SOA’s mission is to address key areas to attain fundamental, systemic change, and ensure the full participation in the STEMM workforce to meet the increasing performance and innovation demands required to keep the U.S. competitive.

As an SOA partner, Wiki Education will help enact a community-developed national strategy to accelerate scientific excellence to power progress, innovation, and prosperity for all by 2050. In alignment with our work, Wiki Education will bolster the SOA’s national strategy’s Discovery pillar to help create opportunity for all in higher education. 

In 2024 alone, our Wikipedia Student Program supported 336 STEMM courses that taught Wikipedia editing to 6,298 students in higher education classrooms, including 57 courses at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and Tribal Colleges and Universities. In 2025, we plan to support Wikipedia editing assignments for 7,000 higher education students across 375 STEMM courses, including 65 courses at these diverse institutions, to create more inclusive and accessible STEMM programming for all.

Wiki Education also committed to helping achieve the SOA’s national strategy’s Capstone goals on Strategic Communications, including to:

• Ensure that STEMM professionals depicted in entertainment and media are reflective of the country’s population.
• Effectively illustrate the importance of different perspectives in STEMM and how they are critical to achieving excellence in STEMM.

Throughout 2024, university and college students created 113 biographies of historically excluded STEMM professionals on Wikipedia, raising their visibility in the media. In 2025, we will train 200 students to improve 150 biographies on Wikipedia of historically excluded STEMM professionals to inspire excellence and diverse perspectives in the STEMM fields.

SOA will assist Wiki Education in meeting these goals by providing access to a resource library, funding opportunities, and programming to engage directly with other partners and their communities, as well as forums for planning and implementing the national strategy for equity and excellence. 

In collaboration with SOA partners, Wiki Education will help reimagine and transform the existing STEMM ecosystem to better support the aspirations of untapped talent in this country.

Visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn more about the free resources, digital tools, and staff support that Wiki Education offers to postsecondary instructors in the United States and Canada. 

Visit learn.wikiedu.org to explore our editing courses for subject matter experts.

“The sheer number of eyeballs looking to Wikipedia for health-related information is staggering,” said committee lead Amin Azzam, MD. “Helping health professions school faculty to implement Wikipedia editing assignments into their local contexts is far more impactful than my direct teaching of my own students. Getting this information on Wikipedia will help everyone who reads Wikipedia for their own or their loved ones’ health.”

During their two-year term, committee members will collaborate with Wiki Education across key areas of the project, including outreach and recruitment. Working with Wiki Education staff, the scholars will expand faculty awareness of the Wikipedia assignment through outreach to health professions networks, partnership development with organizations and institutions, and support for Teaching with Wikipedia webinars.

“Ever since taking a Wikipedia-editing course as a medical student, I’ve been passionate about improving health-related content on Wikipedia; whether through designing courses or encouraging colleagues to get involved,” said second-year ophthalmology resident Tolga Guven, MD. “I firmly believe in the open-access movement and that motivation should be the only barrier to acquiring knowledge. The opportunity to work alongside and learn from like-minded educators while helping improve one of the world’s most-referenced information sources was one I couldn’t resist.”

The group will also assist with a study led by Azzam to investigate the impact that editing Wikipedia has on health professions student editors. Committee members will support survey design and focus group framework development.

“This work excites me for two main reasons: one, the educational opportunity it presents for health professional students; and two, its potential to improve public health,” explained Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Sheila Kusnoor, PhD. “Participating in Wikipedia editing courses gives students the chance to learn how to identify high-quality evidence and clearly communicate it to a lay audience. These skills are critical, as patients need access to reliable, easy-to-understand health information to make informed decisions about their care. Enhancing the quality of health information on Wikipedia can help empower patients with the knowledge needed to improve their health.” 

2025 Medical Community Advisory Committee members:

Mohammad Aldalou, MD is a postdoctoral scholar at the Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). In 2021, he founded OMEN-Palestine, the Palestinian chapter affiliated with Osmosis from Elsevier, where he led efforts to expand access to medical education resources for students and early-career physicians in the region. He also served as a regional lead and consultant with Osmosis from Elsevier, focusing on competency development and student engagement within the medical education program. At UAB, Dr. Aldalou’s research centers on formative assessment and competency-based medical education. His research interest lies in leveraging learning analytics to track student progress and inform the design of more effective and personalized educational experiences.

Amin Azzam, MD is a passionate health professions educator-innovator. He loves leveraging technologies that maximize learners’ capacities to become the awesome health professionals we all want in society. He is a professor at three San Francisco Bay Area universities: University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine; University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health; and Samuel Merritt University. He’s also a consultant to several health education technology companies.

