Name, Location, and Date of the Event
November 12-15, 2015
Milwaukee, WI
Nature/Type of the Event
The Annual Conference of the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA) is a professional gathering of teaching professionals, academics, administrators, and community practitioners and activists. It regularly draws over 1,600 attendees. A variety of sessions geared toward teaching in Women's Studies, teaching feminist or women's studies-related content and courses to non-majors, course development, and curriculum building are a regular part of the conference. The scholarship of teaching is an important part of session and panel discussions, not least of all because of a disciplinary concern to define and implement feminist pedagogy in the classroom.
Relevance of the Event for Applicant's Teaching and LMU Community, the Applicant's Involvement in the Event, and Expected Learning or Outcome
The NWSA has recently partnered with the Wikipedia Education Program to develop Wikipedia as a classroom teaching instrument based on the Wikipedia platform. Representatives from The Wikipedia Education Program will hold a special session at the NWSA Conference in 2015 to discuss best practices implementing Wikipedia.edu in the classroom. The special session will include presentations from Wikipedia and discussion among faculty who have implemented Wikipedia as a teaching tool.
Second to my attendance and participation at the special session hosted by Wikipedia, I will present a paper discussing how I implemented the Wikipedia Initiative as a component of an Engaged Learning course and a non-Engaged Learning course at LMU during the fall semester. The paper will discuss learning outcomes that were achieved through the "completion" of the project, the level at which they were achieved, and the value of extending classroom learning to direct application, particularly for courses in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. The paper is entitled, "Facilitating Coalition: Engaged Learning as Consciousness Raising and Leadership Development." By attending the Special Session hosted by Wikipedia.edu and presenting my own experience implementing Wikipedia.edu as a teaching tool in my courses, I will be able to meet other academics who are using Wikipedia.edu in their courses and exchange experience-based insight. I hope to meet faculty at other universities who may be interested in coordinating student contributions and interactions on Wikipedia.edu.
The ultimate goal of the Initiative between NWSA and Wikipedia, and a key learning objective for students of Women's Studies, is to understand knowledge as situated, circumscribed by relations of power, fluid, and culturally reinforced or resisted. Through this partnership, Wikipedia is implemented as an interactive tool for learning and assessing course content as it is presented in the classroom and on the web. Students become both knowledge consumers and knowledge producers by evaluating, editing, and contributing live content to the Wikipedia site in consultation with course peers, the course instructor, and the Wikipedia.edu staff. The interactive nature of Wikipedia as an unstable source of knowledge requires that students learn basic digital editing skills in order to participate in an internet community of (largely anonymous) editors and contributors. As a measure of their learning objectives, students play an active and ongoing role in producing accurate, rigorous, and assessable information on topics related to women, gender, and sexuality, for a broad audience. Of great interest to WNST 1000, the site's uneven representation of topics relevant to Women's Studies (for example, the sparse article on "Women's Studies" itself) gives students the opportunity to understand knowledge production as the reproduction of selective information. It also gives them the space to paraphrase course readings, an exercise that demonstrates comprehension, evaluation, and translation. As a tertiary resource, Wikipedia facilitates student awareness of the differences between primary, secondary, and tertiary texts, an important aspect of information literacy learned in the First Year Seminar. When students explore Wikipedia, they engage sources and perspectives that may not be highlighted in the classroom, encountering an opportunity to evaluate classroom lessons in relation to "new" knowledge.
I have implemented Wikipedia as a teaching tool in two of my fall courses: Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies (WNST 1000) and Women in Global Communities (WNST 2000). Over the summer and through the fall, I coordinated with staff members at Wikipedia.edu in order to have the appropriate level of support as I introduce the project to my students. I integrated the project into course design by developing small exploratory and evaluative assignments based on course concepts before placing students into groups for actual online editing. Students are asked first to explore the content already available on Wikipedia and to note interesting differences between their expectations for key course concepts and whether or not the concept has a dedicated article. In a following assignment, students are asked to evaluate the information on a specific "article" (Wikipedia's term for an entry or a page) and articulate specific edits or contributions that they would make to the article. These edits may be in the form of adding a reference, clarifying syntax, or adding an example or an image. The exploratory writing assignments not only help reinforce information that students glean from class lecture and assigned readings, they also require that students make use of the information through acts of evaluation and translation.
