Submissions/Wikipedia projects, college students, and culture clash: opportunities for learning through failure

This is an Open submission for Wikimania 2017 that has not yet been reviewed by a member of the Programme Committee.

Submission no. 6041

Title of the submission: Wikipedia projects, college students, and culture clash: opportunities for learning through failure

Type of submission (lecture, panel, tutorial/workshop, roundtable discussion, lightning talk, poster, birds of a feather discussion): roundtable

Author of the submission: Cecelia Musselman, Matthew Vetter, Rebecca Thorndike-Breeze, Amy Carleton, David Cregar, Amanda Rust

Language of presentation: English

E-mail address: c.musselman@neu.edu, matthew.vetter@iup.edu, rtb@mit.edu, amymarie@mit.edu, david.cregar@nyu.edu, A.Rust@northeastern.edu

Username: WritingTeacherC, Matthewvetter, Rtbhive, AmandaRR123, nymaker

Country of origin: USA

Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.): Northeastern University, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University

Personal homepage or blog

Abstract (up to 300 words to describe your proposal)

Academic engagement in Wikipedia is increasingly common, especially as organizations like the Wiki Education Foundation emerge to provide training and support of novices. As academics who value the opportunities for learning that Wikipedia projects allow, moderators in this session are committed to sharing positive aspects of this work at our home institutions and beyond. But the positive opportunities for learning and engagement that Wikipedia affords don’t always come easily or automatically. This roundtable will give a view from the classroom and the library on what has worked for us, and what hasn’t.

University students have access to information resources not publicly available and typically diversify both Wikipedia content and editor demographics. As frequent users of Wikipedia, students bring an appreciation of the encyclopedia to their contributions. However, Wikipedia is not a teaching tool by design. Contribution efforts can encounter difficulties at many points: mismatches between student and Wikipedia values; technical competency challenges; linguistic and cultural disjunctions; assignments that are never “done”; new source use and evaluation practices; timing mismatches; failing then learning and recovering; and emotional effects of being a “newbie” in a community with specific and often arcane norms. In this roundtable, moderators and participants will identify challenges of working with undergraduate and graduate students in Wikipedia, and create strategies for addressing them.

Moderators bring broad experience across different institutional and disciplinary contexts. Speaker 1 examines challenges facing students contributing to science and medicine articles; Speaker 2 shares experience teaching a Wikipedia writing project in a multilingual graduate class; Speaker 3 shares experience collaborating with librarians and Wikipedians organizing edit-a-thons and addressing diversity gaps; Speaker 4 discusses notability, systemic bias, and Wikipedia coverage of the history of underrepresented groups; Speaker 5 shares design principles and outcomes for writing exercises using Talk Pages for International and English Language Learning students.

What will attendees take away from this session?: Attendees will:

• Learn about common points of friction and failure when students work with Wikipedia

• Have a better understanding of goals of student editors and college Wikipedia assignments

• Brainstorm other potential points of friction and workshop methods of constructive engagement with student articles and projects

Theme of presentation: Education

For workshops and discussions, what level is the intended audience?: All are welcome

Length of session (if other than 25 minutes, specify how long): 55 minutes

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?: Half of the team = yes; Half no

Slides or further information (optional): Google Slides

Special requests: Wifi and HDMI

Is this Submission a Draft or Final?

This is a Completed submission for Wikimania 2017 ready to be reviewed by a member of the Programme Committee.

Interested attendees

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