🧭 What This Article Does

This article documents a service-learning approach that brings civic engagement into the classroom by having students improve Wikipedia’s coverage of state government officials. It explains the course design, the partnership with Wikipedia norms and communities, and the goals of both improving public information and developing students’ civic skills.

📚 How the Course Was Structured

• Students were assigned to create, expand, or improve Wikipedia pages on state-level officeholders and institutions.
• Instruction combined Wikipedia editing practice with background on state government, source evaluation, and ethical editing standards.
• The project integrated classroom assessments with Wikimedia community feedback and article revision histories.

🔎 What Was Measured and Reviewed

• Changes in article presence and visibility for state officials (new articles created, coverage gaps closed).
• Article quality indicators such as sourcing, neutrality, and comprehensiveness based on edit histories and quality tags.
• Student learning outcomes tied to civic knowledge, digital literacy, and public-oriented scholarship via course artifacts and reflections.

💡 Why This Matters

• Addresses persistent public-information gaps about state government actors by leveraging an open, widely used platform.
• Demonstrates a scalable model for combining pedagogy and public service: students gain civic skills while producing verifiable public goods.
• Highlights practical challenges—community norms, source requirements, and sustainability—that instructors and institutions must navigate when linking service learning with live public knowledge platforms.