Preservapedia:WikiProject Preservation Education/Examples

Interviews with professors and professionals that utilize wiki-based projects
As a part of PreservapediaTalks, the following professors have shared their success stories with wiki-based projects as a part of a graduate school curriculum.
 * Bruce Sharky, Louisiana State University
 * "I thought it would be a good learning process for my students for them to understand better how Wikipedia works and the quality of the articles and the information that one can get from Wikipedia and, at the same time, make a contribution." - Bruce Sharky
 * "I don't think there's any other venue that gets vetted as on the Wikipedia review community and we had people in, literally, from many parts of the world critiquing the students. The students really then, not that they didn't take it seriously, but they got much more serious about what they were doing because they realized that people took them seriously and were giving them critiques that they were not used to, say, in a design studio critique." - Bruce Sharky
 * Jennifer Geigel Mikulay, Alverno College
 * "The videos my students are producing and contributing focus on cultural heritage and illustrate ideas that are described directly in the text of the articles. We create our videos specifically to illustrate the content of the articles, and we often choose subjects that can be hard to describe in words." - Jennifer Geigel Mikulay
 * "My students are using their new media skills to share cultural heritage knowledge on a very accessible platform with a massive scale, and they're often serving diverse audiences whose interests are not routinely reflected in the local institutional exhibition and preservation activity." - Jennifer Geigel Mikulay
 * Michael Holleran and Josh Conrad, University of Texas at Austin
 * "It's a more distributed knowledge that we wanted to be able to get people involved in sharing, and I guess I'll add one more thing, which is that the very act of having people involved and sharing information seemed to be a very healthy aspect of the preservation program - a strength of having a broader involvement in the survey process." - Michael Holleran
 * "One of the things that I think it does well for the students is to get them a better appreciation and some experience with data management and understanding the historical survey not just as an individualized research project on a particular property or neighborhood, but also the whole picture of how does this information come together, how can it be used, what you need to do to understand and manage it and make it useful in practice." - Michael Holleran
 * Richard McCoy, Indiana University-Pursue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)
 * "In order to be a good writer and a good researcher, you have to know your subject, and then putting the information in Wikipedia isn't really any different, in the end, from using a complex Microsoft Word document." - Richard McCoy
 * "Today, we have this capacity to collaborate globally, and so as we're increasing knowledge I just thought it was important to publish it, and so some students I do know really liked that. They put it up on their resume, like, 'Here's a Wikipedia article I made.'" - Richard McCoy

Others have taken a part in interviews about incorporating wikis into coursework in independent projects.
 * Richard Gordon, University of Delaware
 * Chris Penna, University of Delaware
 * Lou Rossi, University of Delaware
 * Carl Schmidt, University of Delaware

Louisiana State University (Baton Rouge, Louisiana)

 * Course and Professor: Regional Planning and Design, Bruce Sharky
 * 11 Master's students
 * Assignment: Develop diagrams and illustrations to improve Wikipedia pages about natural phenomena related to landscapes and conservation biology.
 * Professor Bruce Sharky: "Students were very excited about the assignment because they were able to be published, they were treated as grown-ups, they were making a contribution to Wikipedia, and people all over the world were critiquing their work. I found that the quality of their other work was some of the best I’ve seen of my students, and I think it was because of the Wikipedia assignment. It made students think critically about the kind of graphic illustrations they do with all of their assignments. As landscape architects, we have to communicate to the public, and this assignment helped them gain those skills."

Alverno College (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)

 * Course and Professor: Advanced Media Studies
 * 20 advanced undergraduate students
 * Assignment: Create videos related to cultural heritage that are then uploaded to Wikipedia pages through WikiProject Wiki Makes Video.
 * Professor Jennifer Geigel Mikulay: "Students learned about Wikipedia as a digital project and as a collaborative community with a specific culture...They also learned the value of sharing their work in a highly accessible venue. The feedback students got meant a lot to them. When Wikipedians left notes on their talk pages or otherwise commented on the videos, the students really learned from the engagement."

Indiana University-Pursue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) (Indianapolis, Indiana)

 * Course and Professor: Collection Care and Management, Richard McCoy
 * Assignment: Create articles for public art projects in Indianapolis and upload photographs to WikiProject Public Art.

Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic)

 * Course and Professor: Nature Conservation, Jiri Reif
 * 30 advanced undergraduate students
 * Assignment: Improve an existing Wikipedia article by visiting a district of the city and photographing it, and then uploading photos and new content to the Wikipedia pages.
 * Professor Jiri Reif: "Students were really pushed into the game in most cases and worked more enthusiastically than during other kinds of courses. I am very glad that they realize the value of publishing their written work on Wikipedia — their schoolwork did not end up in the teacher’s drawer. Last but not least, the complete availability of the article on the Internet and its critical assessment by independent Wikipedians made the students learn to work with sources — a skill that will be useful for them during further studies."

School of Applied Arts Spilimbergo (Argentina)

 * Course and Professors: History of Argentinian and Latin American Photography, Lila Pagola and Pablo Genero
 * 45 second-year undergraduate students
 * Assignment: Students add content to Wikipedia pages relating to Argentinean and Latin American photography.
 * Professors Lila Pagola and Pablo Genero: "The History of photography in Argentina and Latin America is a field of recent research, and professors face a big challenge for teaching it, because of the lack of information, preservation and access to documents, etc. By 2007 most of this few data existent was hardly represented in the web, including Wikipedia. So, the work done by this students from 2007 to 2011, had a huge impact on the information available, indexing in first results of Google thanks of its presence in Wikipedia."

