Wikipedia:Training/For Ambassadors/Grading tips

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Tips for grading students' Wikipedia contributions

Finding a good way of grading Wikipedia assignments can be a challenge for instructors. Depending on the complexity of the assignment and their own priorities, instructors may take a variety of different approaches to grading.

As a starting point educators are advised to follow these three basic tips when deciding how to grade student work:

1.   Know all the students' usernames on Wikipedia

Without knowing the students' usernames on Wikipedia, you won't be able to grade them.

Create a course page on Wikipedia before the term starts. Later, we'll show you how to use the Assignment Design Wizard to easily customize a template with a syllabus and links to up-to-date resources and tools. Once you've built this course page, make sure all students enroll on the course page.

Once students have signed the list at the bottom of the course page, you can click on "user contributions" (in the menu bar on the left hand side of your browser screen) to review all of the student's activities on Wikipedia. If you require completion of the student training, you can check the feedback page to see which students completed it.

For courses supported by the Wiki Education Foundation, this information is readily accessible through your class Dashboard.

2.   Be specific about your expectations

Being specific about what you expect your students to do is crucial for grading. As an example: The assignment for the students could be to add a minimum of 3 new sections to an existing article. Students could also be asked to add a minimum of 8 references to an existing article that lacks the appropriate sourcing, etc.

Note: Please do not grade students based on what stays in Wikipedia; you can always see their original contributions in the article history, even if some of it was later removed. There are many factors that may contribute to a student’s content not remaining in Wikipedia, and if students feel they must fight to control an article for the sake of their grade. This could lead to edit-wars, or create conflicts with other editors. Communicating this clearly to students very early will ensure a successful assignment for everyone. Remember: Wikipedia editing is a collaborative writing environment that is driven by verifiability, noteworthiness and neutral point of view – all of which have created challenges for students.

3.   Break your Wikipedia assignment into key milestones

Based on experience of many educators, a milestone approach to Wikipedia assignments has proven to be useful to both assessing performance, completing the assignment and grading student contribution.

Additionally, it allows students and Wikipedia editors to engage together in the unique peer editing and collaboration process found on Wikipedia.