in the Wikiproject under which your field would appear (Astronomy, Computer Science, etc.) and see if there is a Requested Articles list. Check it to see whether there are any topics you would like to write from scratch (i.e., create from nothing). There is also an Wikipedia-wide Requested Articles list that may be slightly different.

Go through the &quot;Choose a topic&quot; assignment below, but instead of proposing 3-5 topics and later thinking about finding sources (i.e., confirming &quot;notability&quot;), I want you to propose on your Talk page 2 topics for which you already have or can find 3 or more reliable new sources. Include those sources and a brief description of what you plan to include from each in your proposals.

Choose a topic

Resource: Editing Wikipedia, page 6

Chemistry

Ecology

Environmental Sciences

Genes and Proteins

Medicine

Species

We will finalize your topic together in your User Talk page.

Week 11
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 begun writing their article drafts.

Week 12
Prepare your draft for peer review:


 * On the Talk page of your Sandbox, indicate whether it is a new article or additions to an existing article. If it is additions to an existing article:
 * Provide a link to the original article
 * State what you are adding and where in the original article you plan to add your changes
 * Make sure all headings and subheadings are formatted in the correct style.
 * Make sure all outside sources are cited fully and correctly.
 * Make sure you have put in links to every term in your additons that has its own Wikipedia page. These include such &quot;everyday&quot; terms as transparency, nut, or investment. If it's a common term, it probably has a Wikipedia page.
 * PRINT OUT your draft and proofread it for grammar, puncutation, and spelling errors.
 * Read it aloud to catch any final mistakes.
 * Email the URL of your Sandbox to the class: Phu Hai Le &lt;phulehai@undefinedmit.edu&gt;, Takuya Kato &lt;katotaku@undefinedmit.edu&gt;, Anna Vasileiou &lt;vasilean@undefinedmit.edu&gt;, Takuya Kato &lt;katotaku@undefinedmit.edu&gt;, Sunghwan Lee &lt;seolee@undefinedmit.edu&gt;, Zeguan Wang &lt;zgwang@undefinedmit.edu&gt;, Eric Grunwald &lt;egrunwal@undefinedmit.edu&gt;. Watch for my email as to whose two drafts you should review.
 * See the next assignment below for how to peer review these drafts.

First, in your own Sandbox, if you have pasted in material from an article to which you are adding, please provide a key at the top that indicates which material is yours and which is the original, e.g.,

boldface = original article

non-bold = my additions

(or vice verse).

If you have drafted  a new article, write &quot;(New article)&quot; before the lede (first paragaph).

Contrary to my earlier instructions, you will not be peer reviewing online but rather on paper. First, click here to see whose articles you will be reviewing and check your email for a link to them. Then,


 * 1) For each of your classmates' drafts, do the following:
 * 2) * Click &quot;Download as PDF&quot; on the left side of your classmates' Sandbox and print out the PDF.
 * 3) * Read the whole article, including text that was already there, all the way through without marking anything.
 * 4) * Reread your partners' additions or new articles.
 * 5) ** Put a checkmark ( ✔ ) next to anything you like. If you think a sentence is particularly nice or elegant, write &quot;nice.&quot;
 * 6) ** Do not worry about grammar or punctuation at this point.
 * 7) ** Are the explanations clear? If not, make a note as to what you still feel is needed.
 * 8) ** Are all jargonistic terms explained briefly (in a phrase or clause), and are they linked to other articles for fuller explanations?
 * 9) ** Is the article well organized, or are your partners' additions inserted in logical places? If you think there are any problmes, indicate the problem and suggest a solution.
 * 10) ** At the bottom, write,
 * 11) *** &quot;Best:&quot; and the best thing about the new article or additions;
 * 12) *** &quot;One thing:' and the one thing that would improve your partner's work the most.
 * 13) ** Finally, read the articles/additions backwards sentence by sentence. Slowly check each sentence for the grammar points below. For each suspected error, circle the error and write the appropriate error code in the margin of the page next to the line. Leave space enough to write multiple codes, and put a line (|) between each code. Thus on the left side of a line, you might write &quot;VT | S-V | AR&quot; and on the right &quot;REF | WF,&quot; and you would be saying that there are five errors in the line. (You will not normally find that many!))
 * 14) *** Subject-verb agreement (S-V)
 * 15) *** verb tense (VT)
 * 16) *** improper word form (WF)
 * 17) *** article problem (AR)
 * 18) *** cohesion (COH; i.e., needs more cohesion, or incorrect transition word was used)
 * 19) *** a noun should be plural (PL) or singular (SG) or, instead, the noun used is a count noun (CT) or un-count (UC) noun.
 * 20) *** If you notice another kind of error, use the error code from the editing code list (2nd page).



3.  Write your name at the top and bring it to class.

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.

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!

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

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!

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

Week 14
Guiding questions