Tanya Cupino, MD, PhD is a recent graduate of Loma Linda University. She has a PhD in microbiology and molecular genetics and a professional interest in adult patients with rare genetic conditions. In 2019, while still in medical school, she volunteered to participate in an international, asynchronous Wikipedia editing course that was sponsored by the medical learning platform Osmosis. After learning how to edit Wikipedia, Dr. Cupino collaborated with Dr. Guven and Dr. Azzam in designing an online course that teaches healthcare students how to improve the health content on Wikipedia. Dr. Cupino contributed to peer-reviewed publications that explore the multifactorial value-added outcomes in teaching healthcare professional students to edit Wikipedia, and has presented similar findings at research conferences. She is passionate about supporting any efforts to ensure trustworthy, approachable, fact-based resources that patients can freely access when they have questions about health concerns.

Scott Ewing, DO is an Interventional Cardiologist and medical educator in Fort Worth, Texas. Previously, he was a mechanical engineering manager at Texas Instruments in Dallas, Texas. He is board-certified in internal medicine, general cardiology, and interventional cardiology. He is an Assistant Professor and clinical preceptor at the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU. Additionally, he is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Texas Health Science Center Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine, where he teaches several cardiology classes, serves as 3rd-year Internal Medicine clerkship director, and teaches the TCOM WikiMed class twice yearly.

Tolga Guven, MD is a second-year ophthalmology resident in the U.K. and currently works as the Simulation Fellow for the Wessex Deanery where he is responsible for coordinating the surgical simulation education for the other residents in the region. As part of this fellowship, he is undertaking a PGCert in Healthcare Education. Dr. Guven previously served as a Histology and Embryology Lector at Charles University from 2017-2020, where his passion to make complex medical information more understandable and accessible began. Following on from this experience, he collaborated with Dr. Azzam on designing an online Wikipedia-editing course for healthcare students, which aims to improve the quality and accuracy of medical information available to the public. Dr. Guven brings a unique perspective to medical education, coming from a niche clinical specialty, with a commitment to accessible knowledge dissemination.

Sheila Kusnoor, PhD is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) and holds roles as Senior Information Scientist and Associate Director for Research at the Center for Knowledge Management (CKM). Dr. Kusnoor earned her Ph.D. in cellular and molecular neuroscience from Vanderbilt University. She began her career at CKM as a Knowledge Management Fellow in Personalized Medicine, aiming to cultivate expertise in informatics and information science. In her current role, Dr. Kusnoor leads and supports a variety of projects to advance VUMC priorities, applying expertise in knowledge management and informatics. Dr. Kusnoor is the course director for the WikiMed advanced elective, which teaches third- and fourth-year medical students how to identify high quality evidence to enhance Wikipedia medicine articles.

Maureen Richards, PhD is an immunology and microbiology educator. She has been working with the Wikipedia Platform as a course director for the past 9 years and has run 7 courses with over 100 total students. She currently serves as the Assistant Dean of Medical Education and Evaluation and Associate Professor at the University of Illinois College of Medicine Rockford Campus. 

We encourage any interested instructor to visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn more about incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into their courses with Wiki Education’s free support and resources. 

This project is funded through a Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Award (EADI #38991).

As Senior Institutional Giving Officer, Lauren engages institutional funders to support Wiki Education’s work. In her role on our Advancement Team, Lauren cultivates a diverse group of mission-aligned organizations to support Wiki Education’s programs. Her work includes grant management, developing reports to demonstrate programmatic impact, expanding foundation relations, and supporting new strategic partnerships.

Lauren brings a broad range of fundraising experience to Wiki Education, including work at nonpartisan nonprofit think tanks and experience across both the public and private sectors. Most recently, she led institutional giving work at the Milken Institute across health, finance, strategic philanthropy, and international pillars, and previously served as Development Officer at the Pacific Council on International Policy. 

Lauren earned a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from The George Washington University and continued her education at the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Southern California. She completed her Masters of Public Administration at the University of Southern California in 2023. 

Lauren has called Los Angeles home since 2015. She enjoys fine arts, volunteering, and Formula 1 racing. 

Thanks to a new $410,000 strategic partnership grant from the WITH Foundation, Wiki Education will build upon our ongoing work to improve and expand Wikipedia’s coverage of healthcare for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, filling in gaps for the benefit of all. This initiative and the work of the disability experts, advocates, and students it will bring to Wikipedia will help ensure more of this missing information is available – and that it’s presented in a more representative, equitable, and accurate way. 

