Wikipedia for Educators at Fordham supports and promotes the use of Wikipedia in the classroom, organizes edit-a-thons on campus and promotes Wikipedia events in the community. This is an open group made of faculty, staff, and students of Fordham University. Founded in 1841, Fordham University, the Jesuit University of New York, is committed to the discovery of Wisdom and the transmission of Learning, through research and through undergraduate, graduate and professional education of the highest quality.
Interested in any of the following?
- learning about how educators can use Wikipedia
- helping to organize and/or promote a Wikipedia event
- organizing and/or promoting an edit-a-thon on campus
Attend one of our meetings, events, or contact us for more information: wikipedia [at] fordham.edu
Examples of the benefits of and how faculty and students engaging with Wikipedia in the classroom
- evaluating articles, analyzing the content & quality of sources
- increasing digital citizenship skills
- publishing for the web and contributing to the largest knowledge-base on the planet
- addressing the gender gap: more than 85% of Wikipedia editors are male
Although Wikipedia is the largest knowledge base on the planet and and the fifth most visited website online, a disturbing fact is that there is a lack of diverse race and gender content. In terms of gender issues, over 85% of Wikipedia editors are men and only 17% of Wikipedia biographies are about women.
Access to information should be a human right and Wikipedia should reflect the diversity and the full spectrum of human knowledge. Sadly in addition to the many missing women on Wikipedia, there are large gaps in subject areas such as the humanities, arts and social sciences.
This chart shows the categories of featured article on the English Wikipedia as of April 2018 (via WikiEdu, the non-for profit organization that serves as a bridge between academia and Wikipedia):
What can you do?
Provide an opportunity for our students to write for Wikipedia in the classroom or encourage them to participate in an in an edit-a-thons on campus and engage with the local community.
Faculty, staff, and students who edit Wikipedia share their scholarly expertise with the world by evaluating articles, analyzing the content & quality of sources, and increasing coverage of on underrepresented people and topics. And Wikipedia projects are an excellent opportunity to model and teach digital citizenship skills.
Projects range from an extra credit assignment to participate in an edit-a-thon to a creating an assignment as part of your syllabus where students would:
- research and write articles from scratch
- expand shorter articles
- translate existing articles
- create and upload media
We can provide advice and support, and we can also connect you to experts at Wiki Edu who have free tools and training available.