Wikipedia:Student assignments

This is an overview page of best practices and advice concerning student assignments.

If you have any questions about anything related to student assignments, please ask at the education noticeboard.

Course page

Each assignment should have a course page set up by the instructor. Course pages help editors track classroom progress and distinguish between classroom-specific and editor-specific issues, so that constructive feedback is targeted to the right place. Consequently, a class that does not have a course page may be seen by other editors as disruptive, and those editors may end up undoing the students' work.

An assignment's course page is created via the Dashboard for the class. (Outside the US and Canada, please use this version.)

The course page should identify the user names of: the instructor; the liaison to the class from the WikiEd staff; the student editors; a listing of the articles the students are planning to work on (even if they don't yet exist); and the locations of any draft versions (such as the user's sandbox). It is especially important that there be a complete listing of all Wikipedia pages that students in the class will be editing.

Each student editor should also have a link to their course page, the article(s) they plan to or are working on for the assignment, and any draft at the top of their user page (see example, complete with WP:Diffs to the relevant edits for the assignment).

Student user names

Each student editor should register their own editor account. Under no circumstances should more than one student edit under the same account.

On Wikipedia, some editors use their real life names as user names, to identify themselves, whereas others choose never to reveal personal information.

For each class project on Wikipedia, instructors should give thought as to whether or not students should edit under their real names. Some instructors have required their students to use their real names, so as to encourage taking responsibility for text and to mimic academic journals. Doing so can, however, unintentionally have a permanent impact on a student's reputation. If the student is perceived (correctly or incorrectly) by other editors as having plagiarized material or having engaged in other misconduct, there may be comments to that effect left on discussion pages that will be permanently accessible by Internet search engines. Instructors should think carefully about the irreversible effects such situations may have on their students' futures, and give consideration to allowing the use of screen pseudonyms. Further information can be found at Wikipedia:On privacy, confidentiality and discretion and Wikipedia:How to not get outed on Wikipedia.

Guidance

Wikipedia takes pride in being "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit", and the Wikipedia community is based on volunteers who attempt to follow the norms of the site. Because students may edit to meet the requirements of a class (which might not align with the norms of Wikipedia), rather than out of a voluntary desire to execute Wikipedia's mission, this dynamic changes. Because of this fact, Wikipedia justifiably expects instructors to take responsibility for their students' work, both for the students' sake and for the good of the encyclopedia.

Instructors are expected to have a good working knowledge of Wikipedia, and should be responsive to community concerns, and be willing to help address core content policy violations in student work. Instructors should make sure they can reply to their user talk pages, or either provide contact details or an enabled email address (which will not be disclosed unless you reply to received emails or use Wikipedia to send an email).

If editors contact an instructor, they should try to be helpful. Likewise, if an instructor receives constructive feedback on a classroom assignment, they should be responsive. If issues such as copyright infringement develop, rapid contact with the instructor can be necessary in order to resolve issues before they negatively affect students' experiences.

Student editors should learn to communicate via the normal Wikipedia channels, such as on article talk pages and user talk pages.

Everyone – instructors, students, and other editors – should practice collegiate civility, should understand what constitutes disruptive editing, and should be aware of Wikipedia's policies of dispute resolution.

Challenges

Student assignments can help improve Wikipedia, but they can also cause the encyclopedia more harm than good when not directed properly. Volunteer editors are sometimes left with a mess and the burden of fixing poor-quality edits, cleaning up or reverting original research, merging content forks, and deleting articles. Even experienced Wikipedia editors who are classroom instructors have had mixed experiences.

Students and instructors participating in assignments can feel overwhelmed by multiple policies and guidelines, style preferences, 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 have their own norms described below).

When experienced editors encounter the results of a poorly performed assignment, they can feel overwhelmed by an onslaught of multiple content or format issues in articles they care about. They might also feel as if they are acting as unpaid and unthanked teaching assistants. If an entire class has systematically failed to adhere to Wikipedia's content policies and guidelines, student work may be reverted or deleted, and it can drive away or discourage existing editors, especially when students do not use talk pages to reach consensus on disputed material.

Despite the difficulties, successful assignments and classrooms do exist. When knowledgeable instructors, competent students, and editors collaborate based on those norms, an assignment has a good chance of succeeding. This information page is intended to point the way to achieving good outcomes.

A successful assignment requires careful crafting, based on a knowledge of, and in accordance with, Wikipedia's norms (known as policies and guidelines).