“WITH Foundation is deeply gratified to expand our partnership with Wiki Education. Ensuring accurate healthcare information about adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities is paramount. Through our continued support of this effort, we are confident that this initiative will continue to empower individuals, families, and professionals with the knowledge they need to foster a more inclusive society and comprehensive healthcare for adults with I/DD.” – Ryan Easterly, Executive Director, WITH Foundation.

Over the next two years, Wiki Education will run a series of Wiki Scientists courses that will support more than 50 experts in intellectual and developmental disability (I/DD) healthcare, including adults with lived experience of I/DD. 

Through our Wikipedia Student Program, we’ll also support postsecondary faculty in disability-related fields as they incorporate Wikipedia assignments into their pedagogy. By engaging faculty scholars, we’ll connect their own expertise to the project and the research efforts of their students as they enhance Wikipedia articles on I/DD as part of their academic coursework.

Guided by Wiki Education’s curriculum, resources, and staff support, participants across both the Wiki Scientists courses and the Wikipedia Student Program will tackle gaps in Wikipedia’s coverage of disabilities and disability healthcare information. They’ll work to transform existing articles from short, underdeveloped “stubs” to more thorough and representative content, as well as to create new articles for disabilities and disability healthcare topics still missing on Wikipedia.

How to Get Involved

Learn how to contribute your expertise

Interested in bringing your own expertise or lived experience to these efforts to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of disabilities and disability healthcare? We invite you to register for our upcoming Wiki Scientists courses! Learn more and register today by visiting learn.wikiedu.org.

Incorporate a Wikipedia assignment into your course

Are you a postsecondary instructor in the U.S. or Canada teaching in a disability or disability healthcare field? Visit teach.wikiedu.org to get started with our free resources, digital tools, and staff support to incorporate a Wikipedia assignment into your courses.

Join our Speaker Series event (tomorrow!)

En“abling” Change: How Wiki Education is tackling disability on Wikipedia
Tuesday, April 22, 2025
11 am Pacific / 2 pm Eastern
Register for Zoom link

Panelists:

• Diana Boling, Xavier University School of Nursing
• Ryan Easterly, WITH Foundation
• Skylar Covich, Braille Institute of America
• Terri Hlava, Arizona State University School of Social Transformation

This edition of the Wiki Education Speaker Series will be moderated by Helaine Blumenthal, Senior Program Manager. We invite you to bring questions for our panelists!

The gender gap on Wikipedia extends across subjects and biographies to its contributors themselves – a gap that individuals, organized groups of editors, and organizations like Wiki Education are tackling head on.

In celebration of Women’s History Month, I had the pleasure of bringing together four scholars from across the country to explore the ongoing efforts to close the gender gap on Wikipedia. As part of Wiki Education’s monthly Speaker Series, the event “Persistence & Progress: Confronting Wikipedia’s gender imbalance” sparked meaningful dialogue between the panelists and our global audience.

Despite the ongoing and concentrated efforts of individuals and organizations alike, why do these gaps continue? One key reason is the precarity of labor as it relates to who contributes to Wikipedia, explained panelist Kira Wisniewski, Executive Director of Art + Feminism.

“It’s truly incredible that Wikipedia is the effort of millions of volunteers, but who actually has the ability to volunteer?” asked Wisniewski. “[For example], there have been many studies about how women, and particularly women of color, have been disproportionately affected by COVID. When you think of the factors of who is even able to volunteer, it helps reveal more answers on how these gaps appear and persist.”

Information activism and the work to support new editors is more important now than ever, emphasized Wisniewski: “What do people edit about? They edit about things they know…so that’s why working with students and getting people editing is so important.”

And there’s no doubt that professors like panelist Caroline Smith and her students are making significant progress in filling these gaps. Through their Wikipedia assignments, Smith’s students have collectively contributed 100,000 words to Wikipedia – and their work has been viewed more than 8 million times!

From the first time Smith incorporated the assignment into her Communicating Feminism course at The George Washington University, she noted how the coursework on Wikipedia resonated with her class. When her students looked for gender gaps in the online encyclopedia, they were surprised by just how much was missing – and that surprise created a sense of urgency to improve it, Smith observed.

“[They] found it so interesting and rewarding, and I think it spoke to some of the historical issues we were discussing throughout the semester in a really real, tangible way,” said Smith, who shows her students Wikipedia articles about their own institution to highlight gender gaps. “They were shocked to find that the amount of space devoted to the [Women’s Leadership] program is much less than some of the other things that happen on George Washington’s campus. Students see that and realize, even in this space I’m occupying right now, we’re seeing these imbalances.”

