Group Admins
Description
While there have been previous Wikimedia residencies based in UK cultural institutions focussing on opening up collections, five years have now passed since Grathwohl (2011) acclaimed Wikipedia had ‘come of age’ in formal education settings with Wikipedia still representing the oft-ignored “elephant in the room” (Brox, 2012). Hosting a Wikimedian at a higher education institution to embed the creation of OER in the curriculum does therefore represent something of a shift in the paradigm. This presentation discusses one such residency and the lessons learnt from the first 15 months.
The innovation remit of the residency has been to raise awareness of Wikimedia and its sister projects, design and deliver digital skills engagement events such as editathons (groups of staff & student editors coming together to edit Wikipedia pages on a focused theme – both inside and outside the curriculum) and to work with colleagues all across the institution to find ways in which the University – as a knowledge creation organisation – can most benefit and contribute to the development of this huge open knowledge resource.
This session will provide attendees with a chance to hear about the lessons learnt and how we work with colleagues across many teams to facilitate student-created OER. The curriculum areas for which we have developed learning activities include Reproductive Biology, World Christianity, English Literature, History of Medicine, Translation Studies, Veterinary Medicine, Online History MSc, Scottish Studies and the Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice (PGCAP). So far we have run dozens of events; the vast majority of which have been to correct the under-representation of women in the online world thereby shifting away from Wikipedia being the “sum of all male knowledge” (Ford and Wajcman, 2016) and creating new role models for young and old alike.
This residency provides a live case study of how a university with approximately 36,000 students and 13,000 staff has engaged with Wikimedia UK as part of the business of teaching, learning and research. Participants in this session will learn how the residency has championed open educational resources (OER), open practice and open knowledge skills alongside emerging models of information & digital literacy. We will include examples of successful, reusable lesson plans for academic and student engagement in Wikipedia projects and reflect on how academic researchers have engaged with Wikidata and the constantly evolving open knowledge tools. We hope this session will provide insight and advice for any institutional teams who might be interested in hosting a Wikimedian in Residence in their own institution in the future.
References
- Wadewitz, A. (2014). 04. Teaching with Wikipedia: the Why, What, and How. [online] HASTAC. Available at: https://www.hastac.org/blogs/wadewitz/2014/02/21/04-teaching-wikipedia-why-what-and-how [Accessed 19 Jan. 2017].
- Grathwohl, C. (2011). Wikipedia Comes of Age. [online] The Chronicle of Higher Education. Available at: http://www.chronicle.com/article/wikipedia-comes-of-age/125899 [Accessed 19 Jan. 2017].
- Aibar, E., Lladós-Masllorens, J., Meseguer-Artola, A., Minguillón, J. and Lerga, M. (2015). Wikipedia at university: what faculty think and do about it. The Electronic Library, [online] 33(4), pp.668-683. Available at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/EL-12-2013-0217 [Accessed 19 Jan. 2017].
- Selwyn, N. and Gorard, S. (2016). Students’ use of Wikipedia as an academic resource — Patterns of use and perceptions of usefulness. The Internet and Higher Education, [online] 28, pp.28-34. Available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1096751615000585 [Accessed 19 Jan. 2017].
- Brox, H. (2012). The Elephant in the Room: A Place for Wikipedia in Higher Education?. Nordlit, [online] 16(2), p.143. Available at: http://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/nordlit/article/view/2377 [Accessed 19 Jan. 2017].
- Ford, H. and Wajcman, J. (2016). ‘Anyone can edit’, not everyone does: Wikipedia’s infrastructure and the gender gap. Researchgate.net [online] Available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/68675/1/Wajcman_Anyone%20can.pdf
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Ewan McAndrew posted an update in the session Lo and Behold: Reveries of a Connected Campus: Reflections from the Wikimedian in Residence at the U 7 years ago
Slides for ‘Lo and Behold’ Wiki residency at the University of Edinburgh presentation: https://www.slideshare.net/EwanMcAndrew/lo-and-bjjehold-slideshare Thanks to all who came along!
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