Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Rutgers University/Language and Law (Spring 2020)
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- Course name
- Language and Law
- Institution
- Rutgers University
- Instructor
- Crystal Akers
- Wikipedia Expert
- Ian (Wiki Ed)
- Subject
- Linguistics
- Course dates
- 2020-01-21 00:00:00 UTC – 2020-05-04 23:59:59 UTC
- Approximate number of student editors
- 38
The course covers aspects of language and linguistics related to the law and forensic linguistic analysis. For the Wikipedia project, students will be given the choice to: add content related to language, linguistics, or the legal topics from the course; evaluated published content for evidence of plagiarism; revise written content using recommendations from the "plain English" movement to simplify complex topics.
Timeline
Week 6
- Course meetings
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- Wednesday, 26 February 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 - Get started on Wikipedia
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.)
- Milestones
This week, everyone should have a Wikipedia account.
Week 7
- Course meetings
-
- Monday, 2 March 2020 | Wednesday, 4 March 2020
- Assignment - Evaluate Wikipedia
Week 8
- Course meetings
-
- Monday, 23 March 2020 | Wednesday, 25 March 2020
- Assignment - Plan your sources and contributions - Submit on Canvas
- In your Canvas group discussion, write a few sentences about what you plan to contribute to the selected article. Be sure not to duplicate ideas someone else has already written.
- Think back to when you did an article critique. What can you add? For the purposes of our course, think about whether you are more interested in the role of communicating to the public as a linguist or in acting as a forensic analyst.
- #*** If you're more interested in the role of communicating to the public, consider:
- Is the writing style accessible to a lay audience? Consider what you learned about linguistic complexity and comprehensibility from the jury instructions unit.
- Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
- How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?
- Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?
- If you're more interested in acting as a forensic analyst, consider:
- Check a few citations. Does the source support the claims in the article? Is there evidence of plagiarism or too-close paraphrase?
- Take note of the writing style as you consider the potential for plagiarism. Do any sentences or phrases seem like they're not written in the Wikipedia "voice" or style?
- Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference? Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted?
- Check a few citations. Does the source support the claims in the article? Is there evidence of plagiarism or too-close paraphrase?
- Also, check out the Talk page of the article. What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?
- #*** If you're more interested in the role of communicating to the public, consider:
- Think back to when you did an article critique. What can you add? For the purposes of our course, think about whether you are more interested in the role of communicating to the public as a linguist or in acting as a forensic analyst.
- Open up the Rutgers Library's search page and compile a list of at least two relevant, reliable books, journal articles, or other sources that are not already included in your sandbox. Post that bibliography to your Canvas group discussion.
- Assignment - Choose your article
See the guide for instructions on how to assign yourself an article from this course. Up to 5 students can work on the same article, but take care that you pick an article that you feel you can contribute to in some way! By the due date, you must:
- have an article assigned to your name here on WikiEd
- self-enroll into the group associated with your article on Canvas. See the Canvas version of this assignment for how-tos.
Week 9
- Course meetings
-
- Monday, 30 March 2020 | Wednesday, 1 April 2020
- Assignment - Start drafting your contributions
Resource: Editing Wikipedia, pages 7–9.
- Are other students working on the same article as you?
- No: Make all of your edits on your personal sandbox page.
- Yes: All of you need to designate a shared sandbox page. Determine the group member whose username is alphabetically first. This group member's Sandbox space is where you'll all share to draft your article. (It will be titled something like User:Diderot/sandbox.) See the assignment on Canvas for the link to the sandbox you should be working in for your article.
- Wikipedia doesn't handle multiple people editing from different devices at the same time very well. Make small edits and save often to avoid "editing conflicts" with classmates. Make sure that you're logged in under your own Wikipedia account while editing in your classmate's sandbox to ensure your edits are recorded.
- Start to make progress on your plans written in Week 10 in your shared sandbox.
- You may want to do additional research and writing to make further improvements to your article, based on my suggestions and your own plan.
- If you plan to revise a paragraph, start working on those revisions.
- If you plan to carefully check a paragraph for evidence of plagiarism, give some notes: what paragraph are you working on? Which sentences have you checked? How are you conducting your check? What have you found out?
- If you're planning to add new content, starting writing some sentences. Explain in the shared sandbox where they will fit in the overall article.
