Online Communities and Crowds (Winter 2022)/Wikipedia assignment
Overview
This page provides information about the Wikipedia assignment for the course.
In general, you should rely on the course WikiEdu Dashboard for specifics about deadlines and individual milestones that you are asked to complete each week.
Over the first six weeks of the course, you will learn about and contribute to Wikipedia. For weeks 2-6, you will work together with a team to research, write, and publish a new article in Wikipedia on a topic of your (collective) choosing. As part of this process you will interact with other Wikipedia community members who are not part of the class. At the conclusion of week 6, you will also write a brief, individual reflection essay assessing your experience and connecting it to other material in the course.
The Wikipedia assignments are not precisely synchronized with the rest of the course material, but should provide you with many opportunities to reflect on the other cases, concepts, and challenges we are covering.
During the Wikipedia assignment, you will need to participate on Wikipedia each week. The teaching team will be able to see this activity and help you where appropriate. The discussion sections and full class meetings will also include time to discuss your experiences. Only the final component of the assignment (the reflection essay) includes anything that you will need to turn in via Canvas.
Please note: Since these assignments are stretched out over six+ weeks, I recommend that you take notes and reflect on your experience throughout. This will help you complete the reflection essay much more easily.
Assignment-specific notes on assessment
We will assess your individual and collective work in several ways throughout this assignment. All of the milestones and tasks involved in editing or completing learning modules about Wikipedia will all be assessed on a credit/no-credit basis. If you complete these tasks in a satisfactory way by the respective due date, you will receive full credit for each one. We (the teaching team) will evaluate the reflection essay and will assign each essay a letter grade based on the evaluation criteria described below.
Evaluation criteria specific to Wikipedia reflection essays:
A successful reflection essay will possess the following characteristics:
- Provide excellent writing and insights consistent with the Assessment general assessment rubric for written assignments in the course.
- Describe and comment on your experience in Wikipedia. What did you do? Any surprises along the way? Anything go as you expected?
- Asses your own work. Discuss aspects of the assignment and your work that went particularly well or poorly. Analyze how you (and your group) got your work done and whether/how you might have done things more effectively.
- Connect your experience in Wikipedia to at least one relevant dynamic or challenge we have talked about in other parts of the course (e.g., newcomer socialization, motivation, governance, inclusion, identity, etc.). Which elements or challenges were most relevant or important to your experience? Why?
- Identify aspects of your experience that could inform changes to the course or this sequence of Wikipedia assignments in the future.
