Wikipedia in Education: Taking Stock summarizes a conference on using Wikipedia in education. The conference included presentations on the Wikipedia ecosystem, approaches to using Wikipedia in different educational contexts, and workshops sharing experiences. Participants discussed benefits like improving research, writing and collaboration skills, but also challenges like ensuring information quality and overcoming technical barriers. The document outlines typologies of Wikipedia education approaches and shares examples from primary, secondary and tertiary levels.

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

2. 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

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

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

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

6. 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.

7. 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!

8. « 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

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

10. 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, ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

18. 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

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

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

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

22. Wikipedia for creating special class content
L’isola dei fake

23. 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)

24. 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

25. 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

26. 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

27. Workshop

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

29. 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

30. 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, ...

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

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

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

35. 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

36. What Teachers Think: Use of Wikipedia

37. Usefulness of Wikipedia - Perception by language

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

39. Wikidata Assignments

40. 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

41. 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

42. 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.

43. Tools

44. Resources on Wikimedia Outreach

45. Brochures and Support Materials

46. Wiki Education Dashboard

47. Wiki Education Dashboard

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

49. Benefits / Challenges