1.
Teaching with
Wikipedia
Experiences, Lessons & Best Practices
Webinar, West Virginia University Libraries, April 2015
Adeline Koh
Stockton University
@adelinekoh

2.
Classes I’ve Taught with
Wikipedia
Introduction to Digital Writing (Spring 2014)
Lower-level General Studies writing course
Seminar in Feminist Theory (Fall 2014)
Capstone in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies
@adelinekoh

3.
Class Wikipedia Projects
Introduction to Digital Writing
Add 500 words to a Wikipedia entry/start a new
entry of student’s choice
Seminar in Feminist Theory
Add 500 words to a Wikipedia entry on Feminist
Theory/start a new entry of student’s choice
@adelinekoh

4.
“It’s empowering and scary.”
Student Reactions to Editing Wikipedia
“I thought I was never supposed to use
Wikipedia.”
“Wikipedia has a vetting process?”
“It’s amazing to have an effect on the
public”
@adelinekoh

5.
Lessons I Learned
@adelinekoh

6.
1. You Can’t Begin
Introducing Wikipedia
Too Early
@adelinekoh

7.
Important
Scaffolding learning about Wikipedia editing throughout
the semester
Wiki editing takes place in markup—may be unfamiliar to
students
Have students pair up/group for practice rounds
Look at other sample syllabi as model:
http://tinyurl.com/WVUwikipedia
@adelinekoh

8.
2. Learn How to Edit
Wikipedia Yourself
@adelinekoh

9.
Instructors
Take some time to edit Wikipedia yourself, take the
tutorials: http://tinyurl.com/WVUwikipedia
Wiki markup takes a little practice to learn, as well as
page structures etc.
@adelinekoh

10.
3. Work with the Wiki
Education Foundation
@adelinekoh

11.
Work with Wiki Ed
Get in touch with the Wiki Education Foundation for help
Use the Wiki Education Foundation assignment tool:
http://wizard.wikiedu.org/
Design a Course Page on Wikipedia (Example: https://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Education_Program:Northeastern_University/
Online_Communities_(2015-1-Spring) )
@adelinekoh

12.
4. Use the Wikimedia
Instructor Handout
Repository
@adelinekoh

13.
Handouts Galore
http://tinyurl.com/wikipediahandouts or google
“Wikipedia Education handouts”
Includes everything you need: Cheat sheets on Wiki
markup, citing sources, references, choosing articles to
edit, how to use a talk page, what to do for instructors
before semester starts, and many more
@adelinekoh

14.
5. How to Deal with
Trolls
@adelinekoh

15.
How to Deal with Trolls
Encourage students to edit pages which are still stubs, or
articles which are non-controversial
Teach them how to recognized “featured articles”
Give them examples of “edit wars”
Edits should be peer reviewed by other students in the
class, but don’t need to be “sticky” to count for credit
Teach disengagement
@adelinekoh

16.
For More Resources
I wrote a blog post:
http://tinyurl.com/WVUwikipedia
@adelinekoh