Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/University of California, Merced/Extinction Events and Stewardship (2021)
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- Course name
- Extinction Events and Stewardship
- Institution
- University of California, Merced
- Instructor
- Michelle Toconis
- Wikipedia Expert
- Ian (Wiki Ed)
- Subject
- Sociology
- Course dates
- 2021-01-19 00:00:00 UTC – 2021-05-06 23:59:59 UTC
- Approximate number of student editors
- 20
Course Description: Development of college-level skills in effective use of language, analysis and argumentation, organization and strategies for creation, revision and editing.
Course Learning Outcomes: Develop ability to synthesize and express complex ideas; Develop ability to argue for different rhetorical purposes: to persuade, to explain, to cooperate, to refute; Integrate peer and faculty feedback throughout the planning and drafting process; Demonstrate information literacy and be able to work with evidence; Collaborate successfully on group tasks and class projects by supporting your classmates as members of the same learning community.
Students will contribute their findings by editing relevant Wikipedia pages as they progress through the course.
Timeline
Week 1
- Course meetings
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- Tuesday, 19 January 2021 | Thursday, 21 January 2021
- 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.
To prepare for editing and contributing to Wikipedia, please review the following handouts:
- Editing Wikipedia: A guide for student editors, pg. 1–5
- Evaluating Wikipedia: Tracing the evolution & evaluating the quality of articles, pg. 1-8
- Assignment - Getting Started on Wikipedia
Create an account and join this course page, using the enrollment link on the Enroll in your WikiEdu Course page on CatCourses.
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 2
- Course meetings
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- Tuesday, 26 January 2021 | Thursday, 28 January 2021
- Assignment - Editing Basics
Time to jump in! This week you will complete 2 trainings that will introduce you to editing basics and the types of pages that you will interact with in Wikipedia.
After completing the tutorials, watch this video, and follow the instructions for creating & editing your user page.
How to create a user page on Wikipedia (4:09)
Exercise: Create & Edit Your User Page
Create your user page using the Wiki Visual Editor. Add at least 5 sentences describing yourself and the ways in which you plan to contribute to Wikipedia.
- Milestones
This week, everyone should be familiar with editing basics and have a user page formatted with a few sentences.
Week 3
- Course meetings
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- Tuesday, 2 February 2021 | Thursday, 4 February 2021
- Assignment - Evaluating Articles
We are now going to take a closer look and begin to think critically about Wikipedia articles.
This week's training will review how to evaluate article quality, the elements of quality articles, and some introductory information about sources and citations. After you finish the training, Complete the Evaluate Wikipedia Exercise.
As part of this exercise, Wikipedia will generate a user subpage for you to record your notes. Be sure to publish this page to save your work.
You will also select an article to evaluate. If you are not sure what to select, pick an article from this list: Environment Articles: C quality: High Importance.
- Milestones
After completing the training and exercise for Week 3, you should have 4 trainings completed and 1 exercise completed up to this point.
If you completed the exercise but your excersices completed number is 0, it is OK, as long as you published your changes associated with the evaluating articles exercise.
Week 4
- Course meetings
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- Tuesday, 9 February 2021 | Thursday, 11 February 2021
- Assignment - Adding to Wikipedia
This week you will learn about adding content to Wikipedia. The trainings and exercises will provide you with hands on practice.
For the Copyedit an article exercise, use the article you evaluated last week, or select a new article if you wish.
Publish changes when completing a training or exercise in your user page, sandbox, or other Wikipedia page in order to save your work.
Optional: view Adding Citations to Wikipedia Articles (12:36) for a step-by-step example of adding citations.
- Milestones
After completing Week 4 assignments, you will have completed 6 trainings so far!
Your Wikipedia contributions should include your user page intro, your article evaluation, and at least 3 copyedits.
Week 5
- Course meetings
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- Tuesday, 16 February 2021 | Thursday, 18 February 2021
Week 6
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 23 February 2021 | Thursday, 25 February 2021
- Assignment - Exploring Articles
It's time to start thinking about how your course readings and discussions will shape your Wikipedia contribution. For this week's training, you will explore articles related to your course themes and your interests.
A list of articles has been preselected for this class. Spend time reading through the available articles, and consider:
- What are the themes from the course that I am most interested in?
- What articles have content gaps that I can address through my Wikipedia contribution?
Interested in a theme not covered by an article in the available article list? Search and read through other Wikipedia articles. The available articles are likely to be broader or narrower (although possibly equivalent) to your topic scope.
Note, a well written and well researched article will not be a good match for this assignment, because you will likely have difficulty finding ways to improve the article.
We are working towards selecting an article that you will work on for the remainder of this project. Do not assign yourself an article just yet!
As you read through the available articles, consider where the themes of this course fit in, and where does the Wikipedia article fall short? Think back to the questions asked in the Week 3 Exercise: Evaluate Wikipedia .
- Milestones
After completing Week 6 assignments, you will have completed 7 trainings so far!
Your Wikipedia contributions should include your user page intro, your article evaluation, and at least 3 copyedits to an article.
You will have a few Wikipedia articles in mind for your final Wiki contribution.
Week 7
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 2 March 2021 | Thursday, 4 March 2021
- Assignment - Selecting an Article for your Wikipedia Contribution Assignment
This week you are:
- assigning yourself an article that you will work on for the rest of the semester.
- responding to 4 questions in your sandbox.
For your Wikipedia contribution assignment, you will be applying the sources and information you are finding as part of your Annotated Bibliography to your selected Wikipedia article. Specifically, you will be applying your source summaries, with source citations, to expand the article.
A list of articles has been preselected for this class: available articles. Next to each article is the article's Class. Use the Class table to inform your selection, and to help answer the 4 questions below.
You are also free to continue working with an article that you already selected, related to the course themes, however be aware a well developed article will be harder to expand.