Like Smith, panelist Siobahn Day Grady also teaches with Wikipedia with free support from Wiki Education, empowering her students to add notable women and other historically excluded figures to the encyclopedia. Initially unsure about bringing a Wikipedia assignment into her course, Grady ultimately found the experience rewarding, just like her students.

“There are so many times when people don’t even recognize that they are worthy to have a Wikipedia article, that their contributions matter,” said Grady, a professor at North Carolina Central University. “I really take these moments as pure joy to celebrate the achievements of women doing amazing things that may not have an opportunity to have their work shared, if not through this work that we do with Wiki Education.”

Panelist Whitney James enrolled in a Wiki Education editing course in summer 2024 to learn how to contribute to Wikipedia herself, then incorporated Wikipedia assignments into her first-year writing courses. 

But the University of Notre Dame professor didn’t stop there – she joined two more of our editing courses to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of women herself. As a new editor, James worked to improve existing content and created new Wikipedia articles for notable women including investor Tracy Gray and corporate sustainability expert Esther An.

“I feel like this work has a low barrier for entry and a really high impact,” said James. “It’s also very rewarding for me personally, which is an important self-care thing to think about. This is a really important space right now, and I’m happy to be part of it.”

As we wrapped up the discussion, I asked the panelists if they had advice for anyone who found our conversation interesting and liked the idea of a more inclusive Wikipedia, but didn’t feel like their individual efforts could make a difference on closing the gender gap. Smith kicked us off with a simple answer and a laugh.

“I would just say, no, that’s wrong,” said Smith. “Every voice matters and can make a difference. Maybe that’s oversimplifying, but I feel like it takes a lot of little movements to create broader change.”

Catch up on our Speaker Series on our YouTube channel and join us for our next webinar on Tuesday, April 22!

En “abling” Change: How Wiki Education is tackling disability on Wikipedia

Tuesday, April 22, 2025
11 am Pacific /  2 pm Eastern
REGISTER NOW

Interested in incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into your course? Visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn more about the free resources, digital tools, and staff support that Wiki Education offers to postsecondary instructors in the United States and Canada. 

Visit learn.wikiedu.org to explore our editing courses for subject matter experts.

Connect with Art + Feminism at artandfeminism.org.

Entomopathogenic fungi are found in several distinct lineages within the fungi (and in the Oomycetes, a group of organisms that were formerly included in the fungal kingdom). They have a range of life cycles, but typically use enzymes to bore a hole in the insect’s exoskeleton and infect the host. They can be useful in the biological control of certain insect pests, and some species are also useful in bioremediation, because they can produce enzymes able to break down certain harmful synthetic compounds.

Although the Wikipedia article on entomopathogenic fungi has existed since 2006, the article remained fairly short and undeveloped until the Fall 2024 term when a student in Kasey Fowler-Finn’s Advanced Evolution class started working to expand the article. 

The student editor reworked the article from top to bottom, more than tripling its size and adding 29 new references to the scholarly literature. The article now does a much better job of capturing the diversity of life cycles exhibited by entomopathogenic fungi, and includes details about the many different phyla of fungi that exhibit this type of activity. 

In addition to this, they also added a section about the evolutionary history of entomopathogenicity, noting that the ability to infect insects had evolved many times in different fungal lineages. The ability to infect insects has also been lost many times across different lineages, creating an even more complicated picture. 

And importantly for people who don’t love fungi for their own sake, the article now includes information of their use in the biological control of several insect pests, and their use in bioremediation. 

When you edit an article on Wikipedia, you’re adding to the knowledge that’s accessible to the public at large. Will an expanded article about entomopathogenic fungi change the world? Maybe. Perhaps someone will stumble upon it and it will pique their interest in a new field and they will discover a new way to break down toxic chemicals. Or someone will read it and make some new connections about something in their own field. Or maybe someone will find “entomopathogenic” to be a fascinating word that draws their interest toward linguistics. 

There’s no guarantee that expanding a Wikipedia article will change the world, but there’s always a chance you’ll change someone’s world. After all, even an article about a topic as obscure as this one has received over 9,000 page views since a student editor started working on it.

Interested in incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into your course? Visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn more about the free resources, digital tools, and staff support that Wiki Education offers to postsecondary instructors in the United States and Canada.

