Introduction

Specific introduction for students is in the next section.

As a part of the BI481, Introduction to Neuroscience course at Boston College, students are assigned the task of writing articles in Wikipedia pertaining to neuroscience. The Society for Neuroscience has recently begun an initiative to update and improve incomplete neuroscience related articles here on Wikipedia. You will play an important role in this initiative through this assignment.

There will be approximately 25 groups of 4 students each. Each student will have a separate Wikipedia account, and each group will develop a proposal to significantly expand and edit an existing incomplete article related to neuroscience (Category:Neuroscience stubs). They will be expected to expand their article to the level as close to Good Article as they can.

Supervisors: I, Joseph Burdo will take care of introducing students to Wikipedia and ensuring they and the project are working within the bounds of Wikipedia guidelines.

Important dates: The project will begin on Monday, September 19th, 2011, and end Wednesday, December 7th, 2011.

Introduction for Students

Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, is an encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone. It has over ten million registered users and 75,000 active contributors(Wikipedians) as of 2009, many of whom are students like you. The vast majority of them are volunteers who find editing this site to be an enjoyable experience, even a hobby. Therefore I hope you will enjoy this exercise! After all, there are not many assignments that tell you to do something that over a million people think is 'fun'. :)

Before starting this assignment, you need to create an account (Wikipedia:Why create an account?). You definitely need to have an account before attempting to edit any page (otherwise I will be unable to confirm if you have completed the assignment). After you create an account, share your user name with your group members, and link to that account from your name next to the topic you chose.

Best places to start	Description
Wikipedia:Tutorial	Has a good video walkthrough
Help:Sandbox tutorial	How to create a user subpage
Template:Invitation to edit/tutorial	This overview page links to some of the more detailed info below
Wikipedia:Cheatsheet	Shows exactly what to type in to get your desired formatting output
Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)	How to find proper sources and referencing
Wikipedia:List of policies and guidelines	How not to tick off the WP community
Wikipedia:FAQ/Editing	Detailed editing "how to" info

if you have any questions, check the Help:Contents and if you cannot find what you are looking for, ask the friendly people at Wikipedia:Help desk - or just contact me.

Remember that Wikipedia is not a project limited only to Boston College. We are guests here and we should all behave accordingly. Please make sure you read Wikipedia:Wikiquette. Our BI481 course is the first one at our university to use Wikipedia to such an extent, so please try to think what impression you want other Wikipedians to have of our university—and of yourselves.

You should expect that the teaching assistant, other students, your friends, even (or especially) other Wikipedia editors (not affiliated with our course) or I will leave you various messages on your talk pages. When working on the exercises below, you should log in to Wikipedia and check your messages as often as you check your email (I strongly recommend you read 'as often' as 'at least daily'). Whenever you have a new message and are logged into Wikipedia, you will see a large orange message, 'You have new messages', on every Wikipedia page you access. To make this message disappear, you should click on it and read the message. Note that it is customary to leave new messages at the bottom of the talk/discussion pages, and to reply to somebody's messages on their talk pages. If you want to leave somebody a message, make sure you are editing their talk page, not their user page. Remember to sign your talk and discussion messages.

Some other useful tips: whenever you are done with an edit and want to save a page, fill out the edit summary box and view a preview of the page after your edit to make sure it looks as you actually want it to look. Only then click the "Save Page" button. You may find the page history tool and watchlist tools to be very useful when you want to check what changes by other editors have been made to the article(s) you are working on.

BI481 Assignment

Now that you are familiar with the Wikipedia environment, it is time to jump into your assignment. You should use the Wikipedia:Sandbox for practice or add a private user subpage to work on your edits before you make them live. DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, CREATE ANOTHER MAINSPACE WIKIPEDIA PAGE (such as [[Neural facilitation/Joe Burdo topic proposal]] SEPARATE FROM YOUR USER ACCOUNT TO PRACTICE EDITING OR TO CLAIM YOUR TOPIC!. You will quickly anger many WP editors and lose points from your assignment. To work on your editing under a user subpage, use the box below or at the bottom of this page.

Simply replace YOUR_PROJECT_TITLE with the title of your project, or any user subpage you'd like to create, click "Create project proposal", and follow the instructions given. MAKE SURE THAT YOU DO NOT REMOVE THE SLASH OR THE TEXT BEFORE IT. If you do you will create a new WP topic in the mainspace for everyone to see (I found this out the hard way).

Important note: make sure you are logged into your account before uploading any work relating to this assignment. If you are not logged in, we cannot verify who has done the edits, thus we will be unable to recognize your work and grade you on it. In other words, if you do any work while not logged in, we will not count that work toward your grade in this course.

