Wikipedia in Education: Taking Stock
Iolanda Pensa & Luca Botturi, SUPSI
Beat Estermann, Bern University of Applied Sciences
OER Conference, Lucerne, 29 January 2019

Programme
Morning Session
● The Wikimedia/Wikipedia Ecosystem
● Wikimedia in Education – An Overview
Variety of Approaches (Typology)
The Role of Wikimedia in Education
Afternoon Session: Workshop
● Short Round of Introduction
● Wikimedia Education – Relating Our Own Experiences
Wikipedia in the Classroom (Secondary School)
Wikidata Assignments (Tertiary Level)
Wikipedia Games (Primary School)
● Benefits of using Wikipedia in education
● Challenges and how to overcome them

© Bili Bidjocka, Ecriture Infinie, http://www.ecritureinfinie.org.

Edit Wikipedia. Communication campaign in public libraries. Design by Alessandro Serravalle developed within Wikipedia dietro le quinte, 2015 (Bachelor thesis), cc by-sa.

DensityDesign Research Lab-INDACO Department Politecnico di Milano, Share Your Knowledge, 2011-2012, cc by-sa.

The Wikimedia / Wikipedia Family
Imagine a world in which
every single human being
can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge!
That’s our commitment.

Five Pillars of Wikipedia
1. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia
specific style; notability criteria; no original research
2. Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view
balanced approach towards controversies; verifiable sources
3. Wikipedia is free content that anyone can use,
edit, and distribute
free copyright licenses
4. Wikipedia’s editors should treat each other with
respect and civility
seek consensus; assume good faith; no personal attacks
5. Wikipedia has no firm rules
be bold!

« The Sum of All Human Knowledge» in form of Linked Open Data
1. A multilingual database
2. With sourced Statements
3. Freely usable by anyone (CC Zero)
4. An important node of the Semantic Web

Wiki(m/p)edia in Education Comes in Many
Flavours

Elements of a Typology...
- school levels: primary, secondary, tertiary; lifelong learning
- institutionalization: curricular, extracurricular
- platforms: Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikiversity, Wikimedia Commons, …
- formats: exploring; contributing: copyediting, article writing, translating, coding, recording,
photographing, graphical design; games, contests
- group size: individual assignments, group assignments, class/school projects
- class size: 4 - 150
- course subjects: history, art history, literature, writing, technical communication, media
studies, chemistry, regional planning and design, nature conversation, translation, ...
- time frame: 1-hour, 1-day, week, semester, ...
- learning objectives: information retrieval, writing skills, media literacy, critical thinking and
research skills, online collaboration, technical and communication skills, ...

Approach proposed by the Wiki Education Foundation
Wiki Education Foundation https://wikiedu.org/

Improving the Language and Style of Wikipedia Articles
Source: Case Studies: How professors are teaching with Wikipedia

Improving the Content of Wikipedia Articles
Source: Case Studies: How professors are teaching with Wikipedia

Translating Wikipedia Articles
Source: Case Studies: How professors are teaching with Wikipedia

Contributing Photographs and Including them in Wikipedia Articles
Source: Case Studies: How professors are teaching with Wikipedia

Creating Illustrations for Wikipedia Articles
Source: Case Studies: How professors... (CC BY-SA 3.0) by Yue Guan

Creating Educational Videos
Source: Case Studies: How professors are teaching with Wikipedia

Editing Wikipedia and Wikidata
Photos: Shani Evenstein (CC BY-SA 4.0)
“From Web 2.0 to Web 3.0”
Undergraduate Course
at Tel Aviv University

Flavours of Wiki(m/p)edia
in compulsory education

Wikipedia as a multimedia content resource
“How does a racoon look like?”
Handy
Safe
Controlled
Reliable

Wikipedia as a safe online search environment
The Wikipedia scavenger hunt
Closed, more stable and controlled but real environment
Non-AI search tool

Wikipedia for creating special class content
L’isola dei fake

Other information literacy activities
Comparing online (wikipedia +
web) search with offline search
(books, encyclopaedia,
vocabulary)
Search skills in the practice:
identifying keywords, interpreting
snippets, searching within a
document, etc.
Reflecting on different types of
online sources (where
wikipedia is a kind of its own)

Wikipedia as a real case of online collaboration
How is wikipedia organized?
How can 70’000 active
contributors work together?
What happens if we try editing
wikipedia? How shall we
organize our class? How do we
interact with the community?
Thomas Hawk on Flickr.com

