Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Siena College/Exploring Modern Topics in Plant Biology 2020 (Spring)
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- Course name
- Exploring Modern Topics in Plant Biology 2020
- Institution
- Siena College
- Instructor
- Kenneth Helm
- Wikipedia Expert
- Ian (Wiki Ed)
- Subject
- Plant Physiology
- Course dates
- 2020-01-21 00:00:00 UTC – 2020-05-12 23:59:59 UTC
- Approximate number of student editors
- 8
In this assignment, you will add a paragraph or two to existing Wikipedia Articles dealing with various aspects of plant cell biology and physiology. The articles might be "stubs", short articles, or articles that Plant Phys students contributed to in previous years. You will complete the online trainings, and pick your topics in the next 2-3 weeks. For the trainings, you will work individually. You will make you contributions working in pairs. you will make minor changes such as repairing links and making minor editorial/factual corrections to existing work. Later, again working in pairs, you will summarize key experiments in recent journal articles and add you findings to you Wikipedia pages. Prior to "going live" with your work, we'll be doing some in-class peer editing work, which will result in a high(er) quality final product. As part of the your final exam, a take-home question, I'll have you read and summarize one another's completed pages. This will be a fun and engaging way to get cozy with interesting, cutting edge topics in plant biology!
Timeline
Week 9
- Course meetings
-
- Monday, 16 March 2020 | Wednesday, 18 March 2020 | Friday, 20 March 2020
Week 10
- Course meetings
-
- Monday, 23 March 2020 | Wednesday, 25 March 2020 | Friday, 27 March 2020
- In class - Introduction to the Wikipedia assignment
Welcome to your Wikipedia assignment's course timeline. This page guides you through the steps you'll need to complete for your Wikipedia assignment, with links to training modules and your classmates' work spaces.
Your course has been assigned a Wikipedia Expert. You can reach them through the Get Help button at the top of this page.
Resources:
- Editing Wikipedia, pages 1–5
- Evaluating Wikipedia
- Assignment - Training block 1-let's get started!
- Assignment - Get started on Wikipedia, creating an account, 1 point
Create an account and join this course page, using the enrollment link your instructor sent you. (Because of Wikipedia's technical restraints, you may receive a message that you cannot create an account. To resolve this, please try again off campus or the next day.)
- Assignment - Get into pairs, and report the pairngs to Dr Helm
Please report your pairings to Dr Helm, via email, no later than Friday.
Week 11
- Course meetings
-
- Monday, 30 March 2020 | Wednesday, 1 April 2020 | Friday, 3 April 2020
- Assignment - Finding your article, and deciding how you can improve it.
Exercise
- Assignment - Traing Block 2
- Choose an article to work on
- In class - Content Gaps. What's missing?
We'll talk a little bit about how to identify areas of your articles where information is missing. It's a bit tough, but I can show you a couple of examples.
- Assignment - Find source material, two journal articles.
Go find a couple of articles. One should be a "primary paper", and the other can be a review article. If you'd like, both of your sources can be primary papers. However, one source MUST be a primary paper.
- In class - Discussion-submitted to Canvas. What's this all about?
Week 12
- Course meetings
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- Monday, 6 April 2020 | Wednesday, 8 April 2020
- Assignment - Training block 3
- Wikipedia editing, the basics
- Guide(s) for writing articles in your topic area
- Assignment - draft work is in sandbox
Let's figure out how the source material can contribute to your Wikipedia Article! I would like to see your sandbox set up, with some work in it before we "break" for Easter.
Resource: Editing Wikipedia, page 13
Week 13
- Course meetings
-
- Wednesday, 15 April 2020 | Friday, 17 April 2020
- Assignment - Continue improving your article
Exercise
Now's the time to revisit your text and refine your work. You may do more research and find missing information; rewrite the lead section to represent all major points; reorganize the text to communicate the information better; or add images and other media.
- Assignment - Training block 4
- Now we tidy up! Tidy is good.
This week, you should be building your contributions in your sandboxes, and getting them ready for peer review.
- In class - Discussion-sources and plagiarism
Week 14
- Course meetings
-
- Monday, 20 April 2020 | Wednesday, 22 April 2020 | Friday, 24 April 2020
- Assignment - Polish your work
Continue to expand and improve your work, and format your article to match Wikipedia's tone and standards. Remember to contact your Wikipedia Expert at any time if you need further help! The evil eye of Dr Helm will be ever-vigilent.
- Assignment - Final article review and polish
- from the Wiki crew...
It's the final week to develop your article.
- Read Editing Wikipedia page 15 to review a final check-list before completing your assignment.
- Don't forget that you can ask for help from your Wikipedia Expert at any time!
- Assignment - In class presentations of your work! Weds and Friday
Let's see what you've got! At this point, most likely, we'll be be doing our presentations remotely. The presentations will have two components.
1. The first component. An overview of the topic that you worked on, culminating with your contributions to your wikipedia article. Remember: your contributions should be approachable to a larger audience of people who, while educated, might not be well versed in biology in general, or plant biology specifically.
2. The second part of your presentation will be a deeper dive into specific, primary research literature that you used in preparing your contributions. In this part of the presentation, you'll aim at your fellow plant biologists in the class. You'll cover specific experimental questions, actual data, an discussions of how the data were used to answers the questions posed by the paper's authors.
Your in-class presentation will be approximately 30 minutes long, split more or less evenly between part 1 and part 2. Since we'll have four groups, we'll do two presentations on Weds and two on Friday. At this point, my best guess is that these will be Zoom teleconferences or the like. You'll be able to burnish your video editing skills!
Week 15
- Course meetings
-
- Monday, 27 April 2020 | Wednesday, 29 April 2020 | Friday, 1 May 2020
- Assignment - Virtual Peer Editing Session.
Since we can't physically meet, you'll have to do your peer editing with one another online. On Monday, I would like you to submit written peer editing suggestions to your assigned group, and send me a copy of your suggestions. Remember, suggestions should be constructive, positive, and useful. Good peer-edits arise from a careful, critical (yet positive and constructive) analysis of one another's work.
- Assignment - Take a deep breath. Give 'er one more look, and GO LIVE
The entire projectd should be done and wrapped up! You can move the work any time before 5/8, but the trainings must be completed by 5/4.