Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/University of California, Merced/Feminism, Handmaids and Wild Seeds (Spring 2021)

Margaret Atwood’s &quot;The Handmaid’s Tale&quot; and Octavia Butler’s &quot;Wild Seed&quot;, both from the genre of speculative fiction, serve as the basis from which we will examine oppressive systems, the state of being other or different, and marginality, particularly along the lines of gender and race; in addition, these texts offer alternative ways to think about self, the capacity to act independently and to make one’s own free choices, as well as the means one has to determine their own actions.

In this course, students will learn how: to take the controversies raised in speculative fiction, alternative versions of the past or projections of the possible future, from the &quot;The Handmaid’s Tale&quot; and &quot;Wild Seed&quot; to draw parallels and/or generate real-world research questions, identify problems, and formulate tentative solutions; students will practice the use of multiple interdisciplinary analytical tools to identify, interpret, and evaluate texts and various information; students will work independently and collaboratively applying their research and analysis using written, visual, and oral modes of communication to convey ideas; and students will learn to identify the ways in which cultural, political, economic, technological, and environmental dimensions of society interact understanding that conflict is inherent and welcome in diverse learning communities.

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.

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

To prepare for editing and contributing to Wikipedia, please review the following handouts:


 * Editing Wikipedia: A guide for student editors, pg. 1–5
 * Evaluating Wikipedia: Tracing the evolution &amp; evaluating the quality of articles, pg. 1-8

Create an account and join this course page, using the enrollment link on the Enroll in your WikiEdu Course page on CatCourses.

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.

Week 2
Time to jump in! This week you will complete 2 trainings that will introduce you to editing basics and the types of pages that you will interact with in Wikipedia.

After completing the tutorials, watch this video, and follow the instructions for creating &amp; editing your user page.

How to create a user page on Wikipedia (4:09)

Exercise: Create &amp; Edit Your User Page
Create your user page using the Wiki Visual Editor. Add at least 5 sentences describing yourself and the ways in which you plan to contribute to Wikipedia.

Everyone has a User Page!

At this point, everyone should have 3 trainings completed. This week, everyone should be familiar with editing basics and have a user page formatted with a few sentences.

Week 3
After completing the training and exercise for Week 3, you should have 4 trainings completed and 1 exercise completed up to this point.

If you completed the exercise but your excersices completed number is 0, it is OK, as long as you published your changes associated with the evaluating articles exercise.

We are now going to take a closer look and begin to think critically about Wikipedia articles.

This week's training will review how to evaluate article quality, the elements of quality articles, and some introductory information about sources and citations. After you finish the training, Complete the Evaluate Wikipedia Exercise.

'''As part of this exercise, Wikipedia will generate a user subpage for you to record your notes. Be sure to publish this page to save your work. '''

You will also select an article to evaluate. If you are not sure what to select, pick an article from this list: Feminism Articles: C quality: High Importance.

Questions to address:


 * 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?

Week 4
After completing Week 4 assignments, you will have completed 6 trainings so far!

Your Wikipedia contributions should include your user page intro, your article evaluation, and at least 3 copyedits.

This week you will learn about adding content to Wikipedia. The trainings and exercises will provide you with hands on practice.

For the Copyedit an article exercise, use the article you evaluated last week, or select a new article if you wish.

Publish changes when completing a training or exercise in your user page, sandbox, or another Wikipedia page in order to save your work.

Optional: view Adding Citations to Wikipedia Articles (12:36) for a step-by-step example of adding citations.

Week 6


It's time to start thinking about how your course readings and discussions will shape your Wikipedia contribution. For this week's training, you will explore articles related to the course themes and your interests.



A list of articles has been preselected for this class. Spend time reading through the available articles, and consider:


 * What are the themes from the course that I am most interested in?
 * What articles have content gaps that I can address through my Wikipedia contribution?

Interested in a theme not covered by an article in the available article list? Search and read through other Wikipedia articles. The available articles are likely to be broader or narrower (although possibly equivilent) to your topic scope.

aa (Links to an external site.are likely to be broader or narrower (although possibly equivalent) to your topic scope.

Note, a well written and well researched article will not be a good match for this assignment, because you will likely have difficulty finding ways to improve the article.

We are working towards selecting an article that you will work on for the remainder of this project. Do not assign yourself an article just yet!

As you read through the available articles, consider where the themes of this course fit in, and  where does the Wikipedia article fall short? Think back to the questions asked in the Week 3 Exercise: Evaluate Wikipedia.

Week 6 Instructions:   

After completing Week 6 assignments, you will have completed 7 trainings so far!

Your Wikipedia contributions should include your user page intro, your article evaluation, and at least 3 copyedits to an article.

You will have a few Wikipedia articles in mind for your final Wiki contribution.

Week 7
After completing Week 7 assignments, you will have assigned yourself an article for your final Wikipedia Contribution Assignment!

