I'm teaching an advanced experience course for senior college students called "Environmental Disruptors of Development". We've identified some stubs relevant to our course material, and over this semester students will work independently on these topics. I welcome any help that the wiki community can provide! You can learn about our wikipedia project guidelines at User:Hakeleh/BI513 Fall 2011.

• Hey Hakeleh, how are things? I'm glad you are finding a use for Wikipedia. I'm not sure if you have considered getting in touch with our education project, but I placed a note on their noticeboard pointing to your course description--please see Wikipedia:Education noticeboard. There should be plenty of folks there who can help with whatever you need, including technical and other support. And drop me a line if you think I can help; I'm also an administrator here so I have some magic powers. Good luck, Drmies (talk) 03:50, 14 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • On that note, you may find our Training for educators and Training for students helpful. The former has info about our structured course pages, which you may find useful for running your course. We have a Campus Ambassador at BC, in case you'd like some help from an experienced Wikipedian in person. Good luck!--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 17:38, 14 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Hakeleh, I just posted a welcome template on User talk:Prewmi and am looking for the others. It would be helpful if you had a list of users/students on User:Hakeleh/BI432 Spring 2013, I suppose. When I taught a class using Wikipedia I had a gradebook on-wiki and found it very helpful to be able to keep track of things. I had a table where they could check off whether they had done this or that assignment and that was simpler than keeping track of all the individual assignments in my (QuattroPro) gradebook. But maybe you have something like that already--I'm not browsing through all your sub pages. BTW, Sage, above, is the MacDaddy of WP Education, or at least one of them. Good luck, Drmies (talk) 02:31, 16 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • (Let's keep this here, if you don't mind--my talk page is high-traffic and I don't always see everything.) I posted welcome templates on all the talk pages I could find: that is not a small class, and I applaud you for trying such a project with so many students. Well, I wish them the best for next week. If they start playing around (outside of your project) a bit, reading articles and maybe making an edit here or there, they might have some fun and learn some skills along the way--but it is an acquired taste, haha. Again, let me know if there's anything I can do. If I can't help, I know some skilled people with lots of experience so don't be afraid to call on me. (If you need me, just post a quick note in a new section at the bottom of my talk page, or post a talkback template if you know how to do that.) Drmies (talk) 02:56, 16 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • I have them working in teams of three (3 students revising/ expanding one article) so hopefully it won't be too bad. I'm already overwhelmed with the semester! The 'blur' stage, as one colleague put it. Thanks for pointing out the D Brown post. I've feeling very special right now...Hakeleh (talk) 03:05, 16 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Drmies! Your welcome message is great- thanks. Hopefully they will do the tutorial for students, and I'll put the education assignment banner on my pages too.Hakeleh (talk) 03:14, 16 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The ambassador working with another BC class is User:GabrielF. Nice course page you've got! If you'd like to use one of our new semi-automated course pages (which have built-in tables for enrolled students and which articles they are working on, and also has some tools for following what your students are doing) it would be easy to port that over. Here's what our new course page system looks like: Education Program:Example University/Example Course (2013 Q1). (You can enroll in that if you like, to see how it works. Check out the "Summary and students" section at the bottom, which is the automated part.)--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 12:30, 16 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Sage! This looks really very very very helpful! Will be much easier to keep up with the articles, and I like the looks of your sample syllabus for working on pages. I'm going to figure out what of that I can adapt and use now. Will definitely help me get a handle on the mid-semester blur. Definitely the table for keeping tabs on the students pages. I'll look through the page system again. Just got too excited and had to let you know immediately. Is it better if I reply to you here or on your talk page?Hakeleh (talk) 00:19, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Here is fine, although if I don't respond to a message you leave here within about a day, ping me on my talk page. I'll go ahead and give you the course instructor right so that you can get started with the course page extension whenever you're ready. Let me know if you need any help with the course page.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 00:22, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oooo- course instructor. Thanks! So much cool stuff. I was just learning about your project with education US and canada. Very cool- great stuff. So glad that you found me! (I seem to only have the words "cool" and "stuff" tonight...)Hakeleh (talk) 00:26, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • I told you Sage was great. And his kids are almost as goodlooking as mine^{[citation needed]}. Drmies (talk) 00:10, 19 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sage and Drmies- let me know what you think! I have a bit more polishing to do of the more detailed syllabus. Hakeleh (talk) 02:24, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Looks great! I hope you and your class didn't have too much trouble with switching course pages mid-stream.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:59, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure they'll let me know!Hakeleh (talk) 15:45, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. It looks like you don't have an online ambassador for your Developmental Biology (Spring 2013) course. If you need one, I'm available. If you're interested, let me know, and I'll sign myself up. Cheers.Smallman12q (talk) 19:03, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Smallman12q! Would be super to have an online ambassador! Join us! I'm planning an in class wikipedia work session on Thursday the 14th. Hakeleh (talk) 21:32, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've signed myself up as OA for Developmental Biology. If you need help with anything, feel free to ask. I've also sent you an email, if you want email correspondence. Cheers.Smallman12q (talk) 12:42, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Messages[edit]

