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reach not only the millions of anonymous Wikipedia users out there, but also people in her own inner circle.When you start studying more advanced topics in chemistry, it gets harder to explain them to your family and friends, Amos said. It's nice to show them something you did that they can understand.Since the first experience in 2008, McNeil and other chemistry faculty have used the Wikipedia project in five other courses, and the approach itself has gone through some revisions. For example, students now provide peer review feedback to one another at the outline and draft stages, pointing out problems with repetition, structure and flow. And, at the suggestion of one class member, McNeil and her graduate student instructor Cheryl Moy created a handbook that offers guidance in editing chemistry entries. Moy also is creating online video tutorials on editing Wikipedia.To evaluate the project's success, co-author Brian Coppola, who is the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Chemistry, helped design and administer a survey to students that asked how the Wikipedia project compared with other classroom activities, such as lectures and problem sets, in achieving specific course learning goals. The results showed that the Wikipedia project contributed more than other activities to the goals of communicating science to a diverse and general audience, working collaboratively, and identifying appropriate references and other resources for building an argument.The educators also enlisted a specialist in writing and rhetoric, professor Anne Gere, who holds joint Rosetta Stone Portuguese Levev 1-3
appointments in the Department of English Language and Literature and the School of Education and directs the Sweetland Writing Center. Gere compared Wikipedia entries before and after student editing and concluded that the revised versions were much more engaging and accessible to nonspecialists, thanks to clear explanations and the inclusion of real-world examples, historical contexts and illustrations.In early May, McNeil and Moy traveled to San Francisco to discuss the project at a meeting on using Wikipedia as a teaching tool.We were very excited about the work Anne McNeil has been doing with Wikipedia in her chemistry classes, so when we decided to bring together a small group of professors to the Wikimedia Foundation office to present and discuss their work with Wikipedia, Anne was the natural choice, said Rod Dunican, the foundation's education programs manager. Anne and her graduate student Cheryl Moy shared with us their keen insights and the pitfalls and successes of using Wikipedia as a teaching tool. Through Anne's classes, students at the University of Michigan greatly enhance the chemistry body of knowledge on Wikipedia.McNeil plans to try the Wikipedia assignment in an undergraduate honors course, where instead of advanced concepts in chemistry, students will work on entries about famous Rosetta Stone Korean Levev 1-3
chemists and chemical reactions named for scientists.By writing the article and creating the handbook, she hopes to encourage other chemistry professors to use Wikipedia projects in their classes.It's a truly educational endeavor, McNeil said. The students learn a lot and they're really proud of what they produce, but in the process they're also improving the chemistry knowledge that's out there in the world, which benefits the chemists who rely on these sites, as well as general readers seeking to broaden their knowledge.In addition to McNeil, the paper's authors are Moy, Locke and Coppola. Funding was provided by the U-M IDEA Institute and the U.S. Department of Education.