This structure maintains the major works prescribed by Skola2030 (research poster, article, and presentation, as well as the overall timeframe and the concept of a conference at the end. I have traditionally also included in this part of the course a test on academic English which includes summarizing an article and use of articles. Altogether, this means five summatively graded works:

1.  Research poster about planned article (Sample rubric)

2. Test on academic English (Sample test)

3. Published Wikipedia article (Sample rubric)

4. Presentation about research and writing process (Rubric still in progress)

5. Organization, participation and analysis of a conference (Conference feedback analysis sheet)

All of the learning outcomes that have been expected by the Skola2030 course and VIAA exam programs for English II for this part of the course are summatively evaluated by at least one of the above assignments.

Part I: Topic choice and initial research

At this point, students need to first find a suitable topic to write a new Wikipedia page about or an existing page. This is the most critical part of the entire project, as picking an unsuitable topic will make it impossible to succeed. Here are some of the most important things to keep in mind.

Picking a topic

For this assignment, I give students two options: to write a completely new article about a topic that does not exist already on Wikipedia or to improve a previously existing Wikipedia article. 

Although I have had students very successfully write completely new articles, I strongly encourage students to improve existing ones instead for a number of reasons:

1. If there is not already an article about this topic and it is not very new (such as an album that has just come out), there's a very strong chance that it will not meet Wikipedia's standards for "notability" (being noteworthy enough to have an encyclopedia article about it). For more information about how determine if a topic is "notable" or not,  you can check out this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability 

2. The article topic might be considered "notable," but not enough for its own article—instead it might be better suited as a section of a different article. For example, some songs are significant enough to have their very own Wikipedia pages, whereas others are only significant enough to mention on the page of the album that they come from.

3. It's very common to not be able to find an article about a particular topic because the article might be written under a different name. For example, I had a student who really wanted to write about "ice bath theraphy," which is something I had heard of before and was very skeptical that there would be no Wikipedia article about yet. It turns out that it is more officially known as "Cryotherapy," for which there is already an extensive article about.

4. New user accounts are not allowed to publish completely new articles. If a person with a new account wants to write a completely new article, they must first submit a draft to be checked by a more experienced editor and then approved or rejected. I have had students successfully go through the review process which can be very satisfying, but I have also had student articles rejected for very asinine reasons—unfortunately, other editors can be extremely nitpicky, especially if they see it is a new account.

To find a good topic which already has an article which needs to be improved, I strongly suggest looking at ones that have the tag of "stub," which means that the article has been started in hopes that someone else will keep working on it and finish it someday. "Stubs" are great for students to work on, because it means that:

•  at least one other person has considered it notable enough for there to be an article;

• there are likely sources out there that students can use to research and write the article;

• if it truly is a "stub," there should be plenty for your students to do in terms of writing.

To find stub articles, you can check out this page which includes all of the different categories (by topic) of stubs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Stub_categories 

What is far easier though is for students to type into Google their topic category along with "stubs." For example, if a student really wants to find a horror film from the 1990s to write about, they can type "horror 1990s stubs" into Google and they will find this page as the first result (with more than 100 choices!): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1990s_horror_film_stubs 

PLEASE NOTE: NOT ALL ARTICLES ON THE LISTS OF STUBS ARE GOOD CHOICES FOR YOUR STUDENTS! There are two main things to keep in mind:

• Some "stub" articles have remained stubs because there just are not enough sources available to improve it;

• Some articles have already been significantly improved but no one has remmebered to take away the "stub" tag and it remains on the list.

It is up to your students to use their critical thinking skills to determine whether or not the topic is viable based on the above and below criteria.

A good topic should NOT:

• Be directly connected to the author (writing about a family member, band that they are a part of, etc). This is a strict rule of Wikipedia in order to cut down on biases in articles. In reality, it's almost impossible to imagine that Wikipedia has no real way to know if someone is closely related to the topic they are writing about. However, I strongly suggest enforcing this rule because it helps get students a bit outside of their comfort zones, and also cuts down on the chance that their article is going to sound like an advertisement that needs significant revision.

