Course Calendar
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We will offer weekly one-hour class sessions including students from all parts of the world, beginning Tuesday 14 May / Wednesday 15 May. Class time is optimized for Asia, Australia, and the Americas:
- Bangalore, India: 6:30am Wednesdays
- Beijing, China: 9:00am Wednesdays
- Buenos Aires, Argentina: 10:00pm Tuesdays
- Los Angeles, USA: 6:00pm Tuesdays
- New York, USA: 9:00pm Tuesdays
- Seoul, Korea: 10:00am Wednesdays
- Sydney, Australia: 11:00am Wednesdays
- Tokyo, Japan: 10:00am Wednesdays
Optional labs will be held at the same times on Thursdays (Americas) and Friday (Asia, Australia).
Please click here to find the exact time of day in your city/time zone. If these times do not work for you, check back in coming weeks:
- A self-paced version of this course will soon be available.
- We expect to run the course again in the morning (Americas)/afternoon (Europe & Africa) starting in July.
Week One: Wikipedia under the hood (14 or 15 May)
What has inspired hundreds of thousands of people to volunteer their time to build millions of Wikipedia articles in hundreds of languages? We begin with a survey of the project's history, values, and culture. We will explore how learners increasingly use Wikipedia as scaffolding, as they begin to build a general understanding of a topic. Herein lies an opportunity: how can we work toward a broader understanding of a topic like Open Educational Resources (OER)?
Week Two: Who am I to edit Wikipedia? Identity & collaboration (21 or 22 May)
This class reviews issues of expertise, credentials, anonymity, privacy, conflicts of interest (COI). What are Wikipedia's standards? What are the most effective ways to collaborate and make substantive improvements to Wikipedia content? What kinds of conflict arise around editor identity and behavior, and how can conflict be avoided or resolved?
Week Three: What is quality? (28 or 29 May)
This class will first explore the concept of quality in Wikipedia. We will look at several peer review processes within Wikipedia, and explore articles of low and high quality. We'll also look at techniques for gathering information about a page. For instance, how many Wikipedians are "watching" an article for changes? How many times has an article been viewed in the last month?
Week Four: Build it bigger - Roundtable one (4 or 5 June)
This class will focus on how to build up a Wikipedia article on a smaller topic, where authoritative sources are hard to come by. In this roundtable discussion, several experienced Wikipedians will discuss an article he or she built up. Discussion and Q/A will follow. (Speakers to be announced; in the last session, we were joined by Sage Ross and Lane Rasberry.)
Week Five: The deep dive - Roundtable two (11 or 12 June)
This class will delve more deeply into Wikipedia editing, analyzing how to improve an important but messy high-level article. We will be joined by the several guest speakers experienced in open educational resources. (Speakers to be announced; in the last session, we were joined by Cathy Casserly (Creative Commons), David Wiley (Shuttleworth Fellow/Brigham Young University), David Kernohan (JISC), and Nick Shockey (Right to Research Coalition, SPARC).)
Week Six: The takeaway and student showcase (18 or 19 June)
We will review core concepts covered throughout the course, and students will have the opportunity to present their final projects. We will discuss how to best support one another's ongoing work. The webinars are over, but the new Wikipedians in our course are just getting started! Do students want to stay in touch and collaborate on Wikipedia going forward? What will work best for this group?
Already registered? Visit the class Wikipedia page to get started!