Democratizing Knowledge: Using Wikipedia for Inclusive Teaching and Research in Four Undergraduate Classes

In four undergraduate arts-related courses taught by three faculty, undergraduate students learned how to edit Wikipedia to present authentic research to a public audience. The goal was to increase free and open access to information about women and minoritized individuals in the arts, while simultaneously facilitating the acquisition and practice of student information literacy, research, and writing skills. This article outlines the assignments for each class, summarizes the reflections of students regarding their perception of learning, and discusses the pedagogical strategies and impact of using Wikipedia editing as a research assignment. While each faculty had diverse parameters and outcomes for her respective assignment and course, overall the public nature of writing for Wikipedia and the demonstrated need for presenting the contributions of women art educators, women artists, and Haitian artists created a common motivation for students and faculty to work together as knowledge constructors.

January 11, 2018, the President of the United States responded to a bipartisan gathering of lawmakers discussing how to protect immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries saying, "Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?" Mainstream news outlets accommodated his vulgar language and reprinted his racist comments, including his preference to bring immigrants from western European countries such as Norway. He particularly derided Haiti, repeating that immigrants from Haiti must be left out of any deal. 1 By the time the 45th U.S. President launched this particular racist salvo, we three professors and our students had embarked on a radically cooperative, inclusive learning journey to make information that is freely available on the internet more diverse, including efforts to highlight Haiti's artistic achievements.
The learning project has its roots in radical pedagogy, a concept and practice that builds on the premise that knowledge is power, and that no knowledge is neutral or free from values. Lisa Nyberg and Johanna Gustavsson define radical pedagogy as "a clear and transparent perspective on power and with a view on education that challenges the prevailing social order through a critical language and an active construction of alternatives." 2 Wikipedia is the fifth most-visited website in the world, 3 and its founders and contributors promote a philosophy of collaboration and neutrality. 4 Yet, the majority of its contributors do not reflect the gamut of human diversity and identities; most of them "are white, male, technically-oriented, educated and from the northern hemisphere." 5 It is a free source of information for billions of people, so the demographics of the volunteer editors of Wikipedia matters. There is nothing wrong with young white males contributing to Wikipedia, but content will be shaped by their knowledge, interests, and experiences. 6 At a regional university in the Midwest, undergraduate students in four classes came together for a Wikipedia edit-a-thon in order to make a small contribution to diversifying the content available and democratizing the production of knowledge by writing content about Haitian art, nineteenth-century women artists, and women art educators. Students from two art history classes, an art education class, and a class dedicated to critical analysis of Wikipedia actively connected the information they were learning in class to a larger collective ideal of diversification. In this way, students' participation in the edit-a-thon exemplified how radical pedagogy acts "not to confirm the prevailing power structure, but...activate[s] critical thinking...strives to connect knowledge with social responsibility and collective struggle." 7 With established and growing programs like Wiki Edu, assigning students to write an article for Wikipedia may not seem like radical pedagogy. However, for students this assignment was radical in delivery and content. At this mid-sized Midwestern regional university, 84.5 percent of the undergraduate population is white and 90 percent originate from within the similarly homogenous state. In many ways, they reflect the typical Wikipedian as described above. Most students arrive with very little experience of diversity, both in terms of their encounters with peers and in their K-12 educational environments. 8 The assignments asked students to challenge their assumptions about dominant narratives in history and art history. What is radical and potentially transformative is that the project also asked students to challenge assumptions about their own learning. Through the process of learning about Wikipedia from peers, reading, researching, and peer editing, students learned that authentic scholarship is collaborative, and that Wikipedia--and peer teaching and editing--are as significant sources of knowledge as a teacher or text. They practiced critical thinking and connected their knowledge to social responsibility through a collective struggle for inclusion.

