Wikipedia:GLAM/University of California Davis Libraries/May 8

Teaching with Wikipedia

talk by Phoebe Ayers and open discussion
May 8, 2014, 3:30pm-5:00pm
Shields Library, Library Instruction Lab

Description

Wikipedia is the largest reference work ever created, accessed by half a billion people around the world every month. It is often the first result in web searches, and is the default starting place for many students. This extraordinary resource is created by volunteer editors with no top-down oversight, and anyone can contribute to making articles better. But despite this openness, the complex global community and byzantine editorial rules that underlie Wikipedia are often a mystery, and comparatively few people edit articles. Furthermore, the advice given in the classroom to students about Wikipedia is often limited to "don't cite it." But working on Wikipedia provides a compelling way to explore many dimensions of writing and research, and offers a way for students to make valuable contributions in a real-world editing environment.

Dozens of faculty around the country and the world have used writing for Wikipedia in their classrooms to engage students and teach skills like media literacy, critical thinking, expository writing, online collaboration and research skills. How do Wikipedia assignments work, and what are some best practices? This workshop, geared towards teaching faculty, staff and graduate students, will provide a brief introduction to how Wikipedia works and how teaching with Wikipedia can work, and what some of the benefits and pitfalls are. We will show some example assignments and resources available for faculty, discuss the difficulties of having students write on Wikipedia, and explore ideas.

Note, we will not dive deeply into actually editing Wikipedia in this workshop (unless there is interest in doing so); but there are two edit-a-thons scheduled for 1:00pm-3:00pm on May 16 and May 23 that everyone is welcome to attend, that will be focused on learning to edit and working on articles.

Phoebe Ayers is a science and engineering librarian at UC Davis, who has been involved with Wikipedia for ten years, is the author of How Wikipedia Works (2008), and is on the Board of Trustees for the Wikimedia Foundation (which runs Wikipedia). In 2013-4, she is leading a Wikipedia project at the UC Davis Libraries.

Logistics

Thursday May 8, 3:30-5:00pm
Talk will be held in the Shields Library Instruction Lab, Room 165, in the far back corner of the library: [1]
Here is a map of where Shields is: [2]
Everyone is welcome, but this talk will be geared towards instructors (grad students, faculty, and lecturers) who are interested with working with Wikipedia in the classroom: please invite anyone who may be interested.
Questions? Contact Phoebe Ayers, psayers<at>ucdavis.edu (or post here on the talk page!)