Wikimedia and Education

Dr Martin Poulter

Our options?

• Ignore• Recognise• Learn from• Co-operate• Partner

Beat them

Join them

Sausages and Scholarship

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bratwurst-1.jpg CC-BY-SA

Writing an online encyclopaedia

• What skills do people need to write, edit and illustrate an online encyclopaedia for the world?

Writing an online encyclopaedia

• Thinking, planning, reasoning• IT Skills: word processing• Critical thinking• Information skills: interpreting, assessing• Information skills: digesting, reporting• Creative/ original thinking• Writing accessibly• Attention to detail: reviewing and improving• Research skills• Working in a global environment: collaborating with people

from different cultures, time zones, languages

Working in the 21st Century

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Armand_Kohl22a.jpg (PD)

Working in the 21st Century

• Thinking, planning, reasoning• IT Skills: word processing• Critical thinking• Information skills: interpreting, assessing• Information skills: digesting, reporting• Creative/ original thinking• Writing accessibly• Attention to detail: reviewing and improving• Research skills• Working in a global environment: collaborating with people

from different cultures, time zones, languages

“Imagine a world in which

every single human being

can freely share in the

sum of all knowledge.

That's our commitment.”

What is Wikimedia?

Wikimedia projects

“Bronchial anatomy” by Patrick J. Lynch via Wikimedia Commons. CC-BY

The Garter King Before St George in the Garter Book 1435. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Free Encyclopedia

anyone can edit

Supported by donations

The Wikimedia projects

• Multilingual (in more than 280 languages)• Free (as in free speech)• Created by volunteer labour• Run by the Wikimedia Foundation, a US charity• Supported in the UK by Wikimedia UK, a charity• No ads, no commercial influences, no

government targets

Some statistics

• > 1,000,000,000 edits so far

• Nearly 500 million visitors per month– Aiming for 1 billion per month by 2015

• Around 90,000 active registered editors

• 12 million files (images, audio, video)

Wikipedia

• >22,000,000 total articles– 3,973,696 articles in English

• 3,567 are Featured Articles• 5 million hits per day on English Wikipedia main page

• More than 280 WikipediasImage by user He!ko on Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA

Policies and guidelines

Core policies

• Verifiability [[WP:V]]– “Other people have to be able to check that you didn't just make

things up. This means that all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation.”

• No original research [[WP:NOR]]– “All material in Wikipedia must be attributable to a reliable,

published source. Articles may not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position not clearly advanced by the sources.”

Open review processes

Openness and transparency

• Page history is open

• Discussion is open

• Open processes for policies &

guidelines

• Open source software

• Open, transparent organisation

The Free Encyclopedia

anyone can edit

Freely available tertiary literature, accessibly and neutrally summarised from reliable secondary and primary sources, in an ongoing process of good faith collaboration involving both experts and non-experts

Robbins report into HE, 1963

• “[T]here are many persons of first class ability, particularly in the humanities, who have never engaged in research in the narrow sense or felt any urge to publish, but whose breadth of culture, ripeness of judgment and wide-ranging intellectual curiosity are priceless assets in a department or a college.”

Wikipedia Educational Assignments

http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education

Campus Ambassadors

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dc-2011-campus-ambassador-training.jpg CC-BY

Article quality

Potential advantages

• Feedback from the community• Motivation• Public exposure• Encouragement to write neutrally & accessibly• Use the community’s free resources:

handouts, video, mentorship etc.

Challenges

Wikipedia assignments are rewarding, but are in several respects more challenging than traditional assignments.

• Demanding of students• Planning ahead• Pacing• Grading

Meanwhile, in HE

2699 words

Thanks

martin.poulter@wikimedia.org.uk@mlpoulter

http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/

See you at EduWiki Conference 2012, LeicesterWed 5th-Thurs 6th SeptemberBit.ly/eduwiki