As Chief Administration and Financial Officer, Jordan works directly with Senior Leadership to build budgets, create financial forecasts, and make strategic recommendations, ensuring financial sustainability for our organization. Having owned two financial firms and served over 500 businesses in the Bay Area and beyond, Jordan brings a wealth of knowledge to her new role. Before joining our staff, Jordan worked with Wiki Education in a consulting capacity since 2016.

Jordan holds a BFA from University of California, Santa Cruz, where she focused on Intermedia Arts with a particular interest in Political Theory courses. Throughout her career in finance, Jordan has applied her background in philosophy, ethics and the duty of the arts to cultivate her holistic perspective towards organizational goals.

In her off-time, you can find Jordan in beautiful natural spaces on or around water – she loves to kayak, sail, swim, and spend time on the beach. Jordan also enjoys opportunities to build community by lending her professional skills to small businesses and upstarts.

Kelly Doyle Kim joins Wiki Education as Project Manager: Digital Heritage, focusing on the 250 by 2026 Campaign in our Wiki Scholars & Scientists program. In recognition of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, this new initiative will improve Wikipedia’s depth and coverage of American history.  Kelly will work closely with our Scholars & Scientists team, the American Association for State and Local History, and other cultural heritage organizations and professionals throughout the project. 

With over a decade of experience in the Wikimedia and GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) sectors, Kelly is deeply passionate about bridging gaps in the cultural narrative and ensuring that diverse voices are represented in the digital space.

Prior to joining Wiki Education, Kelly worked at the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, where she focused on addressing Wikipedia’s gender gap and amplifying the achievements of women in the US. She also previously served as Community Manager for Democratic Commons at mySociety, Wikimedian in Residence for Gender Equity at West Virginia University Libraries, and as an instructor in our Wiki Scholars & Scientists program.

Outside of work, Kelly enjoys exploring new restaurants, crafting pottery in her garage studio, and spending time at the local beaches of Charleston, South Carolina, where she lives with her husband and daughter.

Academics and Wikipedia 

Among many academics, Wikipedia has a poor reputation. It’s not uncommon for college professors to discourage students from using the site or penalize them for quoting, citing or referencing it in their written work. Usually left unstated, the assumption behind this attitude is that, since it does not go through the channels of peer review characteristic of academic research, Wikipedia content doesn’t meet the right standards of accuracy and verifiability, and is, therefore, inherently unreliable. In this way, academia’s model of legitimation via peer review (in which quality control is ensured by vetted scholars in positions of institutional power) is pitted against Wikipedia’s more malleable and decentralized model (in which quality control is distributed across a wide network of agents known as “Wikipedians” who build content and fact-check one another collectively).

This resistance is hardly surprising given that we academics are trained from the earliest stages of our professional formation to equate scholarship with the system of peer-review that has ruled higher education, by some accounts, since the 1600s. For many of us, scholarship is synonymous with peer-reviewed works, which is to say, publications anonymously evaluated and approved by experts in the field. Measured against this standard, of course, Wikipedia’s model of knowledge production looks more than vulgar and unrefined. It looks positively dubious. By shunning legitimation by the few in favor of legitimation by the many, this model seems to do away with the very notion of expertise, and to confuse what the Greeks called doxa (opinion) for episteme (knowledge). Since anyone and everyone can be a Wikipedian, or so the argument goes, anything and everything can end up on Wikipedia, regardless of whether it’s true or false. 

While we cannot deny that Wikipedia’s model of knowledge production has its limits (which model doesn’t?), it is revealing that those who oppose it most feverishly tend to be those who are least familiar with it, with what it is and how it works. For instance, even critics who know that behind every Wikipedia page there is a large community of contributors who fact-check, update, and cross-reference its claims may not realize that behind this community there is a complex constellation of rules, guidelines, and principles regulating the behavior of its members. Yes, practically anyone can become a Wikipedian. But this does not mean that Wikipedia is a digital Wild West where “anything goes.”

Thanks to its internal quality control mechanisms, Wikipedia often yields content that matches,  in terms of epistemic merit, the best of what the academic system of peer review has to offer. As early as 2005, a mere four years after Wikipedia’s launch, the prestigious journal Nature published an article showing that entries on the new site surpassed those in the Encyclopedia Britannica in terms of accuracy and credibility, putting the newcomer above its more prestigious cousin as far as epistemic reliability is concerned. Since then, the line between academia’s centralized and Wikipedia’s decentralized models of legitimation has only continued to blur. Nowadays, more and more academics are incorporating Wikipedia into their courses in one way or another, with a few even suggesting that academic scholarship should emulate Wikipedia’s malleable approach to knowledge creation in order to meet the informational and pedagogical challenges of the new century.  

