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Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom for Communication Students in Lagos State

Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom for Communication Students in Lagos State

    Description

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    The Media is the focal point of any information ecosystem and without the media, there can be no effective information dissemination system, for us to have a balanced information delivery system.

    The world has however changed so drastically in the last several decades and citizen journalism has almost taken over the information ecosystem. This has created a seemingly disoriented and easily misinformed society. It has therefore become imperative to train our media professionals not just about sourcing news and corroborations, but also on how to identify and establish items of misinformation and disinformation from the plethora of news and feature articles in the media for example.

    For Media practitioners to be able to recognise misinformation and disinformation in the information ecosystem, they must be trained on how to fact-check information using fact-checking tools and techniques. Since Wikipedia is at best a tertiary source of information, but actually more of a bank of information from libraries, these primary and secondary sources of information, any effort to assure the reliability of these sources, invariably contributes to making the content on Wikipedia reliable.

    If Wikipedia is to remain reliable as a free open information and educational resource, it must be kept safe from misinformation and disinformation which may have been deliberately or inadvertently published by the media. This is critical because the reliability of information published by the regular media is directly related to the reliability of information on Wikipedia. This is more so because of the totally open accessibility of Wikipedia which ordinarily places a burden of fidelity of its content on its authors and editors, and where they choose to source their references.

    This project;

    • Will help the students to correct and fight misinformation, disinformation on the internet.
    • Will help improve their media and Information literacy skills among communication students in Lagos State.
    • The misconception of Wikipedia amongst communication student who will invariable become the next generation of the media. Once the media can embrace Wikipedia, every other profession will follow. Only the media can change the negativity and bad impression the public have about Wikipedia.Starting with the next generation of Media men and women can help salvage the future of Wikipedia.

    Program Goals

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    1. Create awareness among 50 Communication students, from 3 different tertiary institution, school of communication, on the effective usage of Wikipedia as a learning tool for retrieving, creating, and evaluating information before May 30th, 2023.
    2. The 50 students in Lagos state, enrolled in this program, will be able to understand, access, retrieve, and evaluate information on Wikipedia and its sister projects by May, 2023.
    3. Enable the trained students of the Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom program in Lagos state to implement the lesson learnt to do their course activities.
    4. Enable the students to learn new things outside of their normal school curriculum.
    5. Establish Unilag school of communication wiki fan club in Lagos State.
    6. Establish LASU school of communication Wiki fan club
    7. Establish NIJ communication students Wiki fan club

    Program Execution

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    Building Wikimedia awareness among Communication Students in Lagos State will consist of four different sessions:

    1. Educating: This is aimed at educating the student on the various uses of the Wikimedia project and changing their perception of Wikipedia and other sister projects.
    2. Offline Onboarding Session/ Creation of Awareness: This is a one-on-one onboarding session of the participants. The Avenue will also be used to sensitize the community on the projects of Wikimedia Foundation.
    3. Offline Training Session and edit-a-thon: This is hands-on keyboard training where the new editors will be given the avenue to practice what they have learnt. After the training, there will be a two weeks Edit-a-thon where winners will be given various prices

    List of Selected Schools

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    1. Lagos State University School of Communication.
    2. University of Lagos, Lagos State, Nigeria.
    3. Nigeria Institute of Journalism, Ogba Lagos.
    4. Lagos State Polytechnic.
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