Learning these norms must therefore be one element of any assignment. To keep things on the right track, a grading system and assignment that are aligned with these norms are necessary, and students should be willing to put in the effort to provide a quality contribution.

Advice for students

Further information: Wikipedia:Training/For students

First, welcome to Wikipedia! Wikipedia welcomes new editors, and we hope you will want to stick around after your class is over. Writing and editing here is an expression of encyclopedism using a free and gratis wiki.

You will find that editing Wikipedia will feel quite different than any other assignment you have done for school. When you do schoolwork, you produce work privately or with a team, and submit it to your instructor with your name on it, by a given deadline. Editing Wikipedia is nothing like that. Here, you will be contributing to an article that is publicly available and that has been created and maintained by members of a community of anonymous editors, any one of whom may change or even remove edits that you make to it, and none of whom have a deadline.

As soon as you start to edit Wikipedia, you become a Wikipedian, and you are obligated to follow all of the the same policies and guidelines that other editors must follow. These policies and guidelines were put in place by the editing community over the past 23 years, and they cover both content and editor behavior. Other members of the community will generally be forgiving as you start to learn how Wikipedia works, but you do not have special status in Wikipedia as a student. No person or entity (not even your class!) owns articles here, and everything you publish here instantly becomes freely-licensed to the public, which means that others are free to rewrite, reuse, or modify it for any legal purpose, as long as they credit the original source.

Wikipedia has its own core content policies, style, and editing structure. The traditional writing assignment of the essay (with its necessary point of view) is not suited for publication here because our encyclopedic style requires a neutral point of view. Wikipedia is a tertiary source, so what you will write needs to be based mainly on secondary sources, and not on your own interpretations. Similarly, you should not write about your own opinions, and you should avoid language that tells the reader what to do, such as "note that... ".

Of particularly high importance, please read carefully what this page says about plagiarism and copyright infringement below, and please take it very seriously!

If you plan to edit an existing article but you want to practice with test edits first, then copy and paste the article into your sandbox for practice. You can also start new drafts there. Please be aware that it is a very bad idea to copy a large amount of text into a Wikipedia article all at once, especially at the end of the semester. Before placing such large edits into articles, please have your instructor review and approve the text. Also post at the article talk page well ahead of time, allowing established editors to look at your sandbox draft and give you feedback. Otherwise, you may find that your work will be deleted. You can request the deletion of your sandbox at any time. If you are starting a new article (which can appear as a red link like this when linked or can be a redirect), then your topic should be notable (see the general notability guideline) and worthy of a separate page (see the reasons for merging). It's possible someone else wrote an article on the same subject that you plan on creating, so please check for alternate titles.

Experienced editors might give you advice or might revert your contributions with an edit summary. Please consider their advice attentively; it will usually help your assignment be more successful. Be responsive if they start discussing your edits at a talk page (the article should be on your watchlist). If someone removes or changes your work, read their edit summary in the article's history. (Do not "edit war". See WP:3RR.) If you disagree with an edit, it might be best to open a discussion on the article's talk page, politely explaining why you believe your version is better. Please use policy and guideline-based arguments on the talk pages. Sometimes other editors may add a template pointing to a problem, rather than making any change to the article content. These should not be removed without addressing the issue identified, but if you are unclear on what is needed or you disagree, starting a talk page discussion and pinging the editor who placed the template is appropriate.

Wikipedia is a collaborative environment that depends upon communication. If you think editors are being an impediment to fulfilling your assignment requirements, then please say so to the WikiEd liaison for your class (privately if helpful) or at the education noticeboard. You can also seek help using the {{help me}} template, or using {{admin help}} if you need assistance specifically from an administrator. Also please raise your concerns with WikiEd or at the noticeboard if you think your assignment is asking you to violate any Wikipedia norms, as article space content which is not policy-compliant will likely be quickly removed. Editors and WikiEd people can help by consulting with your instructor to optimize the assignment design. To receive help, you also can always ask a question at the help desk or Teahouse. We hope your experience will be pleasant. Happy editing!

Advice for instructors

Further information: Wikipedia:Training/For educators

Brochure in PDF form developed for the Wikipedia Education Program on how to use Wikipedia as a teaching tool in higher education classrooms

The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) supports a global Wikipedia Education Program that can be contacted through their page on the Outreach Wiki and has resources for many countries. The program's purpose is to help instructors and students learn about Wikipedia and avoid common pitfalls. There is also a separate Wiki Education Foundation (WikiEd) that offers support for classes held at institutions in the United States and Canada. Either the Education Program or WikiEd (depending on the country where the course is based) should always be contacted prior to starting classes.

