User talk:Mike Cline/Articles Under Contemplation/Articles By MSU students

The following list is a partial list[1] of WP articles contributed to by students at Montana State University under the mentorship of Campus Ambassadors in the Wikipedia US Education Program. Also included in the list are major outreach efforts by Montana State University Campus Ambassadors.

Article list

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The articles listed represent new articles created by students, expansion of stub articles, addition of references and/or articles where the content improvement resulted from research and writing accomplished by students.

The articles resulted from work done with the following Montana State University classes.

  • US101 University Studies, First Year Seminar- PREREQUISITE: First year students (less than 30 credits) only. -- This multi-disciplinary course, presented in seminar format, draws from the disciplines of psychology, sociology, history, and philosophy and encourages students to explore issues critical to their academic goals and objectives. The course emphasizes verbal communication, critical thinking, intellectual development, and academic choices. Fulfills university seminar requirement of the core curriculum.
  • WRIT 101W College Writing I-- Studies in the discovery and written expression of ideas, stressing organization, support, audience awareness, clarity, and persuasive presentation. Taught around a particular topic or theme varying with each offering. (6 sections, ~150 students) [2]

Outreach

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Studies

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  • Academic journal proposal by Kelly Myer Polacek on results of Writing 101 classes [4]

Notes

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  1. ^ This is a partial list because not all post course data was properly documented, some students did not complete their assignments, some students never moved article work out of their userspace and some student work was accomplished after course completion and not under the direct purview of an Ambassador
  2. ^ Education/Case Studies/Extend A Stub
  3. ^ Still in user space
  4. ^
    • Title: A novel approach to teaching information literacy skills to freshman writing students: Wikipedia contributions as course assignments
    • Proposal: We describe a unique assignment in which freshman writing students contribute new content to Wikipedia. Survey data reveal that students gain valuable information literacy skills including the ability to differentiate among source types, understand the diversity of library resources, and properly cite materials. Contributing to Wikipedia meets most of the ACRL information literacy standards and allows freshmen to contribute to a larger body of knowledge where their work can serve a greater purpose. Freshman writing students are regularly challenged to write expository essays that incorporate scholarly and popular resources typically available in university libraries. Librarians are often recruited to provide traditional bibliographic instruction in accessing and utilizing these resources, after which students go off to write their essays with no audience other than the writing instructor. Our unique instructional team designed a writing assignment that united traditional and novel learning goals by inviting Wikipedia into the classroom. Wikipedia is the 5th most visited web site worldwide and is used by students for a variety of academic and non-academic purposes. Telling students to avoid Wikipedia eliminates an opportunity for students to think critically about information, an important component of the information literacy skill set. We created an assignment based on Wikipedia contribution practices that met a variety of ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. Our primary goal was have students gain experience in expository writing (specifically, encyclopedic writing style). Additional goals for students included: achieving competence using library databases; differentiating between scholarly and popular resources; understanding and respecting the boundaries of copyright and plagiarism; and learning to contribute in a novel Web 2.0 medium. The assignment instructions were simple: Students were to identify a topic of interest from the list of Wikipedia stubs and expand the stub by 800 words. Students were to cite at least one academic journal article, one book, and one popular news item; additional sources and source types were encouraged. We assessed students' use of library and internet resources, as well as their engagement in several Performance Indicators described in the ACRL Information Literacy standards. Our instructional team included: a Writing 101 instructor, a reference librarian, and two Wikipedia Campus Ambassadors. Student report via surveys found that most students referred to journal articles (69%) and utilized library databases (67%) when researching their Wikipedia topic. Other resource utilization included: books (31%), print newspapers or magazines (26%), and online news sites (14%). In terms of Performance Indicators, 61% of students understood the difference between copyleft and copyright materials (5.1.d); 57% of students applied the same search strategy in multiple databases (2.2.e) demonstrating an understanding of the limitation of a particular resource; and 81% of students cited multiple types of sources (1.2.c) and 69% of student differentiated between popular and scholarly resources (1.2.d), together demonstrating an understanding of the variety and quality of available resource types. Our research is an example of how librarians, faculty, and community constituents can unite to design instructional content that offers students experiences writing and collaborating in new ways while simultaneously enhancing their information literacy skills. Finally, creating content for Wikipedia offers students the opportunity to contribute to a larger body of knowledge, where their work can be viewed, improved, and serve a greater purpose.
    • Authors: ACRL 2013 Proposal, May 2012, Kelly Myer Polacek, MLS, MS, WCA, Bonnie McCallum WCA, Mike Cline, WCA
    • Accepted for publication in ACRL conference proceedings.