• Already have an existing, high-quality Wikipedia article. With this project, I've often had students want to write articles about very famous albums or TV shows. The problem is, if there is already an extensive Wikipedia article, it is going to be extremely difficult for them to write and/or edit enough for you to be actually able to grade. For example, I recently had a student who wanted to write about Kind of Blue, one of the most famous jazz albums of all time with a more than 6500-word Wikipedia article. Since I knew he was interested in jazz, I suggested that he look and see which jazz albums need to be written more about.

• Be dificult to find existing, high-quality sources about (books, newspaper articles, etc). Although Wikipedia has a reputation for being a place where anyone can write whatever they want, this couldn't be further from the truth. Just like with any type of research paper, every single statement in a Wikipedia article needs to be backed up with a source. If they cannot find a source for the information, they should not write it on the page, even if they "know" it's true. 

Please note: Wikipedia does NOT allow individual research. This means that if a student is writing about a musician, they cannot go out and interview that person and write the information in. All of the information must come from already published sources.

If you have a student who isn't sure which direction to go in, one of the easiest topics to write about is a music album with a stub article, especially ones that have been released since the year 2000 or so. This is because any album that Wikipedia considers "notable" will have plenty of announcements, interviews, and reviews that students will be able to find on Google News and other search engines. Music albums also have a very consistent and easy-to-understand format with plenty of examples for students to look at.

I also suggest having students write about topics that are related to Latvia in some way; this is because there are plenty of notable topics that don't have quality articles simply because Latvia is a small country—they can feel patriotic in improving the situation when it comes to Wikipedia! English Wikipedia articles can also use sources from other languages, so your students will have access to a lot of potential sources (online and in libraries) that others in different parts of the world will not when it comes to these topics. Here are some stub categories directly related to Latvia:

• Categories of stubs

• Latvia stubs

• Latvian company stubs

• Latvia geography stubs

• Latvian history stubs

• Latvian people stubs

• Latvia politics stubs

• Latvia transport stubs

Finding sources

As soon as students have a few ideas about topics that they might write about, the very first thing they need to do is find out what sources are available for them to use. Different types of Wikipedia articles have different criteria for what types of sources are allowed for use in an article, but the general principles of information literacy that apply to any type of research process apply here as well. Here is some material I have developed which I have already posted elsewhere on this website for the more traditional research project but apply here as well:

• A printable checklist for students to analyze and use when evaluating sources for research 

• A printable guide to evaluating sources for research (based on the checklist above)

• An interactive presentation (Kahoot) about evaluating sources and determining their trustworthiness 

• A Google Drive folder of sources about vaccines (from 2018) that students can use to practice evaluating whether they are trustworthy or not using the criteria from above

The Wikimedia Foundation (the organization that oversees Wikipedia and its sister websites) also offers training for sources, although it is a bit vague.  First, there is an overview of the process and Wikipedia as a concept which includes a bit about sources. You can do this with students or assign it to them individually to complete: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/training/editing-wikipedia/wikipedia-essentials 

They also offer these two other training modules about sources:

• Evaluating articles and sources

• Sources and citations

Wikimedia Australia has also created a YouTube video about finding sources which is a bit specific to Australia, but the general principles still apply anywhere in the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE6v_02AAF8 

Remember, you CANNOT cite a Wikipedia article in a different language as a source. However, if there is already an article written about a topic in a different language's Wikipedia, students can go and check there and see if there are sources that they might be able to use for the English article they are writing. 

First assignment

What I have my students do for their first assignment is pick an article topic and find at least three trustworthy sources that they can use to write the article. If they cannot find at least three sources fairly quickly, this is probably not going to be a successful topic. Here is what I ask from my students:

By the end of today, please write to me with:

•⁠  ⁠A possible topic

•⁠  ⁠A justification of why it would be a good topic for this project (notability, new topic or article that needs to be improved, your interest in the topic)

•⁠  ⁠At least three sources you have found with information that you could use, along with a justification for why each of the sources is considered trustworthy

I strongly suggest that you use the Wikimedia Foundation tool called "Outreach Dashboard" to manage the project, as you will be able to see precisely what your students have done and track their work during the publishing process. You can create a program for your students by pressing "Create an Independent Program"—you will need to create a Wikipedia account if you don't already have one. Once you create the program, you can get a link for students to sign up with that they can use to create a Wikipedia account that is connected with thie project right away. They can "assign" themselves an article so that you can see what they are working on and so no one else takes the same topic as them  in the class (of course, there is unfortunately no way to guarantee that someone else isn't working on the same article somewhere else, as has happened to one of my students before).

