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Introduction To Assignment

This document discusses assigning students to write a new article on Wikipedia for a class. The author considers this assignment too advanced for freshman students. Instead, the assignment would be better suited for a "Writing in Digital Culture" or "Online Literacy" course at the 300-level. The assignment would require students to first familiarize themselves with editing Wikipedia through modifying an existing article and reflection essay. Creating a new article would give students real-world experience being held accountable to a global audience and producing information for others to build upon. However, ensuring the topic is notable enough to avoid deletion could be problematic.

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Matthew Vetter
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127 views

Introduction To Assignment

This document discusses assigning students to write a new article on Wikipedia for a class. The author considers this assignment too advanced for freshman students. Instead, the assignment would be better suited for a "Writing in Digital Culture" or "Online Literacy" course at the 300-level. The assignment would require students to first familiarize themselves with editing Wikipedia through modifying an existing article and reflection essay. Creating a new article would give students real-world experience being held accountable to a global audience and producing information for others to build upon. However, ensuring the topic is notable enough to avoid deletion could be problematic.

Uploaded by

Matthew Vetter
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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ENG 792E

Matthew Vetter
2/17/11

Introduction to Assignment

In the early stages of composing this assignment, I first thought it might be applicable to English 151.
However, as I began exploring the process of writing a new article on Wikipedia, I quickly realized that
such a project might be too advanced for freshman students. The assignment requires a personal
commitment and interest in digital writing, I think, and will involve a lot of trial and error, and
frustration. For these reasons, I think this kind of assignment is best suited to a course which is
advertised as a “Writing in Digital Culture” or “Online Literacy” which might fit best in either 382:
Rhetorical Approaches to Writing or 284: Writing about Culture and Society

The assignment itself will need to be connected to another project earlier in the quarter in which
students explore the editing capabilities and limitations of Wikipedia and familiarize themselves with the
platform’s policies and procedures. As I make reference to in the assignment, this earlier project would
consists of an edit of an existing article most likely paired with a reflection essay.

The justification of the assignment is perhaps expressed best in the pedagogical benefits acknowleged
by editors at the online encyclopedia itself:

In contrast to traditional writing assignments, working with Wikipedia may offer several
advantages for students:

 students are held accountable to a global audience for what they are doing, and thus may feel
more devoted to the assignment as a whole;
 students' work will likely continue to be used and to be improved upon by others after the
assignment has ended;
 students learn the difference between fact-based and analytical writing styles;
 students strengthen their ability to think critically and evaluate sources;
 students learn how to work in a collaborative environment
 students gain insights in the creation process of texts on Wikipedia. This enables them to draw
conclusions about the purposes for which Wikipedia is best used;
 students gain insights in the creation process of texts on Wikis in general, an increasingly
essential skill in a modern IT workplace (that can be put on one's CV); and
 students understand that they not only consume information, they help to create it.
(“Wikipedia: School and University Projects”)

The most exciting (and problematic) aspect of this assignment is that the students produce a very
concrete, “real” product that will be subject to extra-academic review. There are real issues involved,
however. I’m especially worried about topic generation. A local-interest topic ensures (somewhat) that
Wikipedia won’t already have the entry, but it also is risky in terms of notability. If the topic isn’t
deemed significant enough, it’s subject to deletion.
Works Cited

“Open Content." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 14 Feb. 2011. Web. 17
Feb. 2004.

“Wikipedia: Article Wizard." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 23 Jan. 2011.
Web. 17 Feb. 2004.

“Wikipedia: Notability." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 26 Feb. 2011.
Web. 17 Feb. 2011.

“Wikipedia:Tutorial." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 22 Jan. 2011. Web.
17 Feb. 2011.

“Wikipedia: Your First Article." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 2 Feb.
2011. Web. 17 Feb. 2011

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