Wikipedia:Student assignments

This page provides an overview of best practices and advice about student assignments on Wikipedia and how to avoid common pitfalls.

You can ask questions at the education noticeboard.

Student assignments at Wikipedia

Wikipedia Education Program

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 Wikimedia Education Program to help instructors and students learn about Wikimedia projects. It has resources for many countries.

There is also a separate Wiki Education Foundation (WikiEd) that supports Wikipedia and Wikidata class projects that are conducted through institutions in the United States and Canada.

Either the Wikimedia Education Program or WikiEd (depending on the country where the course is based) must be contacted prior to starting assignments on Wikipedia. Instructors should follow the instructions for setting up a Wikipedia class project.

Course page

See also: the Dashboard system.

Instructors should create a course page using the regional dashboard system each time a course is taught:

• Dashboard — for all countries except the United States and Canada
• Dashboard — for the United States and Canada

The course page should include:

• the user name(s) of the:
  • instructor(s)
  • student editors
  • Wiki Education staff liaison to the class (if applicable)
• a list of:
  • the articles students plan to work on, including planned articles that do not yet exist
  • links to any draft versions, such as pages in a user sandbox

It is important to maintain a complete listing of all Wikipedia pages students will edit as part of the assignment.

Course pages help the editing community track classroom activity, monitor progress, and distinguish between classroom-specific and editor-specific issues. This helps other editors provide constructive feedback in the appropriate place. Classes without a course page are harder to recognise as educational projects, which can lead to student edits being reverted or prevented.

Students should add the course assignment template to the talk pages of any articles they create or plan to improve. Each student editor's user page should also have a link to their course page and to any articles or draft articles that they are working on for the assignment. See this example.

Student user names

See also: Wikipedia:Username policy, Wikipedia:On privacy, confidentiality and discretion, and Wikipedia:How to not get outed on Wikipedia

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

On Wikipedia, an editor may choose to use their real name as their user name, whereas others may choose to use an on-screen pseudonym, and never to reveal their personal information.

In the past, some instructors have required their students to use their real names for class projects on Wikipedia, so as to encourage taking responsibility for their contributions, and to mimic academic journals. However, instructors should consider how students editing under their real names in public could irreversibly impact the students' reputations, and therefore the potential effects it could have upon their future. See also Online community#Problems.

• For example, if a 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, which would be permanently accessible by internet search engines. See also Wikipedia:Wikipedia is in the real world.

Challenges

Student assignments can improve Wikipedia and provide useful learning experiences. However, student editing can also be harmful if not well designed and guided. Students, for example, may prioritize class grades over improving Wikipedia. Students and instructors can feel overwhelmed by multiple policies and guidelines, style preferences, coding complexities, and encountering unpleasant Wikipedians. Editing Wikipedia can have a steep learning curve, especially when editing in controversial subject areas, or areas related to health, medicine, biology, or psychology (see below). If student work fails to adhere to Wikipedia's content policies and guidelines, their edits may be reverted, and the page they created may risk being deleted.

Although the volunteer editing community is often welcoming to new student editors, poorly designed assignments can place substantial demands on experienced editors, especially when large numbers of students all begin editing at the same time and introduce content or formatting problems across multiple articles. This can lead volunteer editors to feel burdened and resentful about the need to correct errors, clean up or revert original research, merge content forks, and nominate unsuitable pages for deletion. Editors may also find it difficult to get students to pay attention to the advice that they offer, especially when students do not use talk pages to reach consensus on disputed material. Some editors may feel that they are effectively acting as unpaid and unacknowledged teaching assistants. Even experienced Wikipedia editors who are classroom instructors have had mixed success.

Despite these challenges, there are successful educational assignment projects. When knowledgeable instructors, competent students, and experienced editors collaborate, an assignment has a good chance of being a rewarding experience.

Guidance

Wikipedia takes pride in being an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. 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.

Advice for students

Further information: Student training modules (wikiedu.org)

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.

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, and none of whom have a deadline.

As soon as you start to edit Wikipedia, you become a Wikipedian, and are obligated to follow all of the the same policies and guidelines that other editors must follow (although good faith lapses by newcomers are recognized as part of the learning experience). These policies and guidelines cover both content and editor behavior. Other members of the community will generally be forgiving as you learn how Wikipedia works, but you do not have special status in Wikipedia as a student. Non-compliant edits are likely to be reverted. Repeatedly editing in unhelpful ways may be considered to be disruptive. 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... ".

