Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/University of Huddersfield Archives Adult Learning Courses/Wikipedia for Beginners (Summer)

An introductory two session course for general adult learners on the roles involved in collaborating on wikipedia and to the basics of editing and evaluating articles.

Week 1
This week is designed to cover the basics of Wikipedia in the modern world. How it is viewed as a source and resource, and the project's internal ideas about its structure and development.

The session will start by looking at Wikipedia's Five Pillars, then at its major policies as they affect contributors (e.g. Conflict of Interest). We'll look at the different types of roles you can have as a contributor to Wikipedia, and then check everyone has and can log in to their user account.

After the break, we'll cover the layout of the site and the basics of editing, doing some practical work in user sandboxes. We'll spend the last part of the session discussing the evaluation of articles, and picking articles for students to work on developing over the next week. See Assignment #1 below for the 'homework'!

Students can follow the training modules below for extra practice before or in between sessions.

Article Evaluation

Select a wikipedia article (preferably of a B or C grade) and evaluate it. Make a few notes (it doesn't have to be an essay!) of its pros and cons and good and bad points and we'll share these around the class.

Article Development

Do some research on your selected article. Either bring your notes with you, or copy them and potential sources into the Talk page of the article to make other potential editors aware of your plans. We'll do some more work on the writing in the session next week.

Week 2
We'll begin this session by discussing the articles you evaluated over the intervening week.

Then there will be chance to feed back on your experiences of editing, the problems, pitfalls, successes and surprises you have come across. Any problems, let's try and problem solve them together!!

The rest of the session will be a predominantly practical one. We'll carry on with editing for a while, and there will be chance to access some library resources in person and online.

We'll end by going over what we've learnt and having a short period of Q&amp;A for anything anyone is unsure of. We'll also look at links to find further learning and training information, or events you might want to get involved with to become more confident within the Wikipedia community.

Completing your Article

Even if you don't complete your article in the second session hopefully you now have the tools to go off and do this in your own time. Please make sure you give me the title of your article and I can link to it in the course page so we can see everyone's outcomes.