Teaching and learning

Incorporate Wikipedia into your teaching.

Wikipedia in education: knowledge activism vs passive consumption 

Wikipedia is already a key part of many students' learning, making it an ideal platform for developing research, critical thinking, digital literacy, and public engagement skills. Rather than simply consuming knowledge, students can contribute to it by improving articles that are read by millions of people.

The University of Edinburgh was the first university in the UK to appoint a university-wide Wikimedian in Residence. In partnership with Wikimedia UK, the programme supports staff and students in using Wikipedia for teaching, learning, research, and public engagement. 

The key Wikimedia projects for teachers are: 

Learn more in our booklet for Wikipedia in education

‘We will enrich Wikipedia content with our research collections and expand the range of knowledge covered. We will contribute not only our research to Wikipedia but do research with and about Wikipedia. We will use the data sets being shared and study how the work of knowledge sharing and gathering is conducted.’

Melissa Highton Assistant Principal Online Learning, University of Edinburgh

Teaching with Wikipedia - a practical 'how to' guide

This 1 hour video below is for any course leaders interested in learning more about Wikipedia Education assignments. The workshop showcases best practice derived from working with over a dozen course programmes at the University of Edinburgh over the 4.5 years.

Further resources 

© Ewan McAndrew and Hannah Rothmann, University of Edinburgh, 2020, CC BY-SA 4.0, unless otherwise indicated.

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