Students are ultimately placed in small groups for the last weeks of the semester to identify and make material edits and contributions to Wikipedia articles of their choice. They are asked to document their interactions with other editors they encounter online (via Wikipedia's "talk" pages) and to assess these interactions within the framework of class discussion. Why, for example, would another editor argue that a groups' suggested edit is "misleading," "biased," or "unrelated" to the topic? How might we explain these assertions by connecting dominant beliefs regarding men's work and women's work, class, and race, for example? Students are encouraged to consider the value of adding information for an opposing point of view to an article against the value of deleting information that they deem "wrong."
The collaborative project replaces a traditional paper while it engages students in the constant process of active writing and rewriting, producing, assessing, analyzing, and translating specialized knowledge pertaining to Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies for local and global audiences. Students prepare to share their reflections on this process in a culminating presentation to the class. The value of this semester-long project is not only in the contribution and improvement of "articles" on Wikipedia, but also in the active process of deliberating with peers and other contributors why content is appropriate, (in)accurate, or unnecessary. This process of deliberation reinforces course lessons through active dialogue and teaches the value of critical thinking skills beyond the classroom in the service of others.
I have implemented the Wikipedia Initiative in both of my fall courses: Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies (WNST 1000) and Women in Global Communities (WNST 2000). WNST 1000 is a required course for the departmental major and minor; it also serves the LMU community as a Core Explorations course that fulfills the Understanding Human Behavior requirement. Two sections of Introduction to Women's Studies are offered every semester. WNST 2000 serves the major and the minor and also fulfills the Engaged-Learning flag. It is offered once a year.
I have regularly taught for the department since 2008, usually teaching at least one section of Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies and a section of Women of Color in the U.S. I have taught Women in Global Communities before, but it is not an anticipated course assignment.
The Wikipedia Initiative is not confined to any specific discipline and would, therefore, serve as a useful model of engaged learning for a variety of courses. While I have attended workshops at the CTE on the uses of digital technology in the classroom, workshops on Wikipedia.edu have not yet been offered. Given the interest that students express in using digital technology to support their learning, Wikipedia Initiative in the classroom may be of interest to faculty campus-wide, particularly to faculty who are interested in building connections across Schools at LMU or with local high schools or community organizations. I plan to present the new pedagogical strategies that I learn from_ attending the conference sessions to the faculty in my home department. I would be delighted to share this information to other faculty by way of a CTE workshop or presentation, or by producing a short informational video for the CTE.
Travel Report
Representatives from The Wikipedia Education Program held a special session at the NWSA Conference to discuss best practices implementing Wikipedia.edu in the classroom. The special session included presentations from Wikipedia staff and discussion among faculty who have implemented Wikipedia as a teaching tool. In Fall 2015, students in my Introduction to Women's Studies course and Women in Global Communities were tasked with editing content, adding sources, and creating course-related Wikipedia pages
I presented on my experience with Wikipedia in the classroom and its value as a tool for teaching students the re/productive nature of knowledge and knowledge production, a key learning objective in the Introduction to Women's Studies course. Students were both consumers and producers of knowledge as they interacted with Wikipedia as editors and contributors who evaluated web information against course lessons. The site's uneven representation of topics relevant to Women's Studies (for example, the sparse article on "Women's Studies" itself) gives students the opportunity to understand knowledge production as the reproduction of selective information. To add content to the site, students paraphrased course readings, an exercise that demonstrates comprehension, evaluation, and translation.
The collaborative project replaces a traditional paper while it engages students in the constant process of active writing and rewriting, producing, assessing, analyzing, and translating specialized knowledge pertaining to Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies for local and global audiences. Students prepare to share their reflections on this process in a culminating presentation to the class. The value of this semester-long project is not only in the contribution and improvement of "articles" on Wikipedia, but also in the active process of deliberating with peers and other contributors why content is appropriate, (in)accurate, or unnecessary. This process of deliberation reinforces course lessons through active dialogue and teaches the value of critical thinking skills beyond the classroom in the service of others.
As a tertiary resource, Wikipedia facilitates student awareness of the differences between primary, secondary, and tertiary texts, an important aspect of information literacy learned in the First Year Seminar. When students explore Wikipedia, they engage sources and perspectives that may not be highlighted in the classroom, encountering an opportunity to evaluate classroom lessons in relation to "new" knowledge. The interactive nature of Wikipedia as an unstable source of knowledge, however, requires that students learn basic digital editing skills in order to participate in an internet community of (largely anonymous) editors and contributors.
The Wikipedia Initiative is not confined to any specific discipline and would, therefore, serve as a useful model of engaged learning for a variety of courses. Given student interest in using digital technology to support their learning, Wikipedia Initiative in the classroom may be of interest to others. The collaborative use of Wikipedia as a teaching tool may be of interest to faculty who want to build connections across Schools at LMU or with local high schools or community organizations.