,
17 tweets,
6 min read
Read on Twitter
Absolutely thrilled to share one of the most rewarding projects I’ve ever worked on with students: Wikipedia entries for African-American artists & printmakers, written by my undergraduate research methods class @Hunter_College this semester (thread)
The semester-long project was inspired by a December tweet by @stephenniem, describing a @wikipedia assignment she devised for students in her Arts of Islam survey
At around the same time, I realized there were a good number of African-American printmakers in @metmuseum collection for whom there were no existing Wikipedia entries. Most of those works came to the museum in a 1999 gift from collectors Reba & Dave Williams
So the assignment came into focus: each student in the class was assigned an individual artist, for whom they would create a completely new Wikipedia entry over the course of the semester
One central component of the project was for students to study a work by their artist firsthand. We were able to do this during a visit to @metmuseum drawings & prints study room, guided by the able hand of assistant curator Allison Rudnick
We also visited the Met’s Thomas J. Watson Library, where each student registered for access. The staff there were incredibly helpful as well, giving us an orientation tour and offering research advice 
Other visits outside the classroom included a study of printmaking techniques @whitneymuseum Sondra Gilman Study Center, & an auction viewing @swanngalleries where @FreemanNigel generously shared his expertise in African-American art
Library staff @Hunter_College offered invaluable advice and guidance. Sarah Ward conducted a thorough library research session, while Iris Finkel visited our classroom several times to help train us in the ways of Wikipedia
For those concerned about logistics, @WikiEducation is dedicated to connecting higher education to Wikipedia. They provided a dashboard that helped me keep track of student work; they can also help you build a timeline of training modules & assignments wikiedu.org
In addition to providing online support, @WikiEducation sent hard-copy pamphlets for me to distribute to students, including a focused guide on editing art history articles on Wikipedia wikiedu.org/blog/2018/10/0…
Course assignments included:
-A close visual analysis of @metmuseum print by their artist
-Requesting books (at least 2-3) via interlibrary loan
-Rough draft of Wikipedia entry
-Peer edit of another student’s entry
-Compiled PDF dossier of cited materials
-A close visual analysis of @metmuseum print by their artist
-Requesting books (at least 2-3) via interlibrary loan
-Rough draft of Wikipedia entry
-Peer edit of another student’s entry
-Compiled PDF dossier of cited materials
While I know some academics may be skeptical of assignments using Wikipedia, it’s actually a great way to teach research skills, because the site generally requires that information come from published sources
Students quickly learned how unreliable web sources can be, as they compared their research from printed sources with the (often incorrect or inaccurate) information posted online
Full disclosure: this did require a good deal of work on my part. There was a lot of back-and-forth communication; checking of citations and sources; line editing and proofreading. But in the end it has been an incredibly rewarding project to work on
I have been tremendously impressed by the hard work and dedication of my students, who took on the responsibility of building their entries with real seriousness of purpose
Today is our last class meeting of the semester, and we’re in our classroom @Hunter_College right now, doing a final editing and upload session. So exciting!