Project and Process
In preparation for the spring 2018 semester, the three of us came together to develop a Wikipedia-based project using feminist pedagogies in their teaching practice. With different assignments, students in the four courses collaborated in this effort to improve the diversity, breadth, and quality of information in the free encyclopedia in English. Moreover, the assignments challenged students' research and information literacy skills via an authentic learning experience, specifically editing Wikipedia on art-and diversity-related topics while engaging with the Wikipedia community and teaching other students how to edit Wikipedia on underrepresented topics--the "social responsibility of a collective struggle" for inclusion in knowledge production.
The course Creating Wikipedia for the Arts prepared students to host an Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon during which they taught participants about Wikipedia and how to edit it. Leading up to the event, students enrolled in Nineteenth-Century Art, Arts of Africa, and Foundations in Art Education researched notable 9 individuals relevant to the topic of their course who did not have an article in Wikipedia or only had a short stub article in need of expansion and improvement. Using this research, they came to the edit-a-thon to create and improve articles, thus making their research freely available to anyone with Internet access.

We aimed to implement more feminist methods that decentered power in an effort to break down traditional hierarchies in the classroom.
This pedagogical model required knowledge and skills from multiple classes to come together for a common goal of information sharing for social justice--in terms of article topics as well as free, accessible, quality information sharing. We aimed to implement more feminist methods that decentered power in an effort to break down traditional hierarchies in the classroom. Those hierarchies typically center and value the instructor as the sole authority. This structure sets up a problematic power dichotomy that ignores or undervalues student's O knowledge, experience, and expertise. Having students marshal their knowledge, skills, and experience into a collective effort to teach each other eliminates traditional power roles, centers their emerging expertise, and empowers them to take ownership of their learning.
One of the shared goals for this project was to have students deeply engage with issues of source quality, source evaluation, and authority. Wikipedia requires reliable sources. 10 This standard challenges students as they search for and evaluate resources they can use as evidence for their articles. It is a good method for practicing information literacy. However, the act of researching, writing, and editing an article that anyone can access, read, and learn from brings about an epiphany moment for students as they begin to recognize their own authority. They can begin to observe different kinds of authority and a continuum of expertise. One student in "Creating Wikipedia for the Arts" shared her revelation that, "a blog or webpage were perhaps just as credible as something published through a 'scholarly' source" because there are different kinds of authority. She went on to explain that "authority is not held in the hollowed, dark corridors of academia" because "people like me or someone who lives on the other side of the world place value in different areas, and we can still contribute to this entity," which is a repository of human knowledge. 11 They are no longer simply students in a class; they're beginning to engage in a larger scholarly conversation. Their work is not original research. It cannot be per Wikipedia's pillars. 12 But the self-actualization that comes from publicly engaging in knowledge acquisition and sharing is an important step toward seeing themselves as budding scholars and authorities in their own right.
Students Teaching Students: The Collective Struggle for Inclusivity in Creating Wikipedia for the Arts (Angela Pratesi) I am really glad that we were able to be a part of a larger movement and that there is a lot of faculty support for projects like this at UNI. I think that it was a really good thing for us as students to be kind of thrown into this a little bit (by having this huge event we had to help run) because it forced us to step up and put our learning into practice for other people. 13 With a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, 14 the class Creating Wikipedia for the Arts hosted an Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon. Their main assignment was to collaboratively plan the event and teach participants how and why to edit (see Appendix A for the assignment written by students in the class using Winkelmes's Transparency in Learning and Teaching model 15 ). This requirement ensured the co-creative process and forum for student-to-student learning. One of the goals of holding edit-a-thons is to reach a wide audience. Therefore, partnering with other faculty, in this case from the art department, ensured a robust and motivated audience the Wikipedia students could teach, adding to the diversity of information available on Wikipedia about artists and art educators with an emphasis on women and minoritized individuals, and improving the breadth and quality of free information on the Internet. As a result, students not only began to recognize the authority of experts in a field, but also to see themselves as emergent authorities and acknowledge the value of diversity, access, and sharing. They also learned to see their peers as authorities on whom they could lean to learn new skills and ideas regardless of age or the expected hierarchical trappings of higher education. Being able to learn in a variety of ways from multiple sources--be those human, print, or media--is a form of self-sufficiency. By seeing peers as people to learn with as well as people to learn from, students expand the tools they have at their disposal to learn and master content and skills.