Paper Requirements

Project Overview:

Your assignment is to choose one of the neuroscience related topics listed below and expand, refine and reformat as needed with the goal of bringing it up to Wikipedia:Good articles status (see the Wikipedia:Good article criteria to determine what you should be shooting for). You will perform a literature search on that topic, and work with your assigned group on the article, following any and all Wikipedia standards first and foremost. During the active project phase, you will regularly monitor and respond to feedback on your article, and assist other groups by reading and commenting on their work.

Project Details:

This assignment is worth 100 points.

During lecture, you had a chance to form groups. This is your Wikipedia assignment group, and will be the people you work with for the duration of the semester. To claim the topic you would like to write about, place your the names of your group members next to it in the list below. Once you have chosen your topic, as a group write up a one page proposal, outlining important information about it, what points you will cover in your article, a short list of resources, and how you will divide up the workload. Again, make a subpage within your account page and post this information. The deadlines for this assignment are listed below.

Once you have gotten my approval, work together to create an interesting, in depth article about your chosen topic. At this point, work on your stub directly on the existing Wikipedia page (not on your user subpage). It is possible (and probable depending upon your topic) that there will be WP editors outside of your group making small or maybe even large changes to your editing. That's fine; in fact, that's the power of the Wikipedia community. There is a "view history" tab that will let me see what edits you made and what others have done. If your edits conflict in large part with those of another editor, use the "talk" page to work out your differences.

Make sure you familiarize yourself with encyclopedia-type writing before you begin. Writing for Wikipedia is very different from writing an essay or scientific paper, and you need to fit in with the proper format. Please read the following guidelines to get a handle on how you should write your article BEFORE you start writing:

Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, which summarizes what Wikipedia is, and what it is not;
Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, which describes Wikipedia's core approach to neutral, unbiased article-writing;
Wikipedia:No original research, which explains what is, and is not, valid encyclopedic information;
Wikipedia:Verifiability, which explains what counts as a verifiable source and how a source can be verified;
Wikipedia:Citing sources, which describes what kinds of sources should be cited and the manner of doing so; and
Wikipedia:Manual of Style, which offers a style guide.

Wikipedia maintains a high standard of writing, and has taken great pains to elucidate these standards. You need to follow their directions to the letter, since deviating from these standards will invite article deletion. Follow the Wikipedia directions 1st and mine 2nd (i.e., if I give contrasting information, obey Wikipedia)

The article must be at least 10 paragraphs in length, and go into detail about your chosen topic. Take a look at some existing pages to understand the formatting and structure that is typically used in a WP article. Glutamate receptor is a good example of a stub that was worked on during our Fall 2009 class. The first paragraph typically is an intro to the topic, followed by a "contents" box that lists the headings in your article, and then the actual bulk of the topic after that. Feel free to include images and photos, but remember that not all pictures on the web are free for the taking. Familiarize yourself with Wikipedia's image use policy to ensure you are not doing anything wrong. Remember that any violation will be caught and dealt with by the plethora of editors on the site. You may also insert original artwork and diagrams if appropriate and of high quality. In fact many of the stubs would greatly benefit from graphical information.

You must include at least 5 secondary references in the paper (see here again for information on primary vs. secondary resources), and correctly cite your article. However, keep in mind that this is a minimum requirement. You won't be able to write a good article only using 5 references. See here again on how to insert citations and references. You should also link to your page from other Wikipedia pages, so your page is not an orphan. To answer that question in your head: yes, you can go on someone else's article and link to your own. That's the beauty of Wiki!

You are welcome to use Wikipedia:Peer Review and related tools and seek creative comments on your article. If you manage to make your article a Wikipedia:Good Article by the last day of class, you will receive 25 additional points. However, please refrain from voting for each other's articles during this process (note also that anonymous and new user votes are commonly disregarded during FA voting process to prevent any abuses.) In addition, please note that any attempt to cheat on Wikipedia will be regarded as seriously as academic plagiarism.

Once you upload your new article, you are required to respond to any comments on your paper and act accordingly (make proper changes, defend your choices, etc). These comments will give you substantial feedback on your work, and allow you to make your final product better. (Besides, I'm going to spend the semester reading your work and commenting on it--if you listen to my feedback, you'll end up with a much better grade.)

Finally, you will read and evaluate/comment on 3 of your classmates' articles. Please make your comments constructive and useful. You will not get credit for such comments as "good article!" or "I liked it!" Also refrain from any abusive or inappropriate language. Remember, you are the face of Boston College for the semester--make us proud.