Hello! So sorry for the delay posting to the main page. All three of us had all our information on three separate computers and didn't have a time to meet and put it all together until tonight. As you can see now (hopefully) our article is up and running! Claritycr (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 02:40, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hello,

I've started looking over some of the contributions and have a few suggestions. I'll do more thorough reviews later on.

• When citing books, please provide page numbers such as in Ectoderm
• When reusing the same citation, use a WP:REFNAME. This way the same citation appears as a,b,c...
• Wikipedia article's aren't essays. The exact wiki style is difficult for new editors to fully grasp.
• Add more wikilinks. If it's a growth factor, enzyme, chemical, hormone, term like epiboly in ectoderm, etc it should be wikilinked the first time it's used. Also, provide the initial full name and abbreviation such as "Hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia (HED)". Red links are okay.
• Every paragraph should have at least one reference
• Use reliable secondary sources. These are sources that do not present new information, but rather an overview of existing information. A lot of the sources used were secondary so that's good.
• Unfortunately, a lot of good images that could be used have copyright restrictions.

Overall, the articles are pretty good for first time editors. A lot of the developmental biology and embryology are in rather lousy shape (many aren't even tagged with a wikiproject) so these contributions are an improvement.

I will nominate several of the articles for Did you know so they'll appear on the Main Page under the "Did you know...".

If you have any questions, feel free to let me know here, my talk page, or via email. Cheers.Smallman12q (talk) 23:34, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your help, Smallman12q! We had a great work session during class yesterday. We developed a punch list for things that everyone needs to work on cleaning up over the next few days. Thanks for adding to it. Any specific suggestions or examples on how to wikify would be very helpful. Thanks also for nominating for "did you know"! Each team is supposed to post to several other pages to help connect their page to the wider world and try to get some input from those in the Molecular Cell Biology/ Medicine/ Biology/ Neuroscience portals. How do we get the tags from those portals/ projects onto the article talk pages that are lacking them? Thanks again for your help! Hakeleh (talk) 13:57, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've nominated the articles that qualify (9 of them) for DYK...you can follow their progress at Education Program talk:Boston College/Developmental Biology (Spring 2013)/DYK. I don't really have specifics as to how best to wikify...it's akin to learning how to write journal papers...takes practice. Relevant terms should be wikilinked once in the intro, and once in the rest of the article. When wikilinking plural, do like so: [[transcription factor]]s putting the s outside the brackets which shows as "transcription factors". Some articles like Silencer (DNA) have almost no wikilinks...and they should. Paragraphs should be written clearly and succinctly. Every paragaph should have at least one citation (more inline citations, rather than one at the end are better, even if its the same one). The WikiProjects aren't very active as a whole anymore as there are so many articles now...rather, editors watch certain categories of those projects or certain articles via the WP:Watchlist. Regarding the tags, those are the messages you on the talk pages that state "This article is within the scope of Wikiproject so and so....". The messages come from wikiproject templates such as Biology, Genetics, Medicine...etc The templates appear at the top of the talk page in the form of

{{WikiProject Biology|class=C|importance=low}}
{{WikiProject Genetics|class=C|importance=low}}

The class tells the article's quality according to their wikiproject's scales such as Wikipedia:WikiProject_Biology/Assessment#Quality_scale. The importance tells the article importance in that project from top to mid to low. The tags also add the article to relevant wikiproject categories/watchlists so they'll be watched. The tags and assesments are generally added by more experienced wikipedians...so you don't need to worry about them now. The lack of tags indicates a lack of activity.Also, don't worry about the citation reuse too much, there's a bot that can autofix that now=). If you need anything else, let me know. Cheers.Smallman12q (talk) 23:52, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments 1[edit]

• Histone methylation will appear in DYK tonight as "... that histone methylation helps regulate gene expression by controlling whether DNA is exposed to proteins and transcription factors?"
• Please make sure students know how to use the history page. You should be able to view what an article looked like at any time since its creation. This comment from Histone methylation "I am not sure what it looked like before your editing, but I am sure much needed information has been added" suggests they don't know how to fully use the history page.
• Though I haven't found any in your course, please go over what plagiarism is as its been found in several other courses=/.Smallman12q (talk) 12:24, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• • Thanks for this work, Smallman12q!! I've noticed that several