Task 1: Introduction to the course
Purpose: Introduce the main assignment for this course that the students will be working on the entire semester.
Background information:
All of the content, activities, and assignments in this course build up to a final product of an original medium-length article (minimum of 1,000 words) for Wikipedia. The article must be on a topic for which no full-length article currently exists in the English-language version of Wikipedia.
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Over the course, students will go through the research and writing process, so the steps of the process are outlined for students here, such as finding a topic, creating an outline, searching for information, paraphrasing, citing sources, revising, and publishing.
Activity stages: Lecture
Resources/websites: Powerpoint slides 2 and 3.
Handouts:
Answers/models:
Task 2: Introduction to the Wikipedia Genre
Purpose: This task introduces the concept of “genres” and starts to explore what makes Wikipedia’s encyclopedia style-articles different from other texts.
Background information:
In this first week, students are introduced to the concept of a written text “genre”. They might not know the word “genre”, but they know music genres (pop, rock, jazz) and movie genres (comedy, action, romance). There are also text genres, such as newspaper articles, blog posts, emails, chat messages, advertisements, and Wikipedia articles.
The genre approach is a core idea of the course. Over the next few weeks, students will be writing their first Wikipedia article. This at first seems like a huge task, but they can model their article on existing Wikipedia articles.
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Students probably have used Wikipedia before, but this first lesson asks them to dig a little deeper and analyze the genre of Wikipedia articles. This includes how the articles are organized and formatted as well as a look at the encyclopedia-style of writing, which is clear, concise, and factual.
Activity stages:
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Stage 1: Distribute ‘Exploring Genres’ worksheet. Give each student one handout, and ensure that there is an even mix of students working with the four different worksheets
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Stage 2: Put students into groups of 4, each with a different worksheet. Students discuss their findings to the questions.
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Stage 3: Class discussion about the genre. Introduce the concept of writing genres, of which Wikipedia is one.
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Stage 4: Distribute ‘Wikipedia Genre’ – one for each student. Students explore the Wikipedia genre alone. Students can compare two/three different Wikipedia articles to identify their similarities and differences. Students will realize that there are more similarities than differences. Similarities will be items such as the title at the top of the page, a lead section (article summary), a table of contents, the body of the article with section headers, references at the end of the article, as well as page sidebars and footers. Students then share their findings in pairs or small groups.
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For the differences between articles, such as the content or the length, students can identify gaps that could be added to a Wikipedia page. There is always more that can be said about any topic. By comparing pages on similar topics but different lengths, students will see what kinds of information can be added to the shorter article.
Resources/websites: Wikipedia.org , Powerpoint slides 4 and 5
Handouts: 1. Exploring genres 2. Exploring Wikipedia genres
Answers/models:
Task 3: Introduction to the functionality of Wikipedia
Purpose: Teach students about the interface and functionality of Wikipedia
Background information:
Students have probably read articles on Wikipedia, but they have probably never edited articles before, so they need to learn how to use the Wikipedia interface. For example, on the top menu bar on every Wikipedia page are the Article/Talk tabs, the Read/Edit/View history tabs, and the search box. This re-enforces the idea that anyone in the world can edit any Wikipedia article at any time.
Activity stages:
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Stage 1: Show students the various functions of a Wikipedia page (see PowerPoint).
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Stage 2: In pairs, students explore Wikipedia to identify the range of information available, and consider the style of writing used. Students can compare a Wikipedia page with the simple Wikipedia page (for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokémon_Go and https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokémon_Go)
Resources/websites: Wikipedia.org, PowerPoint slides 6 to10
Handouts:
Answers/models: Any Wikipedia article
Task 4: Comparing different kinds of Wikipedia articles
Purpose: Students explore Wikipedia pages beyond the standard English pages
Background information: Wiki has a predictable style and look, but what happens in wiki pages other than English?
Activity stages:
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Stage 1: In pairs, students explore Wikipedia to identify organization, look, writing style of Wiki sites other than in standard English.​
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Stage 2: In pairs, students explore the difference between wiki pages in standard English and simple wiki
Resources/websites: 3. Wiki across languages