Ideally, you already have some experience as a Wikipedia editor. If not, there are materials available and people willing to help you learn. Available people might include another instructor who has experience with Wikipedia assignments, the WikiEd liaison for your course, or Wikipedia editors at the Teahouse. Please ask at the education noticeboard if you would like assistance. All class instructors should follow the instructions for setting up a class project, and work via the Dashboard system. We recognize that you are an expert in your field, and in how to teach it. You may, with good reason, perceive Wikipedia as populated by editors who lack your experience and judgment, but please understand that many editors are also experienced academics, and any editor, expert or not, may cross paths with your students. Please do your due diligence to understand Wikipedia before you craft an assignment. We thank you in advance!

The volunteer community here can be very welcoming to new student editors, but they are also limited in their ability to deal with new issues that suddenly develop, as can happen when many students show up at the same time. Often, volunteers have a niche area they contribute to, which may coincide with your class assignment. Because there may be many eyes on the articles where students work, and because you cannot control what Wikipedia editors will do, or when they will show up to make edits of their own, careful attention to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines from the start of the course will improve your students' experiences – and may save you from aggravating and time-consuming incidents just at the time when you are submitting your grades.

Always use the Dashboard to create a course page for your class every time that you teach it, and please ensure that your class follows the above advice for #Course pages, #Student user names, and #Guidelines; please make these requirements to receive assignment credit.

Your assignment and grading rubric should reinforce (and certainly not contradict) Wikipedia's norms, and your class should seek to improve the encyclopedia. Assignments sometimes include student comments about existing Wikipedia content, rather than changes to the articles themselves, or include comments on article changes made by other students. If so, those comments need to be in line with talk page guidelines, focusing on article content in a constructive and objective manner. Pointing out missing content (preferably with reliable sources) is welcome, as is noting areas where there is undue weight, inappropriate synthesis of sources, bias, etc. However, "reviews" in which students only praise each other, or comments that debate the topic and are not based on reliable sources, are inappropriate. Please consider carefully whether you are asking for edits or discussion that could be a problem in any of those ways; if so, those edits or discussions might be better suited to user space, student draft pages, or submitted off-site. If the assignment involves editing Wikipedia, compliance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines is expected (though occasional lapses by newcomers are recognized as part of the learning experience), and non-compliant edits are likely to be reverted.

Please do not give students credit for writing an arbitrary quantity of words or bytes. Wikipedia should not contain unnecessary and off-topic material, because encyclopedias prize brevity. You should monitor the edits your students make, and especially take notice if other Wikipedia editors give feedback to your students, in which case you should make sure that your students respond. Do not assume that Wikipedia editors will always fix the mistakes your students make, and do not assume that the fact that a student edit was not reverted means that other editors have accepted the edit. If something in your class assignment turns out not to work as well as you had hoped, please correct it before you repeat the assignment in a subsequent semester; repeatedly editing in unhelpful ways may be considered to be disruptive. Good article and DYK nominations are strongly discouraged for a number of reasons, but allowing a small portion of the most dedicated students to attempt these outcomes, after careful review by the instructor, may be rewarding. Please keep in mind that with a Good article nomination, the nominator needs to be around, probably weeks later and after the end of the course, to deal with review suggestions.

Similarly, it is important to recognize that Wikipedia's mechanisms for reviewing drafts of articles or evaluating new articles are not designed to fit within the time frame of your class. This means that the articles for creation and peer review processes are not appropriate for class assignments. Please do not direct your students to use either of these, as the students will find the experience unsatisfying, and Wikipedia editors will resent being asked to make these reviews.

Encourage your students to engage with basic Wikipedia processes and standards. Make sure they understand the advice above for students, perhaps by making this information page assigned reading for a quiz. 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 encyclopedia, where original research is not permitted. (See core content policies, which is also linked to in the student section above.) When assigning topics to students, please understand that Wikipedia does not publish advocacy or topics that are new, simply because they are new, even if your course is about topics such as social change. Please ensure that your students understand that plagiarism and copyright infringement are not allowed.