- Tip: The Citation Hunt tool shows unreferenced statements from articles. First, evaluate whether the statement in question is true! An uncited statement could just be lacking a reference or it could be inaccurate or misleading. Reliable sources on the subject will help you choose whether to add it or correct the statement.
- Suggestion: Read Editing Wikipedia page 12-14. See how to create links from your article to others, and from other articles to your own. Try to link to 3–5 articles, and link to your article from 2–3 other articles.
Keep reading your sources, too, as you work on your contributions.
Week 10
- Course meetings
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- Monday, 6 April 2020 | Wednesday, 8 April 2020
- Assignment - VT Discussion
- Thinking about Plagiarism and Style
Check Canvas for a VoiceThread discussion on plagiarism and style. To relate this discussion to our course topics on authorship analysis, consider the following:
- Have you recognized any close paraphrasing or plagiarism in your chosen article? Screenshot the example, post it on VT, and tell us how you were able to spot it.
- How is checking for authorship problems in a Wikipedia article different from analyzing authorship in other kinds of written texts, such as those we examined in class in Week 10
- You might consider differences in the methods of evaluating authorship, determining what counts as plagiarism.
- What kinds of linguistic features seem to characterize Wikipedia's style? How easy or difficult is it for you to adopt this style for this project?
- Analyze a several sentences from your chosen article. How well do the sentences adhere to what you've learned about the linguistic recommendations to improve reader comprehension (such as we covered regarding jury instructions)?
- Milestones
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!
Week 11
- Course meetings
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- Monday, 13 April 2020 | Wednesday, 15 April 2020
- Milestones
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 - Begin moving your work to Wikipedia
Now that you've improved your draft based on feedback, it's time to move your work live - to the "mainspace." At least one person working on your article should move finalized content from your group sandbox into the Wikipedia mainspace.
Resource: Editing Wikipedia, page 13
Week 12
- Course meetings
-
- Monday, 20 April 2020 | Wednesday, 22 April 2020
- Assignment - Reflection Assignment
Write reflection responses on your Wikipedia contributions.
Respond to each of the following items as you reflect on your Wikipedia assignment. Subquestions are provided for each item as inspiration.
- Subject-matter content & the public-facing side of linguistics (Choose one of the two items below; 1 paragraphs):
- How does the content of your article relate to our course? What did you learn from your article, either from the content that was already there or from what you added to the article? Is there anything more you wanted to learn about or add to your topic?
- In your opinion, what is the most important thing a Wikipedia editor can do to improve the public understanding of linguistics, language and the law, or your topic specifically? Why? Do you think your experience contributing to Wikipedia has changed or will change how you personally use Wikipedia, or how you evaluate the information it provides? Why? What would you have changed about this project or your experience of it if you could?
- Forensic linguistic perspective on critiquing and adding to articles (Choose two different bullet-pointed items; 2 paragraphs in total):
- Authorship analysis involves examining a document for style and other evidence characteristic of a particular author. Wikipedia articles require a particular style, which may be quite different from the style you typically use. How would you describe the linguistic characteristics of this style, such as its syntax or lexical choices? Give examples to illustrate.
- Taking the perspective of a Wikipedia editor -- or a forensic linguist - what challenges did you face in determining whether sentences written by other people were original or were "too close" (or plagiarized, close-paraphrased) from other sources? What methods did you use to evaluate authorship problems, and how do they compare to the methods Olsson and Luchjenbroer describe using? If you were able to identify potential plagiarism or authorship problems, what kinds of evidence, or linguistic clues, helped you to identify these problems? Give examples to illustrate. If you didn't identify potential authorship problems, think back to the Plagiarism training that Wikipedia provided or to our discussion 12: Plagiarism & Style on Wikipedia (VT). Could you identify linguistic clues to authorship problems in the training exercises?
- Reflecting on your experiences critiquing and contributing to articles, what insights have you gained into how successfully people can adopt other styles or voices (such as for criminal purposes like we examined in the course) or into how successfully forensic linguists can identify authorship? Do you have a sense for when successful imitation will be more or less difficult? Refer to language- and linguistics-related concepts to explain why.
Individually:
- Submit your reflection to the Canvas assignment.
- Format: please number your responses as shown above.
- Length: Respond to each of the three items using the sub-questions to help guide your response. Minimum lengths are provided for each response, but you are free to write more if you choose.