In 2005, a high school freshman from Clarksville, Maryland, named Kevin Li discovered Wikipedia. Kevin was amazed that anyone would spend the time to write detailed articles on such a wide range of topics. Today, Kevin is a college senior at Washington University in St. Louis, and he has joined the ranks of those who contribute to Wikipedia.

Kevin got his start with Wikipedia editing through a class project on chronobiology where he worked in a group to improve the article on scientist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle. They brought the article all the way to Good Article status, so Kevin was excited to enroll in another class, Professor Joan Strassmann’s Behavioral Ecology course, where he would be solely responsible for an article.

“I was surprised that some of the animals and behaviors we learned about weren’t on Wikipedia,” Kevin says. “The article that I am working on, worker policing, has been in the scientific literature for more than two decades and hadn’t been discussed. It’s fun to bring some of these concepts into the wiki community, since I feel that being a contributor is equally as important as being a consumer of information.”

Worker policing — the subject of Kevin’s article — is common in honey bees.

Since the topic was not yet covered on Wikipedia, Kevin created a page that contained just the title of the article. Volunteer Heather Walls tagged the article for deletion since it had no content. Kevin came by two hours later and was surprised to discover that his page had been deleted by an editor named WilyD.

“I was contacted by the editor who had marked the page and I responded to her comments,” Kevin explains. “The misunderstanding was resolved and she was even nice enough to add a picture on the article.”

WilyD came back once Kevin had expanded it, and was impressed enough by Kevin’s work to nominate the article to appear on Wikipedia’s main page in the Did You Know section. Kevin’s article appeared on the main page on October 17 and received more than 1,500 views.

“The DYK reviewer asked me to work on the leads and to clarify some of the body paragraphs, which I happily did. Afterward, we were good to go!” Kevin says. “Many of the editors have been helpful with constructive criticism. It was really exciting to see the interest that people had for the article when it went up. I’m still working on making the article better. After some more edits, I hope to get it to Good Article status.”

Kevin is glad to see something he is interested in have more coverage on Wikipedia. That’s one of the reasons he prefers Wikipedia assignments to traditional term papers. He says while the research process is similar, he prefers Wikipedia assignments because of the large audience for his work and the collaboration that comes from work with classmates and other editors on Wikipedia articles.

“Working on wiki is like constructing a miniature classroom for yourself, where you can become an expert given the proper effort. It’s also a work station where I can collect my thoughts and organize them into a product that everyone can see,” he says. “Wikipedia is really one of those sites that I still love going to and exploring what’s out there. It feels nice to be a contributor.”

LiAnna Davis
Wikipedia Education Program Communications Manager

Students at universities in the United States and Canada found that contributing to Wikipedia as a class assignment through the Wikipedia Education Program improved their media literacy and technology skills, according to survey results from the fall 2011 term. In the Wikipedia Education Program, professors assign students to contribute to Wikipedia, usually in the form of expanding a stub article, in place of a traditional research paper grade. At the end of the fall 2011 term, we asked students who participated in the U.S. and Canada program to fill out a survey on their experiences. A total of 132 students took the survey, with a little over three-quarters of the respondents from the United States. About 61 percent of the respondents were enrolled in undergraduate courses, while the remainder were enrolled in graduate courses.

Learning outcomes

A series of questions were designed around assessing student learning outcomes. About two-thirds of the respondents agreed that doing a Wikipedia assignment was a beneficial experience, with almost 20 percent of them strongly in favor of a Wikipedia assignment in place of a traditional term paper. Students from the United States and graduate students all reported higher beliefs in the benefits of a Wikipedia assignment. More than half of the respondents felt that doing a Wikipedia assignment improved (1) their ability to identify poor quality Wikipedia articles and (2) their ability to identify bias in documents. In addition, more than half the respondents felt their ability to write a neutral (i.e., balanced point-­of-­view) document improved through a Wikipedia assignment more than through a standard term paper.

These findings indicate that students recognize the media literacy benefits in doing a Wikipedia assignment. As professors have noted, when Wikipedia is not the destination of the student’s research on a topic, but is instead the road, students are forced out of their research comfort zone. Students are required to evaluate the reliability of sources, find journal articles, and write from a neutral point of view to meet Wikipedia’s policy requirements.

Support resources

Student participants use a set of resources when they have questions about editing Wikipedia — online text, Campus Ambassadors, Online Ambassadors, and professors to name a few. Online text is the most commonly used resource, followed by printed materials. Nearly 93 percent of students who consulted their Campus Ambassador found him or her to be helpful, and 74 percent of students who consulted an Online Ambassador said he or she was helpful.

We’ve found that having that support makes a big difference to students. Students can chat with their Campus Ambassadors in person on campus or on wiki, and they can interact with Online Ambassadors on-wiki and through an IRC chatroom where they can get immediate help for quick questions.

Students had a positive interaction with the Wikipedia community of editors when they interacted with them. Students were asked to pick two adjectives to describe their views of the Wikipedia editing community; top responses included “helpful” (72 percent), “collaborative” (39 percent), and “intelligent” (27 percent).

Motivations

We asked students to identify the key motivations for their contributions to Wikipedia. Important factors students reported were getting a grade, interest in their Wikipedia article topic, and the usefulness of their work (i.e., it wasn’t another throwaway assignment). Graduate students reported a broader variety of motivations, when compared to undergraduates. In particular, more than 60 percent of the graduate students gave a high ranking to the fact that their work contributes to a freely accessible knowledge base.

Final comments and looking ahead

Although converting students into longterm editors is not an explicit goal of the Wikipedia Education Program, as many as 46 percent of our respondents expressed interest in continuing to edit Wikipedia.

When students were asked to share the hardest thing about their Wikipedia editing experience, some common themes emerged. Many students mentioned the challenges of learning how Wikipedia works, and how editing an article was a lot more work than they imagined. Almost universally, they talked about how hard it was to learn wiki syntax. The Visual Editor will help alleviate many of these concerns.

To sum up, here’s what one student had to say when asked about any memorable experiences:

“Overall, a great learning experience. Having to really validate anything you say by backing it with a reputable source is incredibly beneficial and students should be exposed to this, especially if they have not had a research methods course in their undergraduate career.”

Ayush Khanna
Data Analyst, Global Development

Over at his fine blog, Jakob Voss has highlighted some neat work by design students at Texas State University.

From Jakob’s blog:

Mike Perez, design student at Texas State University, and his fellow students Mark Decker and Jacob Brubaker have created a wonderful campaign for Wikipedia in their design class. The posters or ads each show a straight view of an everyday person as an expert on a specific subject and a mind map of their thought process. This are the best ads for Wikipedia that I have seen since the Wikipedia promotion images that André created back in 2005 for the German Wikipedia. Just have a look (photos at flickr only because of copyright restrictions) and enjoy if you like Wikipedia as much as I do!

Nice work! Let us know if you’ve seen any other creative treatments…

Jay Walsh, Head of Communications