Wikipedia Assignment [25 points]
The Wikipedia assignment is designed to give you hands-on practice by providing you with an example of social computing technologies and interacting with an online community. Through working with two other classmates, you will practice collaborative work online. While the assignment is group-based, the grades are individually assigned; i.e. work of each individual in the group is evaluated independently. This group assignment will require you to work in groups of three-four students. The groups will be assigned by me and you will only know your group-mates by their Wikipedia username; i.e. all the coordination needs to happen on Wikipedia talkpages similar to how most of the work on Wikipedia happens. Your Wikipedia assignment consists of three steps:
- Step 1 - Getting Started (individual assignment: due Sep 30):
in this step of the assignment you will become familiar with Wikipedia. It requires you to do the followings:- Create a Wikipedia account
- Create your Wikipedia userpage
- Finish readings: Good article criteria , Wikipedia: Five pillars (There will be a short in-class quiz from the readings)
- Submit a list of 3 topics related to Social Computing in which you are interested to explore Wikipedia articles and to improve the articles
- 2 points for creating your Wikipedia account and userpage
- 2 points for your Wikipedia quiz (quiz will be in class on Sep 30)
- 1 point for submitting the topics
- Step 2 - Identifying an article to improve (due Oct 14):
In this step you will be assigned to a group of 3-4 and your group will be assigned an article related to topics submitted by members of the group which requires improvement. Each member of the group needs to identify an area of improvement including missing content, missing references, missing internal links, or missing figures but the improvement need to be connected together and coordinated among the group. You need to post on the article talk page your plan for improving the article. Your grade for this step will be based on your plan that is posted on the article talkpage and your coordination with your partner on the article talkpage. You will be graded for this step based on the following criteria:- 1 point to contacting group members on their talkpages
- 5 points for relevance, and accuracy of your suggestions to improve the article
- 4 points for discussion and coordination with your partner on the article talkpage
- Step 3 - Contributing to Wikipeida (due Dec 2):
In this step you will implement the change you suggested in step 2. You will be graded based on the following criteria:- 2 point for following your plan of step 2, taking into account any feedback from Wikipedians
- 5 points for quality of your changes, i.e. accurate and relevant content, references, links and figures
- 3 point for quality of writing. You have to make sure it is well-written with correct English