Submissions:2019/Teaching Information Literacy to College Students through the Creation of Wikipedia Articles and Translations: Assignments and Assessments

This submission has been noted and is pending review for WikiConference North America 2019.

Etherpad

Title:

Teaching Information Literacy to College Students through the Creation of Wikipedia Articles and Translations: Assignments and Assessments

Theme:

Reliability of Information
+ Other

Type of session:

Presentation

Abstract:

In this session the speaker will discuss her experiences using student-authored Wikipedia pages as an information literacy component of college courses. The assignment challenges students to create Wikipedia encyclopedic content for the public sphere using reliable, credible sourcing and appropriate tone and structure. Having now taught the construction of Wikipedia articles in four courses, targeting three different groups of students (freshmen honors students, French graduate students, and graduate students in the liberal arts), I have learned some valuable lessons on what is essential for students to understand before they embark on the project. For example, students must consider how to judge the reliability and credibility of a source – blogs do not count as reliable sources! Students often have never considered the difference between a New Yorker article and a blogspot. Then they have to write their article, crediting a source for every fact they mention. They often have a difficult time with this aspect of article writing – they are eager to insert their own opinions into the exposition or they like to generalize the information they have gathered and neglect to cite the source or sources. Finally, they have to use the correct tone – not too abstract or academic, not to colloquial. One assignment also requires students to acquire skill and practice in translating information into good English as they create or add to a Wikipedia article written in French. Through these assignments, the students are learning new technological skills, they as they are contributing to the world-wide body of knowledge. Assessment of the assignments was achieved through student evaluations; this feedback demonstrates how challenging, rewarding, and useful students consider the assignments to be. These experiences are teaching instructor and student alike the value of the Wikipedia assignments.

Academic Peer Review option:

Yes

Author name:

Joan E. McRae

E-mail address:

jmcraemtsu.edu

Wikimedia username:

*Yseut229*

Affiliated organization(s):

Middle Tennessee State University

Estimated time:

17 minutes

Preferred room size:

small-medium

Special requests:

projection/screen

Have you presented on this topic previously? If yes, where/when?:

yes - less broadly - South Atlantic Modern Language Association

If your submission is not accepted, would you be open to presenting your topic in another part of the program? (e.g. lightning talk or unconference session)

Yes - lightning talk