Part II: Planning the article and research poster

Once students have picked a solid topic that you have approved, it is time for them to start planning the article and begin the research process.

Creating a stucture (outline)

One of the things that can be challenging at first is figuring out exactly how to structure the article. Unlike research papers that usually have strict guidelines, even the very best Wikipedia articles about similar topics can vary to a significant degree in terms of their structures. What all Wikipedia articles have in common is the following:

• Lead (similar to an abstract—everything that is mentioned here should be mentioned elsewhere in the article, and it should summarize the most important points. It MUST include citations)

  • According to the Wikipedia Manual of Style: “The first sentence should introduce the topic, and tell the nonspecialist reader what or who the subject is, and often when or where. It should be in plain English.”

• Table of contents (created automatically based on sections and subsections if there are at least three)

• Main body (the amount and order of sections and subsections depends on the topic)

• References (these will be generated automatically as long as there is a reference section already inserted)

The structure of the "body" section is very important, as it will make up about 90% of the article. To figure out how to structure the "body" section, what I have students do is take a look at articles with a similar topics to theirs from the following two lists:

• Featured articles: These are articles that have gone through a rigorous review process and have been found to be of high enough quality that they are good enough to display with pride on the front page of Wikipedia as an example of how an article should be. You can identify a previous "featured article" from the gold star at the top right of the page. There is only one featured article per day, and articles that were once featured can lose their status if the quality goes down over time.

• Good Articles: The standards to be considered a "good" article are less intense than with featured articles, and therefore there are far more "good" articles and it is very likely that they will be able to find a topic similar to their own on this list even if they have a difficult time finding a featured one.

I usually ask students to pick three articles from these two lists with similar topics to their own. Then, they compare and contrast the sections and subsections for each. They will notice that although there are many differences, there will still be a similar overall order to the types of sections. For example, for articles about musicians, after the lead, usually there will be something about their early life, then about their career, then about their personal life, awards they have won, their discography (albums they've released), and references. I would strongly suggest picking a topic as an example together with students, picking three articles together, and doing the comparing and contrasting together as a class first.

Once students have an idea of what sections and subections they can write about based on the other examples they have found, they should make a Google Docs document with the sections they have chosen. As they do their research, they will be able to slowly add information (in addition to anything they may be keeping from the original article if it is one they are improving. Their article structure is likely to change over time, as it is very possible that they might realize later on that it makes more sense to split a section into two parts if they find a lot of information, or they might need to combine two sections together if they are unable to find enough to justify a seperate section. Make sure to have them share the document with you so that you can track their progress. Later on during the peer editing process, it will be possible for other students to leave comments on their document that they can use to improve their draft. 

Research Poster

As mentioned previously, I think that creating a research poster about their project is an excellent opportunity for students to help conceptualize exactly what they are doing and also get feedback about it. In academia, it's very common for researchers to present a poster about not yet published research to get feedback from other experts at conferences that might be useful for them in improving their work in progress. What I suggest is for students to include the following elements in their research poster:

• Your planned “Lead” section for the article (including APA style in-text citations)

• A justification of why the topic fits Wikipedia's criteria for notability

• Your planned article structure and justification based on high-quality existing articles

• At least five secondary sources you plan to include and a justification of why each is considered trustworthy

In terms of the design of the poster, I strongly suggest New York University's guide on research posters.

Here is a rubric I have created for the Wikipedia project research poster that you can use and adapt for your own classroom.

Instead of having students go around and ask each other questions or make comments about the posters, I have had them upload te posters to MS teams and spend at least one lesson where students have to write a constructive question or comment on at least three (or sometimes more) other people's posters. Students then must respond to all of the questions and/or comments left on their own poster. This is graded in the rubric I have included above.

Part III: Drafting and academic writing

Now that students have a topic, outline, and initial lead section (this will be changed and adapted as they continue writing), it's time for them to continue with the research and writing process. Unlike essays they have written before start to finish, it works best for them to keep finding more and more information and to organize it into the sections. Make sure that they keep track of which source goes along with which statement in the article—one easy way to do this is with the "comments" function where students can just post in the URL for now.