In their weekly reflection journals, Wikipedia students expressed trepidation leading up to the event. Some were "not nervous, just excited," 16 while others openly worried they did not know enough to teach others how to edit. In a Small Group Instructional Diagnostic (SGID) session before the edit-a-thon, one of the themes that emerged was their concern about the event. They described the event as "looming" which was "building tension." They were anxious and even described it as "tedious," but at least one acknowledged "warming up with the idea." 17 The feedback from the SGID helped me address worries students were not comfortable sharing directly.
Simultaneously embodying the position as teacher, facilitator, and cheerleader, I reassured them they did in fact know enough as evidenced by the research, writing, and editing work they had already done in Wikipedia. To help them feel more confident, they practiced their presentation multiple times in class, using several rehearsal techniques borrowed from theatre--full run through, cue to cue, and a modified technical rehearsal. However, they did not really believe they were prepared until after the edit-a-thon.
This past week we ran the edit-a-thon which was a great experience. I felt that giving the presentation exemplified our credibility in terms of editing Wikipedia. This was an intimidating feat at first but as I began speaking I grew more confident. Before officially starting the edit-a-thon I expected to struggle answering student questions, but that was quite the opposite. There were very few questions I was not able to answer. I think I need to give myself more credit for all the work I have done throughout this semester. 18 The sentiments this student expressed in her reflection appeared in every single student's journal. The act of teaching and working with other students one-onone made them realize how much they knew. Even better, for the few questions to which they did not immediately know the answers, they discovered they had the skills to easily find the answers with the tools they had already practiced and mastered. Their reflections, both in writing and in a relaxed post-event debriefing during the next class meeting, were universally positive. They expressed great satisfaction with how the edit-a-thon went overall and personal fulfillment from their ability to help participants. They realized just how much they had learned.
Students did more than discover the scope of their knowledge; they demonstrated flexibility and resiliency in the face of significant unexpected obstacles. On the day of the event, a significant snow storm hobbled the technology necessary to access their presentation slides and stream the live presentation to remote participants. The class quickly regrouped, accessing the slides as a .pdf via their phones, and giving the adapted presentation to those in person. Then, when the streaming technology came back online, one student volunteered to give the presentation solo and answer questions (as a way of practicing her public speaking 19 ), while the others worked one-on-one with the folks in person. As a team, the classmates problem-solved for the series of unfortunate events and adapted on the spot. In the process they each learned about their own capacity for flexibility, resiliency, and leadership.
Over the course of a few short hours, the students enrolled in Creating Wikipedia for the Arts put their knowledge into practice, teaching a room full of people about Wikipedia and how to edit the online encyclopedia. Although the only students in the room who would nominally identify themselves as teachers were the participants majoring in art education, the Wikipedia students took on the role of teacher and recognized their ability to share the skills they had acquired as part of their coursework. In doing so, they proved mastery that was meaningful, significant, and authentic.
Writing Wikipedia: Critically Engaging New Knowledge in Arts of Africa and Nineteenth-Century Art History (Elizabeth Sutton) In both of my spring semester upper-level art history courses, Arts of Africa and Nineteenth-Century Art, I included a Wikipedia research project as a major course requirement. While Arts of Africa met face to face twice a week, I taught Nineteenth-Century Art History online. Most art history courses require students to write research papers individually to fulfill student learning outcomes related to critical thinking, content, and communication. This assignment was a way to provide an authentic and collaborative research experience for students that was potentially transformative in how they thought about research and their potential for contributing to the knowledge of and stories told about women, Haitian artists, and other suppressed or underrepresented narratives.
The assignment for each class was scaffolded into four parts: finding sources and citing; rough draft and peer review; final draft; and participation in the edit-a-thon (see Appendices B and C). All the students had access to the library's research tools, and specifically, online and inperson information sessions provided by students in the Creating Wikipedia for the Arts class. The assignment in both classes asked students to use the online collaborative platform of Google docs to write their drafts and peer edit. Both course syllabi include the stated goal of learning research skills and analyzing and critically evaluating sources. The assignment further elaborated on these goals to be specific to the content outlined in the course description: either research a Haitian artist or a nineteenth-century minoritized artist or work. With Wikipedia as the final platform for submission, clear communication in writing was also an essential outcome (see Appendices B and C).
