Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/UW Bothell/Beyond Petroleum (Autumn)

This course explores many of the dimensions by which petroleum or oil touches our lives. Since oil first became an abundant source of cheap fuel, oil increasingly became an inextricable component of our lives. Our consumption of oil is colossal, our uses of its products are myriad, and the chains of impacts on lives across the world are immeasurable. Oil has had an enormous impact on human history, and through global climate change, will have a larger impact on Earth’s future. We are now at the point that we must drastically curtail our use of petroleum and other fossil fuels if we are to retain a livable planet.

We will explore the broad theme of “Beyond Petroleum” both as an end in itself, and as a means to explore how knowledge is produced and why ideas matter.

Week 1
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.

We are engaging in learning about, evaluating, editing and creating content for Wikipedia as one way to make the results of our efforts available beyond ourselves, and because the standards for Wikipedia are consistent with what is needed to create reliable and strong synopses of topics - a skill we all will use over and over. We will use other modes of inquiry in other aspects of this course, but this is one of our core tools.

To begin your work, please complete two tasks - first, learn a little about Wikipedia, from this article: Wikipedia:About

Second, review the assignment &quot;Get Started on Wikipedia&quot; by establishing your account and learning the basic policies.

This course has been assigned a Wikipedia Expert. You can reach them through the Get Help button at the top of this page.

Create an account on Wikipedia.

You should have already joined 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.

Once you get to this point, please stop! We will discuss next steps in our class on Monday, Oct 4.

Week 2
For this assignment, you can pick any of the articles available, or select another one that fits your interests. Any topic about oil is allowed for this assignment. Your goal in this assignment is to gain some perspective on what makes an encyclopedia article useful, accurate and credible.

Note: many articles are very long and complex - that might be something to flag. I do not expect you to evaluate this minutely, but to provide an overview of improvements needed, and examples. This should take you no more than an hour to complete.

Resource to guide your evaluation:


 * Evaluating Wikipedia

Week 3
After reading a number of articles in Wikipedia, it is easy to spot areas for improvement, as you have done when you evaluated your articles last week. Now, take the opportunity to make small improvements by editing an existing article. This could take the form of adding better references, improving the writing, adding images, and correcting misstatements.

You can gain a sense of where there are already deficiencies noted by other Wikipedians in the talk pages associated with the articles. Can you address any of these problems? Or you may note problems that have not been addressed yet. The task for this week is to make some improvement to an article.

Resources:


 * Editing Wikipedia, pages 1–5

Week 10
Resources:


 * Editing Wikipedia, pages 7–9
 * Editing Wikipedia, pages 12 and 14
 * Reach out to your Wikipedia Expert if you have any questions.

Everyone has begun writing their article drafts.

Week 11
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.

After improving your draft based on others' feedback, it's time to move your work live - to the &quot;mainspace.&quot;

Resource: Editing Wikipedia, page 13

Week 12
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!

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! You will have now contributed to this most used of online encyclopedias!