After Week 7, you will have completed 8 trainings and 3 exercises so far.

This week you are:


 * assigning yourself an article that you will work on for the rest of the semester.
 * responding to 4 questions in your sandbox.

For your Wikipedia contribution assignment, you will be applying the sources and information you are finding as part of your Annotated Bibliography to your selected Wikipedia article. Specifically, you will be applying your source summaries, with source citations, to expand the article.

For example, if you choose the Anyanwu article, you would be expanding the article by writing about a course theme related to this character, i.e. afrofuturism, witch-hunt, feminism in science fiction, feminism and food, etc.

A list of articles has been preselected for this class:  available articles. Next to each article is the article's Class. Use the Class table to inform your selection, and to help answer the 4 questions below.

 Want to work on an article not listed? Email Elizabeth, esalmon@undefineducmerced.edu with the Wikipedia URL.

Complete the Finalizing your Topic and Selecting Sources exercise, and the Drafting in the Sandbox training. Note, you will be located sources for your selected article as part of your Annotated Bibliography Assignment.

= In your sandbox, respond to these 4 questions: =


 * 1) ## What content gap(s) do you plan to address?
 * 2) What are the key points information you want to look for in your research?
 * 3) How do you plan to improve this article?
 * 4) <span style="font-family: 'Open Sans', arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.008px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400;">Look at the article's talk page. How can the conversations on the talk page inform your contribution?

Quick Video Instructions:

This week, you are:

 * Viewing the Step-by-Step Video Instructions (below)
 * Reading through a Wikipedia Guide for writing articles in your topic area (below)
 * Adding a minimum of 100 words based on information from one (1) source that you located as part of your Annotated Bibliography assignment.

Step-by-Step Video Instructions (7:55)

<span style="color: #2c2c2c; font-family: 'Open Sans', arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.008px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400;">What guides appear most relevant to your theme and article? Read through at least two guides for writing aritcles in your topic area.

Biographies

Books

Cultural Anthropology

Films

History

LGBT+ Studies

Political Science

Sociology

Women's Studies

Everyone has started their draft contributions! You should have at least 100 words and 1 source added to your sandbox.

Week 9
<span style="color: #2c2c2c; font-family: 'Open Sans', arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.008px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400;">After Week 9,


 * <span style="color: #2c2c2c; font-family: 'Open Sans', arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.008px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400;">you will have completed 9 trainings and 3 exercises so far.
 * <span style="color: #2c2c2c; font-family: 'Open Sans', arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.008px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400;">you will have added a minimum of 200 words, and 2 sources to your selected article sandbox page.

This week, you are:

 * Adding an additional 100 words based on information from a second source that you located as part of your Annotated Bibliography assignment. You are continuing to work in your article sandbox page.
 * This may be in the same section, a different section, or a new section of your selected article.
 * Add your second source to your References section under your written contribution.
 * Completing the Plagiarism training.

Step-by-Step Video Instructions for accessing your sandbox and adding citations (Week 8 video; 7:55)

Week 11
This is your last major contribution to your selected article. This time, you are going to add information from TWO additional sources and adding a minimum of 200 words.

This will bring you to the assignment word and source WIki requirements- using information from 4 sources, to make a contribution of at least 400 words. Over the next 2 weeks, we will peer-review and polish our work before moving contributions from your sandbox to the live article.

To get ready to peer-review each other's work, complete the peer review training. Think about how your own contribution matches up with the peer-review criteria.

<span id="_GoBack"> <span style="font-size: 11.5pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: #2c2c2c;">Congratulations!! You are almost done! You should have at least a 400-word contribution, based on at least 4 sources.

<span style="font-size: 11.5pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: #2c2c2c;">We will review, polish, and move our work to the &quot;live&quot; article over the next few weeks.

This week, you are:
Polishing your final contribution. For instructions,


 * Read, Editing Wikipedia, pages 12 and 14
 * Use the Editing Wikipedia final check-list, page 15

This week, review and improve your work, and format your contribution to match Wikipedia's tone and standards. Using the checklist, read and make improvements to your contribution, and go to the live article, and make small edits to improve grammar, organization, add links, etc.

There are no additional trainings for this week. I Next week you will move your edits from the sandbox into the &quot;live&quot; article.

You are almost done!! At this point, you should have a well developed contribution ready to be moved into the live article. You will also have made additional improviments to the live article.

Week 13
It's time to move your work to the article &quot;mainspace.&quot; For this week,


 * Complete the Move your work to Wikipedia training
 * Read: Editing Wikipedia: Make Your Work Live, pg. 13

Copy your contribution to the live article.

NOTE: Save a screenshot or a copy of your sandbox contribution before moving your work to the live article.

Week 14
Everyone should have finished all of the work they'll do on Wikipedia, and be ready for grading.