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Wikipedia:Student assignments

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Wikipedia Education Program
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Wikipedians are conflicted on the issue of assignments for student editors. Sometimes the articles are good for readers and the volunteer community, but other times readers are left with an eyesore and volunteers are burdened with cleaning up the mess. An ideal assignment involves an instructor who understands Wikipedia norms, students that know about Wikipedia norms, professors or ambassadors willing to clean up serious policy violations in their students' work, and a grading system that encourages adherence to Wikipedia norms. (A grading system that encourages adherence to Wikipedia's norms is important because it results in better initial work, and many students stop editing their articles after being reimbursed with a grade.)

When established Wikipedians encounter the results of a poorly performed assignment, they can feel overwhelmed (and as if they are acting as an unpaid and unthanked teaching assistant). The effort required to locate the sources used by students and doublecheck to ensure that the students accurately represented the sources and did not plagiarize or infringe copyright can be daunting – especially if a copyedit for prose and style is also necessary. In such cases editors may well just revert all the changes, removing all the student's work, as they are entitled to do. This problem is magnified if an entire class has systematically failed to adhere to Wikipedia's content policies, and can drive away or discourage existing editors – so it is crucially important for instructors to ensure their assignments are well-designed, and crucially important for students to ensure that they put in enough effort to leave a quality contribution.

Students participating in Wikipedia-based assignments can also feel overwhelmed, because of numerous "rules", some unpleasant Wikipedians, and coding complexities. Wikipedia can have a steep learning curve, especially when editing in controversial subject areas, or areas related to health, medicine, biology, or psychology (which are covered by special standards about sourcing and style, detailed in the last section of this essay.)

Guidance

Advice for students

First, welcome to Wikipedia! Wikipedia welcomes new editors, and we would be very happy if you decide to stay here after your class is over.

Editing on Wikipedia is going to feel different from most other writing that you have done. Because editing is open to the public, you may find that other Wikipedia editors will make changes to the work you are doing. According to Wikipedia policy, your class cannot own the articles you work on, so you have to accept that other people may want to change or remove what you have worked on, sometimes while you are doing it. Also, everything you write in the encyclopaedia becomes freely-licensed to the public, again meaning that you cannot maintain control over it after you hit the "save" button. You will find that you will have the most enjoyable experience if you accept that this is the case.

Consider creating your article instead in a personal sandbox on a user subpage, and asking that it be graded there. If you're editing an existing article, copy and paste it over to your sandbox and develop it from there. When the course is over, you can request that the sandbox be deleted, or you can choose to move your work over to the encyclopaedia, assuming you feel it is policy-compliant and something you want to share. If you are told you must add your work to the encyclopaedia, please alert your online ambassador or post to the talk page of this essay, where a Wikipedian will respond.

Often, experienced Wikipedians will know how best to create a good article, and their advice will help you be more successful in your class assignment. Please take seriously any advice you get from them about how to edit the article you are working on, and be responsive if your edits are discussed on the article talk page, or if you are contacted on yours. For a start, please read – and take very seriously! – what it says lower down on this page about plagiarism and copyright.

Advice for professors

Consider giving your students information that will encourage engagement of established editors early in your students' writing process.

  • Ask your students to add Template:Educational assignment to the article talk page of articles they plan to expand. That will alert established Wikipedians that students are planning to edit, and allow them to guide the students towards appropriate sourcing and other policies, and to help students better learn about Wikipedia as they write.
  • Consider encouraging your students to work in a sandbox and have their essays graded there. That way, they will retain control over their work, and can request its deletion when the course is over. Once they move their work into the encyclopaedia, they lose that control. All Wikipedians have the right to work in a personal sandbox and to request its deletion, and students should be offered the same opportunity.
  • Ask your students to indicate on talk where they will be working in a sandbox so that established Wikipedians can guide their efforts as they develop content.
  • Make sure your students understand the differences between the style and content appropriate to term papers and other academic forms and those appropriate to an article in an encyclopedia.

Consider the implications of having plagiarism associated with a student's real name in a very public way:

  • Learn to read edit histories of the articles your students edit; some Wikipedians do not feel comfortable pointing out plagiarism to the professor, and believe it is your job to find and remove it, or to review edit histories that may show someone else has removed it.

Advice for editors

It can be frustrating to deal with content that students have created, and experienced Wikipedia editors have disagreed about the extent to which student editors should, or should not, be treated the same as other editors. Obviously, WP:CIVIL, WP:AGF, and WP:BITE apply to interactions with student editors, but students are not entitled to special treatment that would not be extended to other new editors. Serious policy violations should be reverted no matter who makes them.

