Submissions:2018/Teaching with Wikidata: A Case Study

This submission has been noted and is pending review for WikiConference North America 2018.

Title

Teaching with Wikidata: A Case Study

Theme (optional)

Relationship Building & Support

Academic Peer Review option

Yes

Type of submission

Presentation

Author

Clifford B. Anderson

E-mail address

clifford.andersonvanderbilt.edu

Wikimedia username

Clifford_Anderson

Affiliation(s) (optional)

Vanderbilt University

Abstract

In this talk, I discuss the use of Wikidata in a graduate seminar at Vanderbilt University. During the spring semester of 2018, a colleague and I taught a course titled The Digital Flânuer: Mapping Twentieth-Century Berlin. The seminar combined discussion about the history, literature, and subcultures of Berlin with instruction in fundamental techniques of the digital humanities, including geospatial data analysis, querying Wikidata, text mining, 3D modeling, and network analysis. Out of this digital whirlwhind, Wikidata emerged as a favorite among students, several of whom drew on Wikidata for their final projects. In this presentation, I explore practical means for incorporating Wikidata into the humanities classroom, indicate areas of difficulty for students (e.g., incomplete or misclassified data, misleading SPARQL queries, and challenges with transforming the data into other formats), and propose possible improvements to the Wikidata query interface to improve its utility in the college and university classroom.

Length of presentation

30 min.

Special requests

Preferred room size

25

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

No.

If you will be incorporating a slidedeck during your presentation, do you agree to upload it to Commons before your session, with a CC-BY-SA 4.0 license, including suitable attribution in the slidedeck for any images used?

Yes.

Will you attend WikiConference North America if your submission is not accepted?

Yes.

Interested attendees

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1. Samantha (Wiki Education) (talk) 17:08, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
2. Gamaliel (talk) 18:37, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
3. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:33, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
4. BobCummings (talk) 21:31, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
5. Slowking3 (talk)
6. --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 21:07, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
7. Mlemusrojas (talk) 02:41, 18 August 2018 (UTC)
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