James Scholz

Although Wikipedia aims to summarize all the world's knowledge, Wikipedia English skews towards white males for article topics and editors. To address this shortcoming, we have worked with my university, Tennessee State University (TSU), my colleague’s university, the University of South Florida (USF), and Wikimedia Foundation DC on a series of Wikipedia edit-a-thons that address shortcomings in article content.

TSU is a Historically Black College/University (HBCU) in Nashville, while USF has a significant Latino student body. We encourage editing with underrepresented populations through the online encyclopedia by hosting edit-a-thons with both universities. We aligned our events with Black History Month, Women's History Month, Native American History Month, and Latin American History Month.

Our events cover three hours, and for the first hour, Wikimedia Foundation DC teaches attendees how to edit Wikipedia. They help to provide articles on these subjects that need creation or more information. They also provide data such as the number of attendees, new articles created, number of edits, and more.

BHM = Black History Month, NAHM = Native American History Month, WHM = Women’s History Month

We have cooperated well with professors, who agreed to give extra credit to students participating in the events. We have partnered with faculty with which I teach and have already built a relationship of trust. We have had dozens of students create or improve articles about underrepresented individuals and topics. The benefits besides improving Wikipedia are that it helps to teach information literacy skills, critical thinking, and academic research. Wikipedia editing also instills a sense of advocacy in students.

We have accomplished a lot of work to address the problem of Wikipedia English not being a more diverse and inclusive resource. Now, we are working to implement the next phase of our work, persuading teaching faculty to assign students a Wikipedia editing project to replace a traditional research assignment. We will impart the best practices we have learned from the edit-a-thons to the faculty and help them write the lesson plan with the assistance of Wiki Edu, a branch of the Wikimedia Foundation that works with educators, offering assistance to educators who wish to replace traditional research assignments with Wikipedia editing.

Through this process, we will build a culture of Wikipedia editing at our institutions, one where student research does not get filed, collects dust and is shredded a few years later. Instead, students will look to an article they created or improved with a sense of ownership and newfound confidence.

Students have a deficit of information literacy and critical thinking skills, and Wikipedia English reflects an overwhelmingly white, male editor base. However, through the intersection of editing to fill in content gaps and editing as academic research, students gain information literacy, critical thinking, and research skills while making Wikipedia a more diverse and inclusive resource.