Jump to content

Wikipedia:Training/For educators/Assignment prompts

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


  Wikipedia Training  
  Classroom  
          Menu     Resources     Page 40 of 42


Assignment prompts

Looking for ideas for a reflective essay assignment prompt? Pick and choose some of these issues for students to explore.

Reflective essay prompt

Write a short (2-5 page) reflective essay on your experiences using Wikipedia. Some of the questions you may choose to reflect upon include:

  • The ways in which writing for Wikipedia is different from writing regular papers for class.
  • What you learned about Wikipedia.
    • This could be a reflection on the technical or social aspects of editing. This could include a discussion of:
    • the Discussion page
    • the History page
    • the role of users
    • the role of collaboration.
    • Wikipedia's rules (which are slightly different than the rules of writing course papers)
  • Has your relationship to Wikipedia changed?
    • Do you see it differently?
    • Do you trust it more or less?
  • Did you learn new research methods in this course?
    • Did you put methods you already knew to use?
    • Was there more or less research involved for this Wikipedia entry then for your other writing assignments?
  • Did working on Wikipedia, with its insistence on citing every source, make it easier or harder to insure that your writing was well researched?
  • Will this assignment change the way you complete other writing, and if so, how?
  • How do you feel knowing that the words you wrote are likely to be one of the very top search results for the person you were writing about?
  • How do you feel knowing that these words could be modified or rewritten by the next person to come along (with the hope that they would be making them better)?
(source)
Wikipedia and knowledge production

Courses engaging with Wikipedia from a focused theoretical perspective in topics such as knowledge production, rhetoric, politics of access, or authorship, can also find questions appropriate for higher-level and graduate courses in the "Theories: Wikipedia and the production of knowledge" handbook, available as a .pdf for any course, and available in print for courses supported by the Wiki Education Foundation in the USA and Canada.

previous page               next page