Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Texas AM University/Technical and Professional Writing (spring 2024)

This is an applied course meant to prepare students to function as an editor in technical and professional venues. We will use Wikipedia to target certain less-tangible skills necessary for advanced editing: the ability to join a community of editors that already have standards in place, learn to read and improve writing within those conventions, and learn to facilitate good writing within this existing community. Rather than simply copyediting existing articles, creating new articles, or adding new content to existing articles, the students will focus on finding articles that have a good base of content but which need editorial intervention to help the larger community of potential editors continue to improve the articles. Students will focus primarily on issues of organization, appropriateness, and Wikipedia style, with the aim of significantly improving the existing content of an article. Students will be expected to work within the Wikipedia infrastructure, including engaging with current interested editors and leaving traces of their work to assist with future editing of the articles they worked on.