Postgraduate Course: Wikipedia and the Past (fusion online) (EFIE11326)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh Futures Institute |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
| Course type | Online Distance Learning |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 10 |
ECTS Credits | 5 |
| Summary | The online encyclopedia Wikipedia is the world's most popular online platform for heritage-making, and arguably the most important: every day, millions of individual readers turn to its pages as their first port of call for knowledge about the past, while algorithms silently mine its content to feed databases and train AI programmes. However, it is also a contested site, with historical articles frequently the focus of edit wars, and the site itself banned in several countries. In this course we'll explore the practicalities, the problems and the possibilities of how Wikipedia generates heritage. |
| Course description |
On this elective you will think about how Wikipedia's global ubiquity shapes the presentation and consumption of knowledge about the past, both recent and remote. You'll hear the expert perspectives of guest speakers, and discuss recent analysis and interpretations of the site with your peers. To anchor these theoretical perspectives, and see how they relate to the practice, you'll be trained in the basics of Wikipedia editing, and will collaborate in editing a current Wikipedia page.
Themes of the elective include: does Wikipedia need decolonising? Can a Wikipedia page be neutral? How does Wikipedia define expertise and authority? Who benefits from improving Wikipedia? Can you trust Wikipedia? What can we learn from Wikipedia about the potential and pitfalls of crowdsourcing knowledge online more generally? What are its implications for heritage curation?
Students will learn through a combination of mini lectures; followed by group discussion; individual reading; supervised group activities; individual research and knowledge exchange as well as creative communication of research findings. Guest lecturers will be invited, to enhance interdisciplinary teaching and offer students the opportunity to connect with heritage professionals in academia and beyond.
Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) - Online Fusion Course Delivery Information:
The Edinburgh Futures Institute will teach this course in a way that enables online and on-campus students to study together. This approach (our 'fusion' teaching model) offers students flexible and inclusive ways to study, and the ability to choose whether to be on-campus or online at the level of the individual course. It also opens up ways for diverse groups of students to study together regardless of geographical location. To enable this, the course will use technologies to record and live-stream student and staff participation during their teaching and learning activities. Students should note that their interactions may be recorded and live-streamed. There will, however, be options to control whether or not your video and audio are enabled.
As part of your course, you will need access to a personal computing device. Unless otherwise stated activities will be web browser based and as a minimum we recommend a device with a physical keyboard and screen that can access the internet.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2024/25, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 10 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
100
(
Lecture Hours 6,
Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 8,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 2,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
84 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
This course embraces an assessment for learning philosophy, which will be explained to students from the outset.
Assessments are seen as means of scaffolding and facilitating learning throughout the course. In line with this ethos, the assessments are designed as follows:
Formative Assessment:
By the end of week 1 of the pre-intensive period, students will share a post (ca 500 words) presenting their initial reactions to the 2 readings and podcast for this week, and comment (ca 100 words) on a post written by one of their fellow participants. By the end of week 2 of the pre-intensive period, students will write a ca 100 word comment on how they found the training and a brief 50 word comment to suggest an article that could be edited.
This component will be formative. It will not be graded.
Summative Assessment:
The course will be assessed by means of the following assessment components:
1) 1500 Word Blog Post (4 Key References) (100%)
Students will critically reflect on the theoretical approaches to Wikipedia they have encountered through core reading, lectures and additional reading and individual research, in the light of their collaborative editing experience. They will communicate the processes and outcomes of this reflection through a blog post written for an non-specialist audience (ca 1500 words with at least 4 key references). This assessment component will be graded and make up 100% of the overall assessment. |
| Feedback |
Feedback will be provided throughout the intensive: by answering questions after the mini lectures, through discussions and by interacting with students during the 8 hours dedicated to group activities.
In addition, one hour of focused formative feedback is included, at the end of the second day of intensive teaching.
During this session, students will present and receive feedback on the group activity they conducted and which constitutes the starting point for their summative assessment. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate critical understanding of the role played by Wikipedia and Wikipedia editors in creating and disseminating heritage knowledge.
- Conduct both autonomous and collaborative research into how the format and nature of Wikipedia shapes the knowledge collected and presented on its pages.
- Apply this knowledge to make edits to the online encyclopaedia.
- Critically evaluate the 'heritage politics' involved in Wikipedia's claims to present globally-valid and neutral knowledge about the past.
- Communicate the outcome of critical evaluations of Wikipedia as a heritage platform to a non-specialist audience.
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Reading List
Indicative Reading List:
Essential Reading:
Ahmed, Waqas, and Martin Lewis Poulter, 'Representation of Non-Western Cultural Knowledge on Wikipedia: The Case of the Visual Arts.' Digital Studies/Le champ numérique 12 (2022), 1-27. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/dscn.8078.
Prema Smith and Ben Marwick, 'World Heritage Sites on Wikipedia. Cultural heritage activism in a context of constrained agency', Big Data and Society 8 (1) (2021) https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517211017304
Recommended Reading:
Narges Azizifard et al., 'Wiki Loves Monuments: Crowdsourcing the Collective Image of the Worldwide Built Heritage', Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage 16 (2022) https://doi.org/10.1145/3569092
Heather Ford, Writing the Revolution: Wikipedia and the Survival of Facts in the Digital Age (Cambridge, Mass., 2022)
Further Reading:
Bonacchi, Chiara. 'Co-Producing Knowledge Online'. Bristol: Arts and Humanities Research Council, 2018. https://connected-communities.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Knowledge_Online_SP.pdf
Carwil Bjork-James, 'New maps for an inclusive Wikipedia: decolonial scholarship and strategies to counter systemic bias', New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia 3 (2021) https://doi.org/10.1080/13614568.2020.1865463
Amy Bruckman, Should You Believe Wikipedia? Online Communities and the Construction of Knowledge (Cambridge, 2022).
Ridge, Mia, ed. Crowdsourcing Our Cultural Heritage. Digital Research in the Arts and Humanities. Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2014
Matthew Vetter, Wikipedia and the representation of reality (2021) |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
- Enquiry and lifelong learning (ILOs 1, 2, 3, 4)
- Aspiration and personal development (ILOs 1, 2, 3, 4)
- Outlook and engagement (ILOs 3, 4, 5)
- Research and enquiry (ILOs 2, 3, 4)
- Personal and intellectual autonomy (ILO 2)
- Personal effectiveness (ILO 5)
- Communication (ILO 5) |
| Keywords | Digital Heritage,Wikipedia,Cultural Heritage Futures,EFI,Level 11,PG |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Prof Charles West
Tel:
Email: cwest3@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Veronica Silvestre
Tel:
Email: Veronica.Silvestre@ed.ac.uk |
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