HeidiKeller-Lapp
Lecturer,
Assistant Director of
Making of the
Modern World Program
UCSD
hkellerlapp@ucsd.edu

Dr. Heidi Keller-Lapp is a Lecturer and Assistant Director of Making of the Modern World Program at UCSD

Title

Wikipedia Assignment

Goal

The goal of this assignment is for students to develop academic and professional writing skills by writing to a public audience. Additionally, the goal is for students to develop research skills such as fact-checking, researching content, evaluating quality/critical analysis, increasing awareness of questions of authorship, legitimacy, notability, reliability, plagiarism, and to distinguish between scholarly and non-scholarly sources. Distinguishing between fact-based and academic argument writing styles was another learning goal, as was writing and editing collaboratively with peers, producing knowledge, increasing digital/media literacy skills and information fluency, improving critical thinking and research skills, foster collaboration and community of practice among peers and Wikipedia editors, and making scholarly contributions to common, public good.

Lesson Plans

lesson plan

Reflection

I integrated this scaffolded, twelve-week editing assignment into the 8-10 page research paper assignment. Students wrote new Wikipedia articles or substantially edited the content of existing Wikipedia articles related to their selected research paper topic, adding 3-4 paragraphs of encyclopedic text-entries and 5 citations from scholarly sources. Although I still await the final semester course evaluations, attached is a brief formative assessment I administered in class last week. I asked each of my 14 students to submit 7 words that best described the Wikipedia assignment for them. Attached you will find their submissions in the form of a Wordle. I projected the response last night, followed by a great discussion about the role of the assignment in providing space to practice and improve their 1) research skills, 2) skills in writing history for a public audience, 3) critical thinking skills, and 3) digital literacy skills. Students gave great feedback and suggestions for the next time I offer this assignment.
One of the goals of the assignment was to include students in knowledge production in the public space and to assist in closing the gender gap among wikipedia editors and wikipedia topics. Here are the articles they wrote/edited - we made some contributions to these goals: - Childhood in early modern England - student author a woman - Evolution of patents in early modern Europe - History of mentalities - Early impact of Mesoamerican goods in Iberian society - Witchcraft (women) - student author a woman - Convents in early modern Europe - student author a woman - Ignacy Krasicki - Fables and Parables in early modern Poland - German Peasants' War - Martial music - House of Industry (Dublin) (on Irish Penal Laws) - History of Seville (social impact of New World products) - Consumer revolution (France) - student author a woman - Sea Dogs (early modern sailors)