Be sure to read the section on plagiarism and copyright infringement, and please take it very seriously, before editing.

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. You should avoid copying a large amount of text into a Wikipedia article all at once. If placing such large edits into articles, have your instructor review and approve the text first. 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, your work may 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 is 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 how their advice can help to make 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, open a discussion on the article's talk page and politely explain 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 impeding your fulfilling of the assignment requirements, then please inform the liaison for your class or 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 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. You also can 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

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. Good planning will maximize the chances of success for you and your students.

Ideally, you already have experience as a Wikipedia editor. If, not, consider delaying your assignment until you are more familiar with how things work. There are materials available and people willing to help you learn. Key people might include another instructor who has experience with Wikipedia assignments, the WikiEd liaison for your course, or Wikipedia editors at the education noticeboard.

The Wikipedia editing community recognizes that instructors are experts 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 Wikipedia editors are also experienced academics, or bring relevant subject knowledge, professional expertise, or long experience with Wikimedia projects. Student work is likely to attract attention from editors with a particular interest in the topic area, including those who regularly contribute to the same articles. Because Wikipedia is an open collaborative environment, instructors cannot know or control who will edit alongside students or when those edits will occur. Indeed, this should be part of the learning process for your students. For this reason, careful attention to Wikipedia’s policies and guidelines from the beginning of the course can help support constructive collaboration with the editing community, improve students' experiences – and may save you from potentially aggravating and time-consuming incidents just at the time when you are submitting your grades.

Assignments

A Wikipedia assignment should be conducted in accordance with Wikipedia's processes, policies, and guidelines, and the advice on this page. Learning these website norms should be a requirement to receive assignment credit. The assignment and grading rubric should be aligned with Wikipedia's norms. Please do not give students course credit for writing an arbitrary quantity of words or bytes. Also consider 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.

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. 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. Otherwise the student work may end up being reverted.

If you decide to allow a student to directly edit an article, monitor the edits they make. Do not assume that Wikipedia editors will fix the mistakes students make. Similarly, do not assume that non-reversion means that other editors have accepted the edit.

It is often better to have students improve short articles that are in the early stages of development. Articles that are already well-developed are likely to be watched by many editors, and so your students may find more editors objecting to changes, particularly if the articles are already of good quality.

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. 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. Penalize students who do not address the points that were raised by non-student editors. If other Wikipedia editors give feedback to your students, you should make sure that your students respond.

Have students post specific suggestions for improvement directly on the talk pages of their peers' articles, and not offline. 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.

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. If an active WikiProject exists around the content you'll be assigning your students to edit, encourage students to notify editors there.

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.

In general, avoid Wikipedia article assessment processes.

The Articles for creation, Peer review, and other Wikipedia processes for reviewing drafts of articles or evaluating new articles, are strongly discouraged as not appropriate for class assignments. Please do not direct your students to use these assessment processes, as the students may find the experience unsatisfying. For one thing, the time frame involved is unpredictable and typically incompatible with the editing schedule of student assignments, and the nominator would need to be around – probably weeks later and after the end of the course – to deal with review suggestions.

Wikipedia has a system for grading article quality which is used by the various WikiProjects (groups with interests in particular content areas). New articles can take a while to be assessed (at present, nearly 10% of Wikipedia's articles have no grading) and the timing of re-assessments following substantial editing is also unpredictable. To achieve any of the three highest grades (Feature Article (FA), Good Article (GA), and A-class) an article must be nominated and be supported by consensus following a formal evaluation by independent editor(s). Lower grades can be assigned or re-assessed by any editor but may not be accurate or reliable, especially when done by an inexperienced editor. These grades may be considered as a coarse filter of article quality, useful mainly within the editorial community.

There is no benefit for students who are inexperienced editors in trying to assign grades on article talk pages, and any self-assessment task should not involve formally assigning Wikipedia article grades. Students may not sufficiently understand the quality expectations of those processes; student nominations may overwhelm those process pages; reviewers are sometimes reluctant to engage a nomination, or fail a nomination, when they know a student's grade may depend on the outcome; past cases of students pressuring reviewers to pass nominations have come to light; and the quality of the reviews and speed at which they are conducted can vary greatly. Consequently, they are ill-suited to an instructor's assessment of students' contributions, and article grades should not be employed as assignment goals.

Advice for other Wikipedia editors

Established editors should be welcoming towards instructors and student editors. As always, WP:CIVIL, WP:AGF, and WP:BITE apply. Student editors should be treated in the same way any new editor is treated, without any special considerations.