Want to work on an article not listed? Email Elizabeth, esalmon
ucmerced.edu with the Wikipedia URL.
Complete the Finalizing your Topic and Selecting Sources exercise, and the Drafting in the Sandbox training. Note, you will be located sources for your selected article as part of your Annotated Bibliography Assignment.
In your sandbox, respond to these 4 questions:
- ## What content gap(s) do you plan to address?
- What are the key points information you want to look for in your research?
- How do you plan to improve this article?
- Look at the article's talk page. How can the conversations on the talk page inform your contribution?
| Class | Criteria | Reader's experience | Editing suggestions | Example |
| B | The article is mostly complete and without major problems but requires some further work to reach good article standards. | Readers are not left wanting, although the content may not be complete enough to satisfy a serious student or researcher. | A few aspects of content and style need to be addressed. Expert knowledge may be needed. The inclusion of supporting materials should be considered if practical, and the article checked for general compliance with the Manual of Style and related style guidelines. | Human (as of April 2019) |
| C | The article is substantial but is still missing important content or contains much irrelevant material. The article should have some references to reliable sources, but may still have significant problems or require substantial cleanup. | Useful to a casual reader, but would not provide a complete picture for even a moderately detailed study. | Considerable editing is needed to close gaps in content and solve cleanup problems. | Wing (as of June 2018) |
| Start | An article that is developing but still quite incomplete. It may or may not cite adequate reliable sources. | Provides some meaningful content, but most readers will need more. | Providing references to reliable sources should come first; the article also needs substantial improvement in content and organization. Also improve the grammar, spelling, writing style and improve the jargon use. | Ring-tailed cardinalfish (as of June 2018) |
| Stub | A very basic description of the topic. Can be well-written, but may also have significant content issues. | Provides very little meaningful content; may be little more than a dictionary definition. Readers probably see insufficiently developed features of the topic and may not see how the features of the topic are significant. | Any editing or additional material can be helpful. The provision of meaningful content should be a priority. The best solution for a Stub-class Article to step up to a Start-class Article is to add in referenced reasons of why the topic is significant. | Crescent Falls (as of June 2018) |
Quick Video Instructions:
- Milestones
After completing Week 7 assignments, you will have assigned yourself an article for your final Wikipedia Contribution Assignment!
After Week 7, you will have completed 8 trainings and 3 exercises so far.
Week 8
- Course meetings
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- Tuesday, 9 March 2021 | Thursday, 11 March 2021
- Assignment - Week 8
- Adding to Your Selected Article
This week, you are:
- Viewing the Step-by-Step Video Instructions (below)
- Reading through a Wikipedia Guide for writing articles in your topic area (below)
- Adding a minimum of 100 words based on information from one (1) source that you located as part of your Annotated Bibliography assignment.
Step-by-Step Video Instructions (7:55)
- Guide(s) for writing articles in your topic area
- Milestones
Everyone has started their draft contributions! You should have at least 100 words and 1 source added to your sandbox.
Week 9
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 16 March 2021 | Thursday, 18 March 2021
- Assignment - Adding to Your Selected Article Part 2
This week, you are:
- Adding an additional 100 words based on information from a second source that you located as part of your Annotated Bibliography assignment. You are continuing to work in your article sandbox page.
- This may be in the same section, a different section, or a new section of your selected article.
- Add your second source to your References section under your written contribution.
- Completing the Plagiarism training.
Step-by-Step Video Instructions for accessing your sandbox and adding citations (Week 8 video; 7:55)
- Milestones
After Week 9,
- you will have completed 9 trainings and 3 exercises so far.
- you will have added a minimum of 200 words, and 2 sources to your selected article sandbox page.
Week 10
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 30 March 2021 | Thursday, 1 April 2021
- Milestones
Congratulations!! You are almost done! You should have at least a 400-word contribution, based on at least 4 sources.
We will review, polish, and move our work to the "live" article over the next few weeks.
- Assignment - Adding to your Selected Article Part 3
This is your last major contribution to your selected article. This time, you are going to add information from TWO additional sources and adding a minimum of 200 words.
This will bring you to the assignment word and source WIki requirements- using information from 4 sources, to make a contribution of at least 400 words. Over the next 2 weeks, we will peer-review and polish our work before moving contributions from your sandbox to the live article.
To get ready to peer-review each other's work, complete the peer review training. Think about how your own contribution matches up with the peer-review criteria.
Week 11
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 6 April 2021 | Thursday, 8 April 2021
- Assignment - Polishing your Work
This week, you are:
Polishing your final contribution. For instructions,
- Read, Editing Wikipedia, pages 12 and 14
- Use the Editing Wikipedia final check-list, page 15
This week, review and improve your work, and format your contribution to match Wikipedia's tone and standards. Using the checklist, read and make improvements to your contribution, and go to the live article, and make small edits to improve grammar, organization, add links, etc.
There are no additional trainings for this week. Next week you will move your edits from the sandbox into the "live" article.
- Milestones
You are almost done!! At this point, you should have a well developed contribution ready to be moved into the live article. You will also have made additional improviments to the live article.
Week 12
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 13 April 2021 | Thursday, 15 April 2021
- Assignment - Move your work to Wikipedia
It's time to move your work to the article "mainspace." For this week,
- Complete the Move your work to Wikipedia training
- Read: Editing Wikipedia: Make Your Work Live, pg. 13
Copy your contribution to the live article.
NOTE: Save a screenshot or a copy of your sandbox contribution before moving your work to the live article.
Week 13
- Course meetings
-
- Tuesday, 20 April 2021 | Thursday, 22 April 2021
- Milestones
Everyone should have finished all of the work they'll do on Wikipedia, and be ready for grading.
- In class - Reflective essay