Wikimedia+Education Conference 2019/Submissions/To Manage a Course through Writing Wikipedia Articles: The Ethnic Entries of the World in Chinese Wikipedia

Submission no.
Title of the submission
To Manage a Course through Writing Wikipedia Articles: The Ethnic Entries of the World in Chinese Wikipedia

Author(s) of the submission
HUANG, Chiping
E-mail address
jphunag@nccu.edu.tw
Country/place of origin
Taiwan
Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.)
National Chengchi University

Main theme
how we make it happen
Type of session
Lightning talk
Scope
teachers
Length of session
5 mins
Do you want to submit a paper for peer-reviewing?
No

Abstract

The course “World Ethnographies” introduces students to knowing the ethnic groups around the world, the most important assignment of which is to choose an ethnic group as their research topics and write an ethnographic report on it. Yet those research reports, written on the basis of literature and information collected from the Internet, have been only stored on a folder of my computer. Since I have been involved in the establishment of the Taiwanese Aboriginal Language Wikipedia, I realized editing Wikipedia articles could be a good substitute for writing a report as course assignment. Therefore, students in this course have started editing entries in Wikipedia rather than writing ethnic report ever since 2015. Wikipedia, as we know, is an encyclopedia to whichs everyone can contribute. As the lack of understanding ethnic groups around the world is common in Taiwan, more Taiwanese gains access to the knowledge of them through the Wikipedia articles written by my students, which not only encourages their interest and sense of accomplishment, but more importantly, has devotion to encyclopedic knowledge. Compared with a semester report, writing Wikipedia entries is more meaningful. Learning wiki markups and following the rules of citing valid sources are preconditions for writing Wikipedia entries. And when students can merely write what withstands verification in Wikipedia, contributing to Wikipedia reflects the essence of academic requirement and training, and in this sense corresponds to the core of writing an ethnography. For the past three years, the feedback I have received the most from my students says: “Though it is a tough work, I got a great sense of accomplishment after finishing writing the articles.” Perhaps it is why Wikipedia is attractive for its users.

How does your proposal add knowledge to the international community in Wikimedia and education?

I’d like to share how to make the course more interesting by making use of Wikipedia as well as the outcomes of the course with more people.

Who is the intended ideal audience for the topic?

School teachers

Slides or further information

Will be submitted as the application being approved

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