If you see problematic 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, if necessary, 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, recognizing that instructors are experts in their fields, even if they are not yet familiar with some Wikipedia norms. If you do not get a timely or satisfactory response, 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. These templates welcome students and explain how to avoid common problems.

It can be a mutually pleasurable experience for Wikipedia editors to work collaboratively with students. If you see a valuable student editor, 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

When you choose a topic to write about, there may already be a Wikipedia article about it, and you can add your content there. Sometimes, there may be no article yet for the topic; you can use your sandbox or ask your Wikipedia expert for guidance creating the new page.

Existing articles

Good choices

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.

Difficult choices

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.

Similarly, it can be difficult to edit articles about rapidly changing current events; these are typically labeled with notices that can be seen at Wikipedia:Current event templates. Such articles generally see frequent editing by multiple users; attempts to edit them may lead to edit conflicts. Information added may also become outdated quickly, especially if based on breaking news reports.

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.

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) should 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.

New articles

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 revert or significantly alter your work soon after you publish it, and they will generally have good reasons for doing so. They may also nominate your article to be deleted from Wikipedia, 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 main space.

Where to place your content

As you are getting to know your way around Wikipedia, and deciding which topic 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. For 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 spending time generating content that will be moved or deleted if it is in the wrong article.

Removing content

Be more cautious about removing existing content than adding it. 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.

Problems to avoid

Plagiarism and copyright infringement

On Wikipedia, it is strictly forbidden to copy or closely paraphrase text from other sources. All contributions must be written in your own words, even when cited to reliable sources. Plagiarism is one of the most serious kinds of academic dishonesty. Possible consequences of plagiarism at educational institutions can include failing the course and/or expulsion from the school.

Copying too closely may also constitute copyright infringement. For student editors contributing under their real name, such issues may have lasting reputational consequences that can follow them for life. Students should also be aware that Wikipedia edits are publicly visible and routinely monitored by experienced editors, making plagiarism very likely to be detected and reported.

Some editors may be reluctant to report suspected plagiarism due to the potential consequences for students, and may instead expect instructors to review student work. However, if such edits violate Wikipedia policy, they will eventually be noticed by other editors. So, it is in everyone's interest—students, instructors, and the wider editing community—to identify and address plagiarism and copyright concerns as soon as possible.

The following pages provide helpful reading:

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

Artificial intelligence

The role of artificial intelligence in student assignments is rapidly changing. At the English language Wikipedia, AI-generated content is largely prohibited, and there are editors here who actively patrol for violations. All student edits within the WikiEd program are currently run automatically through a software system that detects likely AI content. Attempts to write content for an assignment here using AI are very likely to be rejected by Wikipedia editors, and may result in students who write such content getting blocked.

Alternatives to Wikipedia

The Wikimedia Foundation hosts several sister projects which may be more suitable than Wikipedia for particular types of classwork, including:

• Wikimedia Commons for media files such as images, audio, and video
• Wikiversity for teaching and learning resources, reflective activities, and original research
• Wikibooks for collaboratively authored books and instructional texts
• Wikidata for structured linked data, including information about people, places, concepts, publications, and datasets

Instructors are encouraged to consider the aims, scope, and policies of different Wikimedia projects before deciding which platform is most appropriate for the class they teach. Different projects support different forms of student contribution, including encyclopedic writing, educational resource development, media creation, and data curation.

For more information, see Education on Meta-wiki. These case studies and the newsletter feature many interesting examples of Wikimedia-based teaching and learning projects from around the world.

See also

Editing basics

• Help:Wikitext
• Wikipedia:Citing sources
• Wikipedia:Consensus
• Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia
• Wikipedia:Editor's index to Wikipedia
• Wikipedia:Five pillars
• Wikipedia:How to edit a page
• Wikipedia:List of policies
• Wikipedia:List of guidelines
• Wikipedia:Quick directory
• Wikipedia:Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia

Wikipedia in education and student assignments

• Wikipedia:Academic studies of Wikipedia in education
• Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Courses/Trophy case
• Wikipedia:Historical page for school and university projects
• Wikipedia:Participation by academic projects
• Wikipedia:School and university projects
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Classroom coordination (historical project)
• List of old classroom projects
• Education Program Online volunteer log

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.

Metrics

• WikiEd students by number of edits since program ended, a study of edits by students who stayed on as editors after their class ended.

Meta

• Meta:Education
• Meta:Wikipedia & Education User Group

Sister projects

• Wikiversity

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