Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Northwestern University/Online Communities and Crowds (Fall 2016)
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- Course name
- Online Communities and Crowds
- Institution
- Northwestern University
- Instructor
- Aaron Shaw
- Wikipedia Expert
- Ian (Wiki Ed)
- Subject
- Course dates
- 2016-09-21 00:00:00 UTC – 2016-12-05 23:59:59 UTC
- Approximate number of student editors
- 45
Welcome to the Wikipedia Course page for the Northwestern Online Communities and Crowds class (a.k.a., Comm Studies 378, a.k.a. [occ])!
This page serves as our collective home on Wikipedia and breaks down our Wikipedia assignment into a series of milestones, each of which is an assignment. These steps include online training to help you get started on Wikipedia.
Our course has also been assigned a Wikipedia Content Expert. Check your Talk page for notes from them. You can also reach them through the "Get Help" button on this page.
Timeline
Week 1
- Course meetings
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- Friday, 30 September 2016
- Assignment - Getting Started on Wikipedia
Objectives:
- Create a Wikipedia account, get the hang of some basics, and complete a couple of new editor orientation tasks.
Deliverables (Due before class Oct 7):
- Create a user account on Wikipedia and enroll in the Wikipedia instance of our course (hint: once you're logged in, there's a "join course" button on the right.). If you need a course enrollment token, it is the word "purple" (no quotation marks).
- Complete the "Basics" section of the Wikipedia student training modules — this includes the modules on "Wikipedia Essentials", "Editing Basics", and "Evaluating Articles and Sources."
- If you have not done so already, create a user page. You might find it helpful to use the User_info template.
- Visit the Wikipedia Teahouse; introduce yourself; create a profile; interact with the hosts; and read about the hosts, guests, & answers to recent questions.
- Practice editing and communicating on Wikipedia by leaving a talk page message for at least one of your classmates.
Additional Resources:
- Editing Wikipedia pages 1–5
- Evaluating Wikipedia
Week 2
- Course meetings
-
- Friday, 7 October 2016
- Assignment - Article Topic Selection and Proposal
Objectives:
- Collaborate with your group to select an article topic and propose it to the teaching team.
- Get feedback from the teaching team on your article topic proposal.
- Learn about available resources in the NU libraries and nearby/online archives to help you with your articles.
- Participate in the Big Shoulders Wikipedia Edit-a-thon!
Deliverables:
- Together with your group, select a topic for an article you would like to create or a stub article you would like to significantly expand and improve (see below).
- On the Students tab, assign your chosen article to yourself. All members of the group should assign themselves to the same article, after making sure that no other group has already chosen it.
- Please note: we strongly recommend choosing a topic related to the themes and resources of the "Big Shoulders Edit-a-thon" (Chicagoland history and/or archives, or female scientists). You may choose another topic if you wish, but please make sure you have adequate access to sources and references. If there is a topic you know are interested in writing about that doesn't have an article, go ahead and suggest it.
Resources:
- Edit-a-thon resources - List of training resources and help finding an article (much of this info is also below)
- Special Collection resources - This file shows whether or not a Wikipedia article exists on each subject, as well as whether the article, if it exists, needs to have Special Collections sources added to it. This is a great place to start, and is an opportunity to provide sources to Wikipedia that are much easier for us to access than other editors.
- Wikiproject Chicago articles — A group of Wikipedians interested in Chicago works together to improve Chicagoland articles. There is a box on this page called Chicago articles by quality and importance. You can find "stub" articles from here to work on, or get ideas about new articles to create.
- Chicagoland Stubs — This is the full list of "stub" articles which have been categorized as belonging to the Chicago Wikiproject. There's also this list of all of the stub articles on Wikipedia.
- Female scientists — This is a list of female scientists, put together by Emily Temple-Wood. Scientists whose names are in red still need Wikipedia articles.
- Requested Articles — This is a list of articles that others have asked to be created. It is sorted into categories and sub-categories. When you're looking at the list, remember that it's possible that somebody else has "gotten" to them first and forgot to remove it. Remember that a red link indicates that there is no page with that name.
- List of WikiProjects, which you can use to locate lists of articles and sort them by class (i.e., find stubs).