Have students post specific suggestions for improvement directly on the talk pages of their peers' articles, and not offline. Incorporate responding to feedback into the grading rubric. Reward students who give good advice on Wikipedia. Reward students who seek out advice from experienced editors and then make improvements to the article based on that advice. If an active WikiProject exists around the content you'll be assigning your students to edit, encourage students to notify editors there. Penalize students who do not address the points that were raised by non-student editors.

Thank you for introducing your students to Wikipedia, ensuring that they fit in well here, and helping them leave behind a positive contribution for many readers!

Page editing

Your students should post a course assignment template on the talk pages of any page they plan to improve. If a new article is written, please ensure that your students also place that template on that article's talk page.

Consider encouraging your students to work in a sandbox and know that it is an option to have their assignment graded there for course credit. It is usually best to develop articles on the students' user pages, or as drafts. After evaluation, the articles may go on to become Wikipedia articles.

In particular, please require students to obtain your approval before moving content from sandboxes into the main article space. Students should not abruptly move large amounts of text into articles without first having the material reviewed either by you or by experienced editors, because otherwise we may end up having to revert everything that the student has done.

If you decide to allow a student to directly edit an article, it is often better to have the student improve a short article that is only in the early stages of development. Articles that are already well-developed before your course starts are likely to be watched by many editors, and so your students may find more editors objecting to changes at such articles, particularly if the articles are already of good quality.

Advice for other Wikipedia editors

Established editors should be welcoming to instructors and student editors. As always, WP:CIVIL, WP:AGF, and WP:BITE apply, but student editors should be treated in the same way any new editor is treated, without any special considerations that other editors do not receive.

Depending on how classes are organized, students may have different priorities from established editors (class grades rather than improving Wikipedia; making a few changes and not coming back). Editors sometimes encounter large numbers of student edits in a short period of time, and can find it difficult to get students to pay attention to editorial advice.

If you see problem edits, explain your concerns on article or user talk pages. Make edits you consider appropriate, as you would in the case of other new editors. You are entitled to revert content or move it to the talk page, or to nominate a page for deletion if appropriate, especially when there are serious policy violations. (A student can always request that an administrator userify a deleted article.) Class projects never own the pages they are working on. Once you have politely expressed your concerns, you are not obligated to keep repeating the advice.

You are never obligated to be an unpaid teaching assistant. Please do not let student projects diminish your enjoyment of editing. Do not feel bad about reverting edits that justifiably should be reverted. Student grades are not your responsibility, nor is any other aspect of teaching the class, unless you personally choose to involve yourself. If you do not want to fix all of the problems on a page, feel free to leave it for other editors to work on, rather than becoming stressed by the effort of doing it alone. There is no deadline, so consider adding Template:Cleanup or a similar template to the page. If students are not satisfactorily responsive to concerns, consider drawing the matter to the attention of the instructor. Be professional and polite, remembering that instructors are professionals. If you do not get a timely or satisfactory response, please report the matter to the education noticeboard.

You can point editors who appear to be new student editors in the right direction by using Template:Welcome student, or, in the case of content related to medicine or health, Template:Welcome medical student. Please note that these templates do not merely welcome students; they also point the students towards how to avoid common problems.

When students become interested in editing cooperatively, it can be a genuine pleasure to work with them. If you see a valuable student editor, please consider giving them The Excellent New Editor's Barnstar by placing {{subst:The Excellent New Editor's Barnstar|1=Put your message here. ~~~~}} on their talk page. Likewise, if you have reason to single a class out for praise, also consider posting at the noticeboard.

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 the startle response is needed so the reader can understand the topic, but detail about Beard and the startle response is expanded in the articles George Miller Beard and Startle response. 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 is likely to lead to reversion of all of their edits.

Wikipedia has a large number of articles that are called stubs because they are very short and in need of expansion. Such pages are particularly good choices for class projects, because the addition of more material will be welcome. In contrast, adding material to an article that is already extensive in its coverage may lead to problems if the added material is not written and formatted exactly right, and student edits of such pages are more likely to be reverted by other editors. It is almost always better for students to expand short pages than to try to change long ones.

Some highly contentious topic areas (some dealing with political matters, current events, or religious conflicts, as well as various other controversial subjects) have been placed under special rules called General Sanctions and Contentious topics that are intended to prevent disputes between editors. When such restrictions are in place, editors who violate the rules may be quickly blocked from editing, including student editors who may not recognize the intricacies of such rules and be taken by surprise. Instructors should familiarize themselves and their students ahead of time with the sanctions that are applicable to the areas in which students might edit, and avoid these areas. A current list of these topics is here. These topics should be avoided entirely.