Wikipedia In the Classroom

In early 2024, I partnered with Wiki Education (a nonprofit that seeks to improve Wikipedia) to incorporate a Wikipedia assignment into a course I planned to teach that summer entitled “Humanities 315: The History of Science From the Scientific Revolution.” Beginning from the Copernican revolution in astronomical physics, this course traced the evolution of modern science through the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, paying attention to the progression of scientific concepts “from above,” as well as to the social, cultural, and political forces that shape scientific rationality “from below.”

At the time, Wiki Education was promoting an initiative designed to close a gap in Wikipedia’s archive. By Wikipedia’s own admission, scientists from traditionally underrepresented racial and ethnic groups (Latinx, Black, Asian, Pacific-Islander, Indigenous, etc.) are significantly underrepresented on “the free encyclopedia,” resulting in a problematic imbalance. So, Wiki Education was on the hunt for professors who might be interested in incorporating an assignment into their classes that would put students to work on closing this gap. The basic idea was that students would become temporary Wikipedians and write biographical entries for influential scientists from minoritarian backgrounds who did not yet have a presence on the site.A two-in-one package, the assignment sought to educate students about the ins-and-outs of Wikipedia while giving them an opportunity to help address a concrete racial injustice tied to digital representation.

Given that my course dealt explicitly with how classism, patriarchy, and white supremacy have influenced the history of Western science (and given my own interest in the relationship between racial oppression and the politics of knowledge), I decided to apply. Upon hearing I was accepted, I quickly edited my course syllabus to make room for the five-week long assignment, which asked students to:

1. Create a Wikipedia profile 
2. Familiarize themselves with Wikipedia’s “backend” software program (where the content that will eventually appears on the site is created, edited, and fact-checked)
3. Select a scientist from an underrepresented community from a list provided by Wiki Education
4. Conduct research on that scientist’s personal history, educational background, and contributions to the fields of science and technology 
5. Write, in groups of four or five, an entry on that scientist adhering to Wikipedia’s policies concerning citations and references, and 
6. Publish their entry (pending approval by site)

Students didn’t have to reach the final stage (publication) to receive full credit for the assignment, but they did have to complete all the steps leading up to it. And they were graded based on how far into the assignment they got and on the quality of their individual contributions to the collective writing effort. (I should mention that, as part of the initiative, Wiki Education provided support in the form of a $700 stipend and two staff members who helped answer student questions about how to create entries on the site). 

Summer came and went, and the assignment was by and large a success. Though there were hiccups along the way (some students produced entries that didn’t meet Wikipedia’s standard for publication, while others didn’t bother creating a profile in the first place), the majority of students reported enjoying every stage of the process. 

 For starters, many were thrilled to learn about how Wikipedia pages are made. Although none of my students were Wikipedians prior to the class, all of them reported visiting the site on a regular basis, even when professors explicitly warned against it. Wikipedia was already a key part of their online experience, a recurring digital landing spot. Thus, seeing the backend program, familiarizing themselves with the platform’s rules and regulations, and seeing a collectivist model of knowledge production in action helped demystify the site, which in turn gave them a more nuanced understanding of its various strengths and limitations. For example, the assignment enabled them to see that even if Wikipedia content isn’t put through the grind of traditional methods of peer review, it is subject to norms of accuracy and verification that make it more reliable than the average blog, website, or social media profile. At the same time, this behind-the-scenes access clarified for them that while Wikipedia may be good for general information about a large variety of topics, it’s not the place to go for original research and innovative discoveries. 

“Real” Writing 

The most common refrain I heard from students as we debriefed about the experience at the end of the summer semester was that they were proud to have finally worked on “something real.” “I felt like this was my first real assignment in a college class,” one said. Another followed with: “It was more real than writing the usual essay.” 

I confess: I didn’t respond well to these claims. I balked at the suggestion that traditional classroom assignments (the weekly response, the midterm essay, the final project, etc.) were somehow less substantive or less real than assignments that simply happened to have the name of a recognizable organization attached to them. Was writing for Wikipedia readers really more “real” than writing for me, or were my students just awe-struck by the fact that they were contributing to one of the most famous online platforms? 

It was a fair question. Or so I thought. 

