In 2018, a new innovative course was launched at Tel Aviv University (TAU) -- the first, for-credit, elective course featuring Wikidata in the world, which was approved by the University’s Rector and made available to all undergraduates on campus. The course was adapted from a course model featured Wikipedia that was previously applied at TAU twice. In an attempt to scale up and focus on a broader social impact, knowledge equity and data literacy skills, a third course was designed based on the same model. The course equally featured Wikipedia and Wikidata - Wikipedia’s younger sister project, which is an open, multilingual knowledge base that contains structured, linked-data, launched in 2012. The new course aimed to facilitate a collaborative construction of free knowledge, or rather Open Educational Resources, via Wikipedia, one of the 10 most viewed website in the world, and Wikidata, the biggest “big data” platform humanity created, based on Tim-Berners-Lee’s vision of a Semantic Web.
One of the course’s goals was that participants improve academic, digital and data literacies, and also become critical thinkers when it comes to information consumption. Raising awareness to issues such as copyrights, knowledge gaps and fake news were incorporated into the course, resulting in students becoming more informed as digital citizens. The course also highlighted issues such as social impact, the Gender Gap and Knowledge Equity, with at least half of the articles and Wikidata items created being on notable women in history, which were missing from Wikipedia and Wikidata. Since digital agents like Siri & Alexa rely on Wikidata for their answers, it also meant that these women were missing from the global public sphere. The articles and items were viewed hundreds of thousand times, noting a positive social impact.
The presentation offered here will be divided into two parts:
- A gentle introduction to Wikidata for complete beginners.
- The design, implementation and outcomes of the academic course and its implications in a wider educational perspective.
Following the pre-recorded presentation, a *live* Q&A will be offered, to allow participants of the session to engage directly and ask additional questions about this fairly new learning platform.
After participating in this session, attendees will be able to:
- Learn about Wikidata and its potential as a learning platform for education and research
- Learn about ways to incorporate Wikidata into higher education
- Learn about designing an academic for-credit elective course focusing on producing OERs
- Learn about designing a course focused on active learning, collaborative production of knowledge and a positive learning experience
- Learning about designing with a focus on issues such as copyrights, knowledge gaps, inclusion, diversity and Knowledge Equity, as ways to deal with fake news, improving students' skills and creating a positive social impact