Wikipedia as an outlet for digital content
We worked on a research
project… Shall we share the
knowledge we produced?
Brad Flickinger on Flickr.com

Thank You!
Contact:
iolanda.pensa@supsi.ch
beat.estermann@bfh.ch
luca.botturi@supsi.ch
Iolanda Pensa, Beat Estermann,
Luca Botturi, Wikipedia in
Education, 2019. cc by-sa all.
Photo: Lane Hartwell, CC BY-SA 3.0

Workshop

Wikipedia in Education
Iolanda Pensa & Luca Botturi, SUPSI
Beat Estermann, Bern University of Applied Sciences
OER Conference, Lucerne, 29 January 2019

Programme
● Short Round of Introduction
● Wikimedia Education – Relating Our Own Experiences
Wikipedia in the Classroom (Secondary School)
Wikidata Assignments (Tertiary Level)
Wikipedia Games (Primary School)
● Benefits of using Wikipedia in education
● Challenges and how to overcome them

Elements of a Typology...
- school levels: primary, secondary, tertiary; lifelong learning
- institutionalization: curricular, extracurricular
- platforms: Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikiversity, Wikimedia Commons, …
- formats: exploring; contributing: copyediting, article writing, translating, coding, recording,
photographing, graphical design; games, contests
- group size: individual assignments, group assignments, class/school projects
- class size: 4 - 150
- course subjects: history, art history, literature, writing, technical communication, media
studies, chemistry, regional planning and design, nature conversation, translation, ...
- time frame: 1-hour, 1-day, week, semester, ...
- learning objectives: information retrieval, writing skills, media literacy, critical thinking and
research skills, online collaboration, technical and communication skills, ...

Approach proposed by the Wiki Education Foundation
Wiki Education Foundation https://wikiedu.org/

Wikipedia Primary School, visualization by Giovanni Profeta, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Primary_School, cc by-sa.
August 2015 March 2016

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_art_in_Douala

What Teachers Think
Insights from a FNS study in South Africa
Botturi, L., Van Zyl, I., & Pensa, I. (2017). Wikipedia at School: teachers’ use and perceptions. The Case
of South Africa. Proceedings of ICERI 2017, Sevilla, Spain,1148-1157.
Language Wikipedia no. of articles
English 5’500’000
Afrikaans 47’000
Zulu/Xhosa/
Sesotho
< 1’000
Majority, school-texts available
Minority, no school-texts available

What Teachers Think: Use of Wikipedia

Usefulness of Wikipedia - Perception by language

Usefulness of Wikipedia - Perception by ICT skills
ICT Skills (proxy)

Wikidata Assignments

Wikidata Assignments @ Bern University of Applied Sciences, E-Government Institute
Photo: Flickr user: Andrew Bossi Long Beach Island, CC BY-SA 2.0
Photo: Ansgar Koreng, CC BY 3.0

Assignment Formats & Learning Targets
Assignment Formats
● Master of Business Informatics
○ “Cases and Exercises”, in groups of 2-3
students, 85h each
○ “Preliminary Study and Master Thesis”,
individual assignment, 90h + 360h
● Gymnasium
○ One-week internship, 40h
Learning Targets
● Ontology development (RDF / WD)
● Dealing with terminology issues; creation of
multilingual vocabularies
● Data wrangling, data cleansing
● Data publication (WD)
● Querying data (RDF)
● Getting acquainted with the community aspects
of LOD publication
Not covered so far (possibly more adapted to students
of informatics):
● Software development
● Machine learning
● Human-computer interaction

Insights
● Assignments to students with complementary competencies (e.g. software
programming) yield the greatest benefits.
● Like with most assignments, there is varying engagement from the side of the
students (cf. high workloads in their studies + job).
● Don’t expect anything from students after they have obtained their mark.
● It is worthwhile focusing assignments on community aspects.
● It helps if the supervisor is an active contributor to Wikidata.
● For some tasks, you need to assist students closely (e.g. creation of properties).
● My own role: somewhere between a volunteer putting in my own time and a paid
supervisor.

Tools

Resources on Wikimedia Outreach

Brochures and Support Materials

Wiki Education Dashboard

Wiki Education Dashboard

Wiki Education Foundation
Wiki Education Foundation https://wikiedu.org/

Benefits / Challenges