After mulling over their comments for a couple of days, however, I realized that my reaction was…well, reactionary. Rather than listening to what my students were telling me about their experience of the assignment, I chose to worry about what I thought their comments meant about my teaching style, which regularly features the kinds of assignments they characterized as not-so-real. By projecting this insecurity onto my students, I failed to listen to them and to do what every professor should aspire to do, which is meet students halfway in conversation. To course-correct, I had to ask myself a question that demanded more careful consideration: In invoking the so-called reality of this assignment, what were my students flagging for me about assignments, homework, and education more generally? What did this concept mean to them such that it seemed to illuminate their experience? No sooner than I framed the problem in this manner, I came to see their comments in a new light–no longer as veiled criticisms of my pedagogy, but as sincere critiques of our education system and what traditional approaches to pedagogy do to students’ relationship to writing. 

From an early age, students are taught to write for their professors. Every student knows that what they produce in the classroom will rarely, if ever, be seen by anyone other than the person who has the power to give them an ‘A’ or an ‘F.’ Thus, for most students, writing is tangled up from the get-go with complex dynamics of power, discipline, and submission. Given the asymmetrical nature of the student-teacher relationship, it’s only a matter of time before students learn to give their teachers what they (the students) think they (their teachers) want. So, students master a skill that isn’t easy to unlearn. They learn to write exclusively  for “the Professor,” that amorphous character whose power in the classroom is virtually unchecked. From elementary school to college, the task is the same: Here is a topic, now write about it for an audience of exactly one (where the “one” in question is the person with power over you)! 

One consequence of writing under these conditions is that students are never asked to imagine what they might have to (or want to) say to a broader audience, by which I mean an audience composed of different kinds of people, each of which with their own reasons for wanting to listen in. This, I now believe, is what the Wikipedia assignment offered my students for the first time in their lives. It offered them an audience that wasn’t “the Professor,” an audience of not-me. And my students experienced this as a breath of fresh air. This new audience freed them from me, but it also freed them to imagine a host of other subjects in the position of “reader,” which altered their psychological landscape. I still remember one student in particular, a humanities major, who said: “It’s kinda cool that my mom might read this. I know she’ll want to show it to her friends and to my aunts. Maybe it will help her understand what I’ve been doing in college!” For that student, this assignment was more real. It was more real because it had the power to touch her social world and maybe even make it tilt. Had any other assignment ever done that? 

Furthermore, the mere prospect of having one’s writing “out there” (read: in the World Wide Web) was also transformative for some students. For them, the overarching question was no longer “What should I write in order to get the grade I want?” but “Knowing that strangers may read what I write, what do I actually want to say and how?” Even when my students didn’t reach the final stage of publishing their work on Wikipedia, the possibility that their work might have a life beyond the classroom was enough to shake things up and give them a glimpse of what another relationship to writing might look like.

Conclusion

Of course, I do not want to romanticize the Wikipedia assignment. Some of my students were annoyed by the assignment from the start. Others found the backend program counterintuitive and hard to use (and on this point, I concur). But even the students who complained about the nuts and bolts of the task later reported feeling happy about having participated in a pedagogical exercise with a political mission: helping scientists from underrepresented backgrounds receive the recognition they deserve. 

In effect, I could say that the Wikipedia assignment turned my classroom into an interesting house of mirrors where diversity was reflected off of multiple surfaces at once. Firstly, I, a professor of color, was teaching a class about the historical exclusion of minorities from the modern scientific project. Secondly, I was teaching this material to a highly diverse group of undergraduates attending at a Hispanic-Serving (HSI) and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution (AANAPISI). And finally, I was asking these students at this institution to help correct one of the ways in which this historical exclusion continues to be felt in the here and now—namely, the “gap” in Wikipedia’s coverage of the history of science and technology. My hope is that by learning to move between these layers of reflection, students came out of my summer class with a better appreciation of the gaps that have shaped our past and continue to inform our present. 

Interested in incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into your course? Visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn more about the free resources, digital tools, and staff support that Wiki Education offers to postsecondary instructors in the United States and Canada.

Inspired by his previous research experiences, Ariyaratne focused his efforts on improving the Wikipedia articles for type 1 diabetes and the RAGE receptor, adding valuable information and several new sections to both articles. 

Thousands of words and more than 70 new citations later, and Ariyaratne’s contributions to Wikipedia have already been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. 

Throughout the project, Ariyaratne aimed to ensure that his contributions would provide readers with a clearer understanding of the complexity and dynamism of the biological systems involved in both topics, as well the ongoing challenges and advancements in the field of diabetes research.

And the benefits of Ariyaratne’s Wikipedia assignment aren’t limited to only those who will read his work. The experience also enhanced his own understanding of the topic, along with sharpening his writing and research skills, he explained.

