Grants talk:Project/Wikipedia and the Aotearoa New Zealand History Curriculum/Final

Comments from the WMF Education team[edit]

Thank you for this excellent report! User:NSaad (WMF) and I enjoyed reading your findings and we wanted to share some comments as we think it would be very valuable for more members of the community to learn about this work.

The findings (and literature review) of this research project reflect one usual assumption that many members of the Wikimedia education community are familiar with: that while teachers find Wikipedia to be a valuable and generally positive resource, they don’t quite know how to use it as a pedagogical tool to help their students go from passive consumers of information to critical thinkers. Your report highlights the importance of empowering teacher with this knowledge given the important influence of teachers in shaping their student's perspectives about Wikipedia. It was also notable that teachers report how some students found Wikipedia articles to be difficult to read. We know that the reading level of many Wikipedia articles is too high for secondary school students, and documenting this in the research gives our team more evidence that we can use to advocate for interventions.

The study also shows how important it can be to have teachers identify the prevailing gaps in knowledge as connected to their own curriculum - this can be an empowering start for teacher involvement in editing, content campaigns, and further training opportunities. Additionally, an important point to emphasize that your study found is the fact that teachers consider Wikipedia less reliable when it comes to articles related to local histories. This helps us to understand how to shape future interventions that work toward aligning content on Wikipedia more closely with school curricula. Thank you for sharing the survey you used to carry out this research! It's a tool that can be valuable to share with other members of the community who are looking into leading similar types of research or as part of their needs assessment as they design new initiatives.

Overall, this is a report that is very helpful to our team and to the Wikimedia Education community - it gives evidence of the effectiveness of interventions like "Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom" and it identifies areas where more programming and support may be needed (as well as potential for GLAM-Education initiatives).

We want to encourage you to share these findings more widely! Remember you can always write a short article for the Monthly Education Newsletter or publish a blog on Diff.

Cheers!--MGuadalupe (WMF) (talk) 21:03, 6 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]