Nineteen students each created new articles or added information to stubs on nineteenth-century women artists. Eighteen students created articles on Haitian artists for Wikipedia. Arts of Africa students were able to benefit from the proximity of the largest Haitian art collection in the US, housed at the Waterloo Center for the Arts. In collaboration with the registrar there, students were invited to choose an artist or art object from the collection that they might research so to make more widely available information on Haitian art and artists, particularly those represented at the local public art center. This opportunity contributed to the authenticity of the research and the importance of collaboration with a community partner. The nineteenth-century art history students had opportunities to choose artists or art pieces in the University's and local art center's collections, but because of the remote nature of the course, were not required to do so. I provided students in both courses lists of possible artists, search terms, and stubs that could be augmented. Many of the nineteenth-century art history students chose to add to a stub.
The authenticity of the assignment is substantiated by students' own words captured in written reflections after the edit-a-thon. They valued their contributions because they saw them as such. Indeed, many students commented on how satisfying it was to participate actively in sharing knowledge. Out of the eighteen reflections from Arts of Africa, seventeen students never had edited Wikipedia before; the one student who had had done so minimally. All the students in the nineteenth-century art class were new to editing Wikipedia. When asked in a reflection prompt whether they found the assignment valuable, all thirty-seven students agreed that the assignment was valuable. Students found it "fulfilling to create a reliable source…for others in the future to use." 20 A student from Arts of Africa wrote: I loved writing an article for Wikipedia. It felt great knowing that the hard work I was putting into writing a paper was going to be read by many more people, not just myself, a few classmates, and you, my professor. I have never edited an article on Wikipedia, so I have that set of skills now which I hope I can use again. I also learned a ton more about Haitian art and Haitian Vodou. 21 A student from the nineteenth-century art class wrote that "[i]t is really gratifying that my research will potentially be available to others to use and learn from." 22 In addition to the authenticity of sharing research, students recognized that the public platform of Wikipedia required good research and writing: "I think that this assignment was valuable because we are contributing to research online. Since Wikipedia is a well-known search engine, more pressure is added to make the article good." 23 Interestingly, the two students most critical of the assignment also were two of the best (top-ranked) students in the department, students who consistently turn in quality work. One student wrote: I've never edited Wikipedia, but it was a valuable experience, I guess. It was pretty cool to see everything at the end all lit up and stuff, but I don't know if there were any greater takeaways than that. . . As a whole, this assignment was not just difficult, it was impossible. I got no catharsis at the end, and feel no pride for what I've done. The rough draft and peer reviews would have been helpful if I had gotten feedback other than "you need more information," but what can ya do. The final post was cool and everything, but hell, I could have just done that at home. In the future, just make us write a paper. I would learn so much more. 24 This student was frustrated by the radical aspects of the Wikipedia edit-a-thon research in which she was required to participate. It is safe and easy to write a paper. Paper writing is focused on the individual student and applying processes s/he already knows to gather information, rather than both learning new processes from other students and sharing that information with others. To me, these students' negative perceptions are indication of the potential for transformative learning that such an assignment provides. It made traditionally "good" students uncomfortable because they had to learn new skills such as working with others and being flexible in a dynamic environment with multiple readers--not just the professor.
By researching underrepresented artists, many of whom were marginalized and stereotyped due to their gender or ethnicity, students had to think critically about not only how art history is constructed, but how as researchers and writers they can play an active role in eradicating oppressive stereotypes and general erasure.

Seeing the Value of Wikipedia for the Future of Art Education: Recognizing Responsibility for Representing Female Researchers (Wendy Miller)
As the coordinator of undergraduate art education, I have the opportunity to work with every student preparing to become an art educator at our university. In the spring semester, while teaching Foundations in Art Education, I altered a traditional writing assignment in order to include my students in the Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon. Of my 15 students, 14 were female, and all identified as white, which is typical of students enrolled in art education in our Midwest state.