Georgetown University (Washington, DC)

 * Course and Professor: Introduction to the Study of the Arab World; Theorizing Culture and Politics, Rochelle Davis
 * 20 Master's and 2nd/3rd year undergraduate students
 * Assignment: "Students chose a topic for the semester, researched it, contributed an entry to Wikipedia, and then wrote a research paper on the same subject."
 * Professor Rochelle Davis: "I graded the assignment based on five criteria: (1) Vision for the entry content: Did you divide up the material in a way that reflects both the literature and neutral point of view? Did you make the appropriate headings? (2) Your research in thinking-beyond-Google to find relevant and diverse sources. (3) Your organization of the entry and the content: Did you organize the material or are there things in one section that belong elsewhere? Did you provide relevant material? Are there things missing? (4) Your writing of a well-supported, well-researched entry: Neutral point of view? Sources/footnotes? Grammatically correct? Paragraphs well-constructed? (5) How you address the comments you were given by me and others."

College of Staten Island/CUNY (New York, New York)

 * Course and Professor: History of Design and Digital Media, Michael Mandiberg
 * 22 2nd/3rd-year undergraduate students
 * Assignment: Expand stub articles with both written and photographic content.
 * Professor Michael Mandiberg: "While I was able to use the article history to evaluate the objective quality of each student’s contributions, it was very useful to see the shifts in subjective self-awareness and perception that is a large part of why I had my students write on Wikipedia. I was able to confirm from the student’s own voice the transformations I had witnessed (or believed I had witnessed) via the text they added: it empowered them, it transformed their research skills, it was rewarding for them to do something that was for the greater good, and most importantly, it made their writing better and kept them academically honest."

Public Policy Initiative, several universities

 * Article Quality of Pre-Existing Articles Before and After Student Work.pngnment: Public policy programs from around the US contribute articles related to the WikiProject United States Public Policy.
 * Assessment: In 2011, Wikipedians conducted a study to verify the success of the Initiative, here are their findings:
 * Over the course of the project a total of 140 articles were randomly selected from the WikiProject United States Public Policy Course tab and assessed. 84 were pre-existing and 56 were new.
 * There was 64% increase in all articles, the average score went up 5.8 points (9.0 before, 14.8 after)
 * There was a 50% increase in pre-existing articles. The average score went up 4.8 points (9.7 before, 14.5 after)
 * New articles had an average score of 15.4 which translates to an average B rating in the Wikipedia scale.
 * Over the course of two university terms, approximately 800 students participating in the Initiative contributed over 8.8 million bytes to the Wikipedia namespace.

Quotes from professors and professionals on the advantages of wiki-based assignments

 * "It has up-to-date information on timely topics. Wikipedia may be one’s only reference source on recent technologies and events." - Doug Johnson, Director of Media and Technology for the Mankato Public Schools
 * "Wikis can be used to encourage collaboration among students by allowing them to read and edit each other’s work. Collaborative writing assignments with wikis encourage students to review each other’s pieces and truly reflect on and critique what is being put together instead of just pasting separate components together (Ben-Zvi, 2007)." Faye Deters, Eastern Kentucky University; Kristen Cuthrell, East Carolina University; and Joy Stapleton, East Carolina University
 * "Distance students prefer a variety of teaching methods (Andrusyszyn, Cragg, & Humbert, 2001) and that variety encourages students to develop expertise and professors to become comfortable with online technology (Andrusyszyn, Cragg, & Humbert; Levin, Levin, & Waddoups, 1999)." Mary Bold, Texas Woman's University
 * "Students found the tools helpful in allowing them to see what others in class are contributing; in identifying classmates who can help them with editing difficulties; and in completing peer reviews. All of this resulted in a strong sense of community within the classroom." Jeff Dunn, founder and executive editor of Edudemic.com
 * "Wikipedia blurs the line between consumption and creation of knowledge, giving motivated student the opportunity not only to use but also to generate knowledge and see themselves as members of a community of learners." Educause Learning Initiative
 * "An important part of academic training is seeing how knowledge is created and understanding that it is dynamic, evolving over time based on the contributions of many individuals. Wikipedia provides a considerable measure of transparency about the provenance of information, allowing student to witness and take part in this evolution." Educause Learning Initiative
 * "A wiki is a working space. It is an unpolished web page which can be edited by anyone. Content developed in a wiki doesn’t have to stay in a wiki. The wiki can be the process in its entirety, or it can be one or more steps in a larger workflow which leads to another kind of media." Richard Gordon, University of Delaware
 * "What skills do people need to write, edit and illustrate an online encyclopedia for the world?
 * 1) Thinking, planning, reasoning
 * 2) IT Skills: word processing
 * 3) Critical thinking
 * 4) Information skills: interpreting, assessing
 * 5) Information skills: digesting, reporting
 * 6) Creative/original thinking
 * 7) Writing accessibly
 * 8) Attention to detail: reviewing and improving
 * 9) Research skills
 * 10) Working in a global environment: collaborating with people from different cultures, time zones, languages." Dr. Martin Poulter, University of Bristol
 * "In learning about the specific voice on Wikipedia, they learn about the “authoritative” voice and how its tone can convince, even if the content is questionable. The ways in which tone and content reinforce and/or undermine each other is a crucial media fluency for students to learn." Adrianne Wadewitz, Indiana University