Posted on by Tonya Howe

Aphra Behn Society 2015: Wikipedia Workshop

I love going to (to me) new conferences–not only do I get to learn about exciting work in the field, but I also get to meet new people and, ideally, expand my collection of “regularly-attended.” What strikes me most about the Aphra Behn Society is its collegiality, its openness to and mentorship of graduate student work, and the palpable sense of feminist solidarity practically oozing from each session. Very happy-making!

Despite the fact that I am in desperate need of sleep and time to catch up on mounds of grading–and as a result not doing the friendly-joining-thing I should be doing–I am excited to be here and am most definitely planning on returning. ABS reminds me a bit of the EC-ASECS regional conference in terms of general tone, though the crowd here is rather different–I don’t see too many overlapping faces. I may have two new conferences to make a habit of!

Tomorrow, I’m co-leading a workshop with Laura Runge on using Wikipedia in the classroom. My EN340 course this term, Major Women Writers, is doing a Wikipedia project for one of the novels I’ve assigned–Charlotte Lennox’s Henrietta. It seems to have proven (surprisingly, for me!) a lot more challenging than expected–students were very confused, in general, by the way the first book is essentially Henrietta telling her story to Miss Woodby. Coupled, of course, with the fact that there is no Wikipedia entry on the novel, and my students are rather struggling!

A bit of background on the class–it’s a LT-2 Liberal Arts Core course (advanced literature), and it’s also Writing Intensive. This means I have at most one major, and this term, none–challenging, but it does free me up to do all sorts of experimental things. My goal is, at root, twofold: 1.) get at least a handful of students excited about reading something from “back in the day” that apparently has absolutely no (right?) relevance for the modern world, and 2.) hopefully instill a sense of curiosity about writing done in public. I’ve designed a project organized around Wikipedia, since I know most of my students use it as a crib-sheet of sorts–I routinely see the pages on Fantomina, “The Reformed Coquet,” and Evelina up on their laptops during discussion, and so many were frustrated by the lack of readily available information on Henrietta. What better way to instill a bit of healthy skepticism about their sources, while encouraging students to help others in their same situation, while modeling the kind of DIY practices that I believe are essential to being a well-rounded citizen of the world, while also engaging students in just the kind of real-world writing that frequently goes unnoticed as writing. Enter: Wikipedia.

I’m presenting tomorrow at 1:45. Hope you can make it! The project details–from assignment to homework to groupwork–are all available in PDF, here. But, for simplicity’s sake, I’m also posting below an overview of how I structure the project from pre-writing to submission:

Charlotte Lennox’s novel Henrietta does not have a Wikipedia page, by which I’m sure you’re all distressed! So, let’s help out future students by creating one. This is a full-class project. See the entire assignment sheet on Canvas.

Pre-project work:

  1. Homework: Complete the Wikipedia Training for Students tutorial: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Training/For_students
    1. Create your account
    2. Explore your sandbox
    3. Create your user information page / biographical sketch
    4. Submit your User Contributions URL via Canvas
  2. In-class: Team Wikipedia Quiz / Go over assignment
    1. In-class: (Activity A) How to recognize original research, point of view problems
    2. In-class: Structure/content: Look at “Fantomina” and Evelina pages–what is included?
  3. Homework: Write 1 paragraph for each part of our hypothetical page, upload to Canvas
    1. summary
    2. key characters
    3. theme
    4. style
    5. overview
  4. Homework: Canvas discussion board research post: Find 1 scholarly or biographical source (no overlaps!), download it to your computer. Read it, and post to Canvas discussion board:
    1. bibliographic entry
    2. upload the source
    3. write 1 paragraph overview/summary of the source
  5. In-class: Wikipedia Workshop/Activity B
  6. Homework: Revise in groups
  7. In-class: Lab revision time; add a source; add an image; add a template note
  8. Homework: Revise in (different) groups; sources, content, and writing
  9. In-class: Lab revision time
  10. Homework: Revise
  11. Due: Your user contributions page URL to Canvas
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