“During my contributions to Wikipedia, I refined my expertise in scientific communication and critical analysis, essential for synthesizing complex research findings into coherent, accessible content,” said Ariyaratne. “This task required rigorous validation of information and precise articulation of intricate biological mechanisms, thereby enhancing my competency in data interpretation and literature evaluation – skills integral to scientific inquiry and academic rigor.”

Interested in learning more about Ariyaratne’s experience editing Wikipedia as part of his coursework? Explore our interview below to find out how he views Wikipedia’s role in shaping public perception and understanding, what he enjoyed most about his Wikipedia assignment, and why he plans to continue to edit the online encyclopedia.

How did you feel about your assignment on Wikipedia compared to a traditional assignment?

Editing Wikipedia differed markedly from traditional academic assignments in both scope and impact. Unlike traditional assignments, which are typically confined to the academic environment and primarily assessed by instructors, contributing to Wikipedia allowed me to engage with a global audience. This broadened the significance of my work, as the content I edited and updated could potentially influence public knowledge and understanding worldwide.

The real-time, collaborative nature of Wikipedia editing also introduced a unique set of challenges and rewards. It required a heightened level of accountability and thoroughness, knowing that the information provided would be publicly accessible and subject to scrutiny by an extensive community of editors and readers. This added a practical dimension to my academic training, emphasizing the importance of accuracy and the impact of shared knowledge.

This experience was enriching and empowering, offering a tangible connection between my academic studies and their real-world applications. It fostered a sense of responsibility and pride in contributing to an educational resource that people rely on every day, which is a distinct and valuable departure from the typical results of traditional assignments.

How was writing this particular content meaningful to you?

Engaging in the editing and creation of science-related content for Wikipedia has been profoundly meaningful to my professional development and scholarly pursuits. This process allowed me to apply and expand my understanding of bioinformatics and molecular biology, areas critical to my research on disease pathophysiology. By translating complex scientific theories and data into accessible content, I played a direct role in circulating accurate scientific knowledge.

How would you describe the power of Wikipedia?

Wikipedia plays a substantial influence in shaping global awareness and understanding of a vast array of topics due to its universal accessibility and extensive reach. As an open-source platform that allows users from all over the world to edit and contribute, it provides access to information and makes knowledge accessible to anyone with internet access. This inclusivity is crucial for educational equity and promotes a diverse range of perspectives in content creation.

Moreover, Wikipedia’s model encourages continual updates and revisions, ensuring that information remains current and reflective of the latest consensus in various fields, including science and medicine. This dynamic process of content refinement helps maintain reliability and accuracy, despite the open-edit nature of the platform. I also believe that Wikipedia is a tool that is used in bridging the gap between expert knowledge and general understanding.

What was your favorite part of editing Wikipedia?

My favorite part of editing Wikipedia was the satisfaction I felt from contributing towards global knowledge. This platform allowed me to directly enhance the accuracy and depth of information available to millions around the world. Specifically, I enjoyed incorporating cutting-edge scientific research into articles, ensuring that complex and evolving topics like Type 1 diabetes and the RAGE receptor are represented with the most current and comprehensive data. This task not only deepened my own understanding but also allowed me to share crucial scientific insights in a way that is accessible to a broad audience.

Moreover, the immediate and visible impact of my contributions provided a unique satisfaction that traditional academic work rarely offers. Knowing that the updates I made could help students, educators, researchers, and the curious public to better understand complex scientific topics was incredibly rewarding. The collaborative and dynamic nature of the Wikipedia community, where edits can be discussed and refined collectively, also added a layer of engagement and community interaction that enriched the experience further.

What was your least favorite part?

One technical challenge I experienced while editing Wikipedia involved mastering the Wiki markup language (Wikitext). For those without prior experience, the learning curve can be challenging. Ensuring that articles are not only factually accurate but also well-organized and visually appealing requires proficiency in this specialized language.

Will you continue to edit?

I will of course continue to edit. My experience editing Wikipedia has been immensely rewarding, offering me the opportunity to contribute to the global exchange of knowledge on crucial scientific topics. I plan to continue editing and updating articles, as this aligns with my commitment to educating the public as well as my passion for science communication. Engaging with this platform allows me to stay connected with the latest research developments and ensures that information shared with the public remains accurate and relevant. This ongoing involvement not only strengthens my own understanding but also supports my professional growth in the field of sciences and medicine.

Our support for STEM classes like Gallage Ariyaratne’s is available thanks to the Guru Krupa Foundation.

Interested in incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into your course? Visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn more about the free resources, digital tools, and staff support that Wiki Education offers to postsecondary instructors in the United States and Canada.