If you see problems with student edits, try to explain your concerns civilly on article or user talk pages. Once you have done so, you are entitled to expect student editors to respond appropriately, and you are free to make whatever edits you consider appropriate. Class projects never WP:OWN the pages they are working on. Student grades are not your responsibility, nor is any other aspect of teaching the class, unless you personally choose to involve yourself. You are never obligated to be an unpaid teaching assistant. If you observe problems, and students and the instructor do not respond to your concerns, consider drawing the matter to the attention of the campus ambassador, or posting about the issue at the Education noticeboard. If you do not want to fix all of the problems on a page, please do not feel that it is your responsibility to do so by yourself. Remember, there is no deadline, so consider adding Template:Cleanup or a similar template to the page, or revert to an earlier version if the problems are severe.

Advice for ambassadors

Consider routinely checking your students' work, whether in sandbox or in mainspace.

  • Is the article talk page tagged with a link to the course page, professor, etc?
  • Has the article talk page beem notified if and where the students are working in sandbox?
  • If a student article contains any medical, psych, or health-related content, have the students been made aware of Wikpedia's medicine sourcing guidelines, and have they listed potential sources on talk?
  • Periodically review the students' and article talk pages to see if they are engaging with other editors and using article talk pages and user talk pages appropriately.
  • Periodically review article histories and article talk pages to determine if other editors have removed plagiarism.

Editing considerations

Choosing a topic

As you are getting to know your way around Wikipedia, and deciding which topic you want to write on, you will notice that wikilinking allows readers to easily access text in other articles by clicking on the link. Consider when adding text whether you are adding the content to the right article; if the content you want to add fits better in another article, readers can get there via a link. As an example, in the article Jumping Frenchmen of Maine some information about George Miller Beard and startle response is needed so the reader can understand the topic, but detail about Beard and startle response is expanded in those articles. Take care not to add content to the wrong article, as you may be duplicating work that has already been done, or you may be spending time generating content that will be moved or deleted if it's in the wrong article. Be more cautious about removing existing content than adding it, and if you are removing more than a few lines it is a good idea to explain why on the talk page. Some students entirely replace the existing text and metadata such as categories; this is almost never a good idea, and likely to lead to reversion of all their edits.

If you are starting a new article, the subject needs to pass the test of notability. Judging whether your subject does so may be difficult, and you may need to make your case with other editors. In a new article more attention to following Wikipedia policies and conventions over matters such as layout and style is needed.

Students and otherwise new editors sometimes mistakenly believe that as long as text added is cited to its source, copying that text (or closely paraphrasing it) is acceptable. It is not. Plagiarizing could earn you an "F" in the course or being thrown out of university; copying too closely can also be copyright infringement. If you are editing with your real name, the plagiarism can follow you for life.

Some established editors are reluctant to "blow the whistle" on student plagiarism because of the consequences that can result for the student, and believe that it is the professor's or the Ambassador's job to review articles for plagiarism and copyright infringement.

The following pages are helpful reading:

Good article and DYK nominations

Good article and DYK nominations are generally discouraged for student editors for a number of reasons:

  • Students may not sufficiently understand the quality expectations of those processes.
  • Student nominations may overwhelm those already underserved process pages.
  • Reviewers are sometimes reluctant to engage a nomination, or fail a nomination, when they know a student's grade may depend on the outcome.
  • Past cases of students pressuring reviewers to pass nominations have come to light.
  • The quality of the reviews and speed at which they are conducted can vary greatly.

An optimal outcome for both a new student editor and for Wikipedia is for student editors to stay involved after their course ends, consult with experienced Wikipedians, and aim for Good article status once the pressures of the course are over.

Editing topics in medicine, biology or psychology

Wikipedia has unique sourcing and organizational guidelines for content related to health and medicine (which often includes articles in the psychological or neuropsychological realm, as well as the biology content area). These sourcing guidelines apply to medical statements made in any topic area (that is, even articles not only about health or medicine). Students or otherwise new editors may mistakenly believe that medical text can be sourced to a "peer reviewed journal" article, even if that article is only a case report or a comparative study. But when adding content related to medicine or health, publication in a "peer reviewed journal" isn't always adequate sourcing; secondary reviews of primary studies or case reports are preferred, and secondary journal reviews are preferred over other kinds of reliable sources, such as the laypress or advocacy websites.

The distinction between primary, secondary and tertiary sources is discussed at primary, secondary and tertiary sources; WP:MEDRS explains how primary and secondary sources are used in health-related content.

Students editing medical or health-related content should review these pages that explain how to write and organize medical or health content, what kinds of sourcing is preferred, and how to find those sources:

One way students can have a more rewarding Wikipedia experience in editing medical or psychological content is to begin by posting a list of sources they plan to use to the article talk page before they start writing content from those sources; that will allow experienced editors to guide them towards optimal sources and comment on the appropriateness of the planned article expansion.

See also

References

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