Transcript Editing Wikipedia …as coursework on Science Communication, a final year course in Life Sciences All text and images are copylefted under a CC-BY-SA-3.0 license.

Editing Wikipedia
…as coursework on Science
Communication, a final year course in
Life Sciences
All text and images are copylefted under a CC-BY-SA-3.0 license by
Steve Cook ([email protected]) unless otherwise indicated
Science Communication is a final year
course in Life Sciences
• For students
submitting
literature project
rather than
lab/field project
• 'Skills coursework'
"I actually really enjoyed the (Wiki) skills coursework. I really liked
the fact we could talk about whatever we wanted and that this
gave me the opportunity to write about something that I believe
to be really important and somewhat neglected"
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Video
Podcasting
Blogging
Wikipedia
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Workflow for Wikipedia coursework
• Workshops
– Wiki syntax
– WP ethos, 5P, CC-BY-SA
• Students select
Replicate the page below
Bold
– Drop-in help sessions by
appointment
• Submit page
– WP-ness graded by me
– Content graded by expert
Internal link to "Wood preservation"
["Contents" is added automagically]
Heading
– This coursework
– Proposed page
• … 2 weeks pass …
Subscripts
[Leader]
Image link to "Pentachlorophenol-structure.png"
Subheading
Heading
Italics
Internal link (no
article)
HTML entity right-arrows
Heading
Bullets
"References" formatted automagically,
but you need to create the reference in
the body-text
External link to
http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/basicinformation/pentachlorophenol.cfm
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Improved (hopefully!) pages
*definitely
2012
2013
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Acrogeria
Canarypox
Cre recombinase
Density dependence
FDC-SP
Granule cell
Grb2
Human parainfluenza viruses
Hypnogram
Metrioptera roeselii
Natural killer cell
Parasitic nutrition
Phymatopus
Pyocyanine
Pyroptosis
Rufous Fantail*
Trophic egg
Ugandan red colobus*
Ugandan red colobus
CC-BY-3.0 Perspectionhickmott
(Anthony Dancer)
Active site
Ancylostoma caninum
Bacterial display
Banana Xanthomonas wilt
Carnassial
Chromothripsis
Cicindela dorsalis
Gas exchange
Equine encephalosis virus
Galectin
Glis1
Key innovation
LGR5
Lutzomyia
Mokola virus
Photorhabdus
Progeroid syndromes*
SIGLEC*
TIGAR
Xenoma
SIGLEC
CC-BY-SA-3.0 Minimuns
(Sam Munday)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Polypompholyx
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Things to consider
Pros
• New pages on important or
niche topics
• Only 5% of students have
ever edited before, perhaps
some will again
• Hardly any of them know
what mark-up is either
• Encourage community
contribution
Cons
• 'For profit' rather than 'for fun'
• Registering accounts, clocking
up edits
• Artificially restricted choice
(quiet stubs)
– Plagiarism detection
– Quantity of contribution
• Single large submission rather
than collaborative editing
• Significant technical overhead
for staff
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