Wikipdia student intern (2020) Hannah Rothmann has been awarded the 2021 OEGlobal Awards for Excellence Open Student Award for her work curating and creating instructional guidance videos and materials to empower staff, students and members of the public that they had agency to improve the information freely available online.

The resources Hannah created have been shared in playlists on open licenses to YouTube, the University’s Media Hopper Channel and curated on a new 41 webpage website. All with the aim to break down the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of Wikipedia so that any course leader can embed learning about Wikipedia into course programmes and Virtual Learning Environments; to make sharing knowledge openly super easy to learn and engage with everyone. And thereby increase the diversity of editors contributing to Wikipedia and the diversity of content shared online. You can find Hannah’s new curated ‘how to edit Wikipedia’ playlist here on Open.Ed

Her resources and advocacy have already yielded impact; being put to good use by UNICEF, the University of Toronto and course programmes at the University of Edinburgh inc. projects on: Global Health Challenges; Translation Studies; Islamic Art; and Scotland, Slavery and Black History.

Hannah has continued to make herself available and speaks regularly at events to help promote awareness of these resources and speaks passionately and persuasively, about why open knowledge is important; winning new converts to ‘open’ everywhere she goes.

Congratulations Hannah!