- The attached training modules
Week 3
- Course meetings
-
- Friday, 14 October 2016
- Assignment - Research & draft articles
Objectives:
- Put together a draft version of your article in a "sandbox" on Wikipedia.
Deliverables:
- A bibliography of relevant research or sources for your article.
- At least one image you can use in your article. Do your best to document that it meets relevant Wikipedia policies for media (appropriate license, reasonable fair use justification, etc.).
- A 4-5 paragraph summary version of your article — with citations and image(s) — in the sandbox of one group member.
- Add a link to your draft on our class talk page
- Finish the attached training modules
Resources: Editing Wikipedia pages 6–9
Week 4
- Course meetings
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- Friday, 21 October 2016
- Assignment - Revise, polish, and publish articles
Objectives:
- Fill out, refine, and polish your article.
- Publish your article in the main (article) namespace of Wikipedia.
Deliverables:
- A revised and completed article in the main namespace.
- Read Editing Wikipedia page 13, and follow those steps to move your article from your Sandbox to Mainspace.
- You can also review the Sandboxes and Mainspace online training.
- If the article already exists, then do not copy and paste your draft of an article over the entire article. Instead, edit small sections at a time.
If you'd like a Content Expert to review your draft, now is the time! Click the "Get Help" button in your sandbox to request notes.
Resources
- Guide to contributing to Wikimedia Commons
- Non-free creative commons licenses - Basically, you are looking for images that are available for commercial use with modification.
Week 5
- Course meetings
-
- Friday, 28 October 2016
- Assignment - Peer review other groups' articles
Objectives:
- Read and assess the work of your peers.
- Get feedback from several people on your group's work.
Deliverables:
- Peer review another group's article on that article's talk page.
- A successful peer review will include the following:
- Feedback on strengths of the article.
- Feedback on areas of suggested improvement (including concrete suggestions for improvement).
- Copy-editing of the text (identify any lingering spelling, punctuation, grammar, or syntax issues. For non-controversial issues, go ahead and make the changes yourself).
- The "Peer Review" online training module may be helpful
- In class - Peer Review Assignments
1950 CTA Streetcar Crash - Wootton, Cassie, Mandlsohn
Evanston College for Ladies - McGee, Shi, Gold, Yucesan
Northwestern University Graduate School - Fan, Garg, Middleton, Marino
Northwestern University Lakefill - McCaffrey, Grygleski, Do, Sledge
Student Activism at Northwestern University - Hascher, Fox, Kaunas
Woman's Club of Evanston - Robertson, Blais, Qin, Larbi
Project Survival - Dong, Graifman, Merchant, Han
Northwestern University School of Communication - Munoz, Rose, Le, Matluck
The Waa-Mu Show - Kumar, Kohmoto, Alarcon, Xiang
Foster G. McGaw - Famurewa, Lamberty, Kang, Schwaitzberg
Week 6
- Course meetings
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- Friday, 11 November 2016
- Assignment - Respond to your peer review & write reflection essay
Objectives:
- Address feedback and improve your articles.
- Reflect on your experience across all of these Wikipedia assignments and connect the experience with salient themes of the course.
Deliverables:
- A revised version of your article that addresses any concerns raised by your peer reviewers. Don't forget that you can look at the article history to see any copy-editing changes that were made.
- A brief (~750 word) essay reflecting on and assessing your (individual) experience in light of the course materials, uploaded to Canvas as a pdf. A successful reflection essay will do the following things:
- Describe and comment on your experience in Wikipedia. What did you do? Any surprises along the way? Anything go as you expected?
- Asses your work. Discuss aspects of the assignment and your work that went particularly well or poorly. Analyze how you (and your group) might have done things differently or better.
- Connect your experience in Wikipedia to at least one relevant dynamic or challenge we have talked about in other parts of the course. Which dynamic(s) or challenge(s) were most relevant or important? Why?
- Identify aspects of your experience that could inform changes to the course or this sequence of Wikipedia assignments in the future.
Resources:
- Read Editing Wikipedia pages 12 and 14.
- Reach out to your instructor or your Content Expert if you have any questions.