Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/York University/Digital History (Fall-Winter 2018-19)

This course introduces students to both the theoretical and practical impacts of digital technologies on historical scholarship and public history. Digital technologies and the development of the Internet have transformed the ways that historians conduct their research, access sources, analyze documents, and communicate research findings. Students will gain practical knowledge of how to take advantage of digital tools for historical scholarship and public history and explore the theoretical implications of such digital knowledge mobilization.

Week 1
Welcome to Wikipedia! This is our introductory week to the Wikipedia platform. We will discuss the debates surrounding the use of Wikipedia for history education and historical scholarship.

In this training session, we will learn about the policies and basics for editing Wikipedia.

Before class, be sure to complete the following readings:


 * Read: Rosenzweig, Roy.  “Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past” Journal of American History  93, no. 1 (June 2006): 117-146
 * Read:  Editing Wikipedia
 * Read:  Evaluating Wikipedia

Week 2
In this second week on the Wikipedia platform, we are going to learn about reading articles with a critical eye and adding citations. As a crowdsourced web encyclopedia, Wikipedia relies upon its community of editors to correct errors and add citations to improve the accuracy and quality of its articles.