At the end of the semester, I will review all of your work using the "view history" tab, the talk page on your topic to see how you responded to editors comments and what changes you made to your topic based on those comments, as well as your user history to see what other topics from our class that you made comments on. Each member of the group should individually and honestly determine the amount of work everyone in the group did (% wise) and email me this information after you have completed your assignment. Make sure you have the names of everyone in your group in the email.

Important Dates

Monday, September 19st, 2011 -- Wikipedia registration due
Wednesday, September 21st, 2011 --Topic chosen by group and claimed on Wikipedia assignment page
Wednesday, September 28th, 2011 --One page proposal due posted to your user page subpage
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011 --Article due on Wikipedia site
Wednesday, November 16th, 2011 -- Peer review due on talk pages
Wednesday, December 7th, 2011 --Final WP article edits due

Please keep track of these dates!

If you are late with any of these due dates, you will lose 5 points per day (yes, including weekend days and holidays). If you and your group have an issue, please come to me as soon as possible to resolve it. If you come to me for help one day before the assignment is due, I may not be able to work something out. Come see me!

Grading

The project is worth 100 points total, and will be graded in parts:

Part 1: Proposal--10 points

As long as you post your proposal by the due date, you will receive the points. If you do not get your subject approved, you will not get credit for any of the assignment.

Part 2: Written Article--75 points

Part 3: Peer Review--15 points

Group Percentages: Since you are working in groups, I need a way to know how well you worked together, and if you all contributed equally to the project. At the end of the assignment, you will each email to me a "group percentage", telling me the percentage of work each group member lent to the project. Be honest; I will use all 3 assessments to determine if you shared the workload evenly. You will be marked down if you don't do your fair share.

Ways to Lose Points

As mentioned above, if you are late turning in any portion of the assignment, you will lose 5 points per day (including weekend and holidays) late. I will try and remind you of due dates, but turning things in on time is ultimately up to you and your group. If you create a separate mainspace page for your topic instead of using your user subpage during the proposal period or instead of editing the stub directly after your proposal is accepted, you will lose 10 points.

Grading rubric Wikipedia Writing Assignment (Written article = 75 of 100 points)

Format (15 pts):

Paper is on one of the assigned topics and was approved
Paper is at least 10 paragraphs in length of actual writing
Paper follows the standard Wikipedia structure for good, full length articles
There is no more than one grammatical/spelling error throughout the paper (everybody gets 1 mistake for free!). Note that this includes spurious capitalisation, eg. Frontal Lobe Epilepsy rather than frontal lobe epilepsy.

Content (60 pts):

______ Introduction summarizes the subject according to Wikipedia standards

______In-paper citations are present and used correctly according to Wikipedia format see Wikipedia:Citing sources

______ Bibliography includes at least 5 secondary resources, and is formatted correctly according to Wikipedia format

______ Body of the paper encompasses all reasonably researched information on the subject. Paper should conform to Wikipedia writing standards (Wikipedia:Neutral point of view) and explore chosen subject in adequate detail. (Note: “adequate detail” means I shouldn’t be able to do a quick literature search and find information not included in the paper. I want you to search current and past literature and summarize all the information you find into an easy-to-read and understand paper. If you are missing major bits of information, or have included incorrect information without citations to back up your findings, you will lose points here).

______ Body includes a section on “current” or “future” research that touches on any on-going investigations in chosen area which may not be published yet, or are in the process of being published.

______ All attempts were made to address and fix any and all comments/suggestions given by the course and Wikipedia community during peer review. If the change was not made, adequate explanation was given (which did not include "this is for an research assignment, so leave us alone)

Ways to Lose Points

______ Minus 5 points per day late

______ Creating a separate topic page outside of your user space

______ Evidence of plagiarism found (Please see BC's Academic Integrity Policy for more information)

______ More than 2 direct quotes in the paper, minus 5 points per extra quote

Extra Credit

______ If your article is chosen as a Good Article, you will receive 25 extra credit points

Project Topics and Links

Group and topic
1. Please put the names of all group members by the topic of your choice below, and use correct WP formatting so your name links to your user page.

You can use the box below to create your project proposal. Simply replace YOUR_PROJECT_TITLE with the title of your project, click "Create project proposal", and follow the instructions given.MAKE SURE THAT YOU DO NOT REMOVE THE SLASH OR THE TEXT BEFORE IT. If you do you will create a new WP topic in the mainspace for everyone to see (I found this out the hard way).

Contact Information

Please leave questions or comments on my user talk page or for a little more information about me feel free to visit my user page. My email is burdoj@bc.edu

Acknowledgements

I would like to sincerely thank Adrienne Brundage for her support in developing this assignment and for the use of her Wikipedia assignment template from her Entomology course at Texas A&M University.