During this introductory course, students and I investigate the historical development of art education in order to see how practices and beliefs in teaching art have evolved. We then look toward the future of art education, investigating current research by art educators and sharing new grassroots approaches to teaching and new trends in art education. The students and I use historical and contemporary research to imagine where art education may be headed. Typically, at this point, the students would research an art educator/researcher and then write a traditional paper, discussing a contemporary art educator's research.
This year, I redesigned the assignment to instead teach students to create and submit a Wikipedia entry. The assignment was divided up into four parts, the last being to attend the Wikipedia edit-a-thon. First, students worked with the Fine & Performing Arts Librarian to learn about how to research using the library database with a focus on finding secondary sources. Next, they chose an art educator who is currently researching in the field of art education to examine (see Appendix D). Lastly, they wrote up the Wikipedia entry, or added to a stub article, on the art education researcher to share with others in our class.

I wanted the students to see that these art education researchers, who were working on new, creative, and innovative studies in their future field of art education, were also regular people: artists, teachers, mothers, and friends.
I wanted the students to see that these art education researchers, who were working on new, creative, and innovative studies in their future field of art education, were also regular people: artists, teachers, mothers, and friends. We looked at how they shared their ideas at conferences for K-12 art teachers (like themselves) and realized that they were not be seen as intimidating researchers, but as kindred spirits, sharing the same passions these students are developing. Looking through news articles, conference summaries, and award announcements, the students began to humanize these researchers and see them as people who were working alongside teachers, collaborating and supporting teachers in the field of art. Our discussion led to a realization of reciprocity between the researcher and the teacher and how they could use the findings from art education researchers to guide their teaching, just as the researchers needed the K-12 art teachers and their students to ground their research and provide practical opportunities to test out new strategies and interventions.
The students shared their findings together in class, introducing the art educators to their peers, and together we made connections to the art education timeline we spent the first part of the semester studying. Practices had changed over time, for example the push to move away from the philosophical approach called Discipline Based Art Education (DBAE). 25 With the increase in diversity of approaches to teaching art, the flooding of imagery and visual culture, students saw how art educators were examining new ways of approaching art education.
One student researching scholar and art educator Kristin Congdon, shared what Congdon found to be a lack of inclusiveness or sensitivity to art that was outside the mainstream of DBAE-inspired images in her analysis of DBAE curriculum. 26 This student was able to make a personal connection to these findings as she reflected on her own education in K-12 art classes. However, the student was disheartened because she was unable to find enough reliable secondary sources about Congdon, which Wikipedia requires. This lack indicated to students that Congdon was not sufficiently important, leading to an internal conflict since many students found her work to be inspiring and innovative, yet under-cited in the field of art education: Much of the research that I was able to find, was actually through her writings. I had to read her research studies, and draw conclusions from that in order to fill in information about her. There weren't any other biographies for her except for her professor description on the university website. 27 Our class discussed how difficult it was to find secondary sources and how, correspondingly, that it was then important to publish our art educators on Wikipedia to share the important work of these female art education researchers.
Another student was surprised to learn that few females have edited or written Wikipedia articles. Subsequently, and after she learned how to edit, she felt empowered: I had never written or edited a Wikipedia article, so this entire project was a new experience for me, and it was empowering. I learned how to insert direct links, insert quick citations with links, and how to visually edit. With most of the editors at Wikipedia being male, I believe it is important that people (especially females) learn these simple techniques in order to encourage them to edit. 28 Although my class struggled to find secondary sources, this in some ways proved the point of the assignment to them: that women researchers in the field are under-cited, and under-acknowledged, even while their ideas are significant and useful to educators beyond art education. The project empowered many to see they can change that. It is this dearth of secondary sources that had the largest impact on my students. The realization that our subjects and their work are underrepresented and unsung provides the impetus for our efforts to make their work known and accessible. This project allowed my students to see how learning some simple editing tools can change access to information. As future teachers, they have the power to continue using, and also teaching, these skills. Wikipedia editing is now another tool for them to make the invisible visible and add to the intellectual landscape of their field.

