Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Spelman College/Honors Composition (Fall 2016)

This course explores the meaning of “college and career readiness” because it has become increasingly visible in U.S. education policy. Thus, it warrants critical examination and engagement from today’s first-year college students. As a learning community, we will draw on our mutual interests in becoming ‘betters writers’ and ‘more ready’ to motivate us to organize our activity around three questions:

How is college and career readiness defined (and by whom)?

Where and how are/ought students (be) learning and practicing ‘readiness’ (and who gets to say)?’

How does the focus on college and career readiness affect our soul and sustenance?

Similar to English 103, Honors Composition provides you with various opportunities to develop and exercise critical thinking skills through the metacognitive acts of reading, writing, research, and argumentation. However, our class will experiment with these practices through the design of self-directed ‘readiness’ projects that require the creation of ‘usable resources’ that will be circulated to the entire Spelman community. By reflecting on, and attempting to describe, the complexity of so-called basic literacy tasks like applying for scholarships, discovering paid internships, choosing a college major, filing an employment discrimination complaint, or writing a request for a letter of recommendation, we will start to observe some of the assumptions, values, and beliefs that influence how you write, research, and argue. We will also investigate new media &quot;basic literacy&quot; practices such as editing Wikipedia and user commenting.

Overall, the course provides numerous opportunities for students to discover how problem-solving in any context presents an opportunity for us to learn more about our individual learning process and think more consciously about what we think we know.

Week 1

 * Overview of the course
 * Introduction to how Wikipedia will be used in the course
 * Understanding Wikipedia as a community, we'll discuss its expectations and etiquette.

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Handout: Editing Wikipedia

Week 2

 * Complete the online training for students. During this training, you will make edits in a sandbox and learn the basic rules of Wikipedia.

Week 3

 * Review pages 4-7 of the Evaluating Wikipedia brochure. This will give you a good, brief overview of what to look for in other articles, and what other people will look for in your own.
 * Evaluate an existing Wikipedia article related to the class, and leave suggestions for improving it on the article's talk page.
 * A few questions to consider (don't feel limited to these):
 * Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference?
 * Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?
 * Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
 * Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted?
 * Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
 * Check a few citations. Do the links work? Is there any close paraphrasing or plagiarism in the article?
 * Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?

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Resources: Evaluating Wikipedia,

Week 4

 * Add 1–2 sentences of new information, backed up with a citation to an appropriate source, to a Wikipedia article related to the class.

Week 5

 * Choose one article, identify ways in which you can improve and correct its language and grammar, and make the appropriate changes. (You do not need to alter the article's content.)


 * Identify an article that would benefit from illustration, create or find an appropriate photo, illustration, or audio/video, and add it to the article.
 * All media uploaded to Wikipedia must fall under a &quot;free license,&quot; which means they can be used or shared by anyone. Examples of media you can use are photos that you take yourself, images and text in the public domain, and works created by someone else who has given permission for their work to be used by others. For more information about which types of media can be uploaded to Wikipedia, see Commons:Help desk.
 * To add a media file to an article, you must first upload it to Wikimedia Commons. For instructions on how to upload files to Commons, refer to Illustrating Wikipedia. This brochure will also provide you with detailed information about which files are acceptable to upload to Wikipedia and the value of contributing media to Wikipedia articles.