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. Please be aware that Wikipedia has a New Pages Patrol, a group of editors who monitor all new articles for acceptability as Wikipedia content. These editors may significantly alter your work soon after you publish it, and they will generally have good reasons for doing so. They may also nominate your work to be deleted entirely, if it does not conform to the guidance you are reading here. As with moving new content into an existing article, it is a good idea to start a new article in your sandbox, and consult your instructor before moving it into the regular article space.

Plagiarism and copyright infringement

Students and other new editors sometimes mistakenly believe that as long as added text 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 the university; copying too closely can also be copyright infringement. If you are editing under your real name, the plagiarism can follow you for life. Students should realize that a potentially large number of persons may be silently observing all edits on a Wikipedia page, and consequently there is actually a very high probability that someone will notice plagiarism.

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 job to review articles for plagiarism and copyright infringement. However, it is just as probable that another editor will come along subsequently, and pursue the misconduct at any time, and so it is in the instructor's interest not to leave any problems unresolved.

The following pages are helpful reading:

• Let's get serious about plagiarism
• Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing
• Wikipedia:Copyright violations

Editing medicine and health topics

Main page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/How to edit

See also: Template:Medical student notice

Video for new medical editors

Improving medicine and health topics often requires particularly careful use of sources. Specific examples of best practices are also shown below.

Wikipedia has unique sourcing and style guidelines covering health information. Health and mental health-related content in any article (not just medicine, biology and psychology articles) must be supported by independent "secondary" sources, such as expert reviews in high-impact peer-reviewed journals, university-level textbooks, professional guidelines, etc. "Primary" sources, such as reports of randomised controlled trials, case reports and comparative studies (even if they are published in a peer-reviewed journal) are rarely adequate support for assertions in this field. If health-related information is not covered in current textbooks, professional guidelines or high-quality independent reviews, it is unlikely to be suitable for Wikipedia. The distinction between primary, secondary and tertiary sources is discussed at Primary, secondary and tertiary sources. For many journal articles, you can determine if a source is a secondary review or a primary study by looking up the article in PubMed's search engine. Please provide a PubMed identifier (PMID) with your journal citations, so other editors can help check your sourcing.

Students editing health-related content should read these pages that explain how to write and organize medical articles, how primary, secondary and tertiary sources are used in health-related content, and where to find ideal sources:

• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles for general guidelines on how medical information is organized.
• Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) for information about sourcing guidelines specific to medicine and health-related content.
• Dispatches: Sources in biology and medicine for a tutorial on how to locate appropriate sources.

One way students can have a more rewarding Wikipedia experience in adding health information to an article is to begin by posting a list of sources they plan to use to the article's "talk page" (via the tab at the top of the article) 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.

Examples of best practices

Examples of instructors leading assignments that are good models to learn from include Brianwc, who has successfully run a multi-semester program at a law school; jbmurray, who had students take articles up to good and featured status; and Biolprof, who had graduate students peer review each other's contributions multiple times.

An example of a thorough course page design can be seen at Signal Transduction (Saint Louis University). Another good example is North American Environmental History.

Resources

List of policies* / List of guidelines*

Quick directory / Editor's index

Wikipedia:Five pillars / Wikipedia:Consensus

• Wikipedia:How to edit a page
• Wikipedia:Citing sources
• Help:Wikitext

Any questions?

Please ask at the education noticeboard. Thanks!

See also

• Wikipedia:Academic studies of Wikipedia in education
• Education Program Online volunteer log
• Wikipedia:USEP/Courses/JHU MolBio Ogg FA13/Student banner
• Wikipedia:Participation by academic projects
• Here, for a list of old classroom projects
• Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Courses/Trophy case
• Wikipedia:Historical page for school and university projects
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Classroom coordination, a historical project
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/How to edit
• Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia
• Wikipedia:Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia
• Wikiversity

Templates:

• {{educational assignment}} to tag the talk pages of articles and drafts from the student
• {{Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment}} to tag the talk pages of articles and drafts from the student who is doing a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment.

External links

• Using Wikipedia in the Classroom: A Cautionary Tale, a 2014 blog post by Meghan Duffy, illustrating pitfalls instructors need to anticipate before making Wikipedia assignments
• Wiki Education blog with success stories and case studies