Conclusion
The Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon proved to be a challenging, yet empowering, authentic learning project for students in all four participating classes. Taking a realtime approach to the co-creative process allowed the students and their peers to be responsive and involved in each other's writing, while also supporting, rather than critiquing, the final product of their research. In this modified role, our burgeoning scholars were able to recognize stumbling blocks, and to develop strategies for surpassing them, such as using Google Books to find secondary sources in order to demonstrate notability, a key strategy that developed as we were immersed in the process and staying flexible in the face of technical challenges.
Although some of the students' contributions to Wikipedia did not pass Wikipedia standards for inclusion and were nominated for deletion or eliminated through "speedy deletion," largely due to a lack of available secondary sources pertaining to their subjects, this, too, was a part of the requisite learning inherent in such a task. This reality communicated both the absence of published material by and about women and underrepresented artists and the importance of such scholarly work that creates secondary sources.
Since the first edit-a-thon described here, we already have held four additional public edit-a-thons at the University of Northern Iowa focused on human rights, people of color, women & LGBT+, and diversity, respectively, two of which art students were required or encouraged to attend. We continue to make modifications to assignments and the edit-a-thon experience based on student reflections and the assessment of outcomes. For our students, the edit-a-thon experience highlights a radical awareness of how new knowledge is constructed and disseminated and places them directly into the transformative role of creator and teacher of knowledge, rather than passive consumer. One student's endorsement of the Wikimedia Rapid Grant application funding another series of edit-a-thons conveys this new awareness: It's so important to bring knowledge to everyone about people in under-represented groups. Having participated in this event last year, I know how much it opened my eyes to how hard it can be to find information without Wikipedia's help, but it's so rewarding to be the one to bring that information together for everyone else. 29 Creating assignments for students to collaborate at a Wikipedia edit-a-thon event is a model for how to coconstruct knowledge in a way that was radical for students learning how to think critically and engage in their social responsibility to be inclusive and take ownership of their learning at this mid-sized regional public university. Appendix B

Arts of Africa Assignment
In the first part of the semester we will be visiting the African collections of the UNI Museum and Haitian collection of the Waterloo Center for the Arts. Students will be researching Haitian artists and/or contemporary African or African American women artists for the March 24 Wikipedia edit-a-thon.

The Assignment:
You will be writing a brief entry for Wikipedia on a particular Waterloo Center for the Arts Haitian artist, an African artist, or a notable artwork by an African artist, or an historical event pertaining to African women and art. In preparation to publish online, you will learn how use the UNI library's research resources and identify what kinds of secondary source citations help to authenticate information in such entries. You will write a draft and review other classmates' drafts, and ultimately "publish" your entry to contribute to Wikipedia's free encyclopedia.
Objectives: Develop research skills, reading comprehension and cogent written articulation § Summarize, analyze, and evaluate secondary sources § Synthesize contextual factors and themes and how they relate to specific works and artists § Connect and communicate aspects of African and Haitian art history to today Here is our art library resource page: https://guides.lib.uni.edu/ArtResearch and the specific site for March 24: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/University_of_Northern_Iowa/Rod_Library_ArtAndFeminism_2018 The Assignment: You will be writing a brief entry for Wikipedia on a particular female artist, a notable artwork by a woman, or an historical event pertaining to women and art. In preparation to publish online, you will learn how use the UNI library's research resources and identify what kinds of secondary source citations help to authenticate information in such entries. You will write a draft and review other classmates' drafts, and ultimately "publish" your entry to contribute to Wikipedia's free encyclopedia.
• Final Bibliography/references of at least 3 secondary sources: 1 at least either a journal or a book.
• Consistently cited references according to APA or Chicago Style.
• Correct spelling and grammar.
• Well organized content.
• Participate in March 24 event.
You must submit a rough draft in order to submit a final draft. NO LATE SUBMISSIONS ACCEPTED.