During this part of the course, it's important to teach students some aspects of formal, academic language as this is the register in which they need to write their articles. This video might be a good basic introduction for students: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pE-ohVy9e0 

University of York has some useful explanations of academic writing concepts.

The Open University has useful tasks and guides about academic writing.

I strongly reccommend the book Academic Writing for Graduate Students by John M. Swales and Christine B. Feak. Although it is meant for masters and PhD students, there are some excellent tasks (especially in the first chapter and in the appendices) that are useful for C1 level high school students. You might be able to find a copy of the PDF on Google.

Here is a task I created a few years ago where I took some passages from real Wikipedia articles and created fake, unacceptable versions and students first have to select which one is the real example and also explain what the problem with the other one is.

It is highly important that students learn how to paraphrase and not simply quote information. Perdue University's excellent Online Writing lab has a useful guide to paraphrasing as well as sample tasks that students can try.

Here is a sample test that I have given students in a previous year when teaching this part of the unit.

Parts IV-V: Revising the article draft and publishing

The reason why I so strongly suggested having the students work with Google Docs earlier in the project is so now that they have finished their article drafts they can easily share them with others. I traditionally devote an entire lesson to having students exchange articles with one another and then write comments (not actually edit them themselves) on other people's articles. Another reason why it is very important to keep the Google Doc is so that in case what they publish on Wikipedia is deleted you are still able to grade their work. 

When they are fully ready to publish, I strongly suggest having a day where they bring their own computers or use school computers to all at once publish their work so that you are able to help them if they need assistance or anything goes wrong on the technical side. 

WMF has some tutorials that you can use to help teach about publishing on Wikipedia, but they are a bit outdated and do not show the latest version of the Wikipedia visual editor that is far easier for students to use. I strongly suggest using Molly White's very understandable video guide to making Wikipedia edits that you can find here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRRHR1NEOqE 

Here is a rubric I have come up with for this part of the project, although it is likely that this will be updated in the next few weeks. Please not that there are seperate criteria for those writing a new article and those updating an existing one. That means that there should be a total maximum of 68 possible points.

Parts VI-VII: Presentation and conference

Now that students have finished the writing and publishing process, they can present about the overall process. I would like to suggest that during the roughly 7-minute presentation, students focus on the following aspects:

• How and why they chose their topic;

• An overview of the structure of the article and what they added/changed (before and after)

• At least two interesting things they learned about their topic during the process (including references);

• Specific challenges they faced in the research and writing processes;

• Their overall evaluation of the research and writing process;

• Specific aspects of the article that could still be improved by future Wikipedia editors

I have already posted this material elsewhere on the site, but here are two videos that you can use to illustrate the difference between effective and not-so-effective presentations. I also suggest this useful list of signposting phrases to help refresh students before the presentation from Bialystok University of Technology.

I am still working on a rubric for the presentation part of the project which should be done at the end of January—when it is complete, I will post it here. However, it will focus on the following learning outcomes:

• Using knowledge of a foreign language, compares different opinions about the object of study, describes the results of their research, formulates conclusions and logically substantiates them. (VS.A.1.2.2.)

• Prepares for debates, formulates arguments for and against, collects evidence and participates in debates in an international context.(VS.A.1.2.6.)

• Publishes texts created by oneself that are relevant to one's academic interests; uses appropriate language expression to answer questions; asks questions to other presenters. (VS.A.2.3.4.)

• Analyzes the suitability of language learning strategies in learning other areas of study. (VS.A.3.1.1.)

• Systematically uses the pronunciation, stress, rhythm and intonation of a foreign language in communication, including expressing different emotions and attitudes; uses pauses and punctuation according to the purpose of communication. (VS.A.3.2.5.)

• Analyzes the grammatical constructions characteristic of each language and observes grammatical regularities in speech and writing; uses different sentence types, taking into account the specifics of the genre and style. (VS.A.3.3.1.)

• Analyzes the correspondence of formal and informal means of expression to the language and situation. (VS.A.3.3.2.)

Despite having changed the project this year, I am still planning on having my students organize and then run a conference at the end of March in which they either present a printed-out version of their poster (A2) or present their spoken presentation. You can read more about how conferences are organized at Jelgava Spidola State Gymnasium here.

This page is still very much a work in progress, so please feel free to contact me with any questions or comments! josephjhorgan@gmail.com