OE Week 2025: Wikimedia in the curriculum
As part of our Open Education Week celebrations this year, we’re highlighting the publication of the 2nd Edition of the University of Edinburgh and Wikimedia UK’s booklet of case studies of Wikimedia in Education (pdf). The booklet continues our work collating best practice examples of innovative use of Wikipedia as a learning technology to engage with in the curriculum by including seven new case studies.
The new 2025 edition of the booklet also includes a section on “Going Further with student engagement” and showcases examples of student internships and student work placements focused on delivering Wikimedia-related projects.
Ewan McAndrew has been our Wikimedian in Residence at The University of Edinburgh since January 2016, training, teaching, and collaborating with staff and students on Wikipedia projects. Students from diverse learning communities and a variety of disciplines have benefited from learning new digital and information literacy skills appropriate for the modern graduate. In addition, the published outputs of their learning have an immediate public impact in addressing the diversity of editors and diversity of content shared online.
Wikipedia, inclusive practice and improving representation online
In 2020, a time when many felt disconnected and powerless, Ewan collaborated with Professor Diana Paton and Lucy Parfitt at the University of Edinburgh History Society to run a project to improve public knowledge of Scotland’s Black history, and to help make Scotland’s deep connections to Atlantic slavery better understood. Ewan has written about the project and provided an open seminar with exemplars of how students have engaged with, and been motivated by, researching and publishing their scholarship online in a real-world application of their teaching and learning.
Scotland, Slavery and Black History – Wikipedia in the Classroom
Since the 2016/2017 academic year Ewan has collaborated with staff and students on the the Translation Studies MSc, which supports a wide variety of languages (Arabic, Chinese, Danish, French, German, Japanese, Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish in 2018/2019). Student participation in the Wikipedia translation projects doubled, and trebled in some years, with the format of the project growing and adapting over time in response to the students feedback.
If you’re feeling inspired, you can learn how to participate in a range of Wikimedia’s projects using some of the many guides and videos created by Ewan and our excellent Wikimedia interns over the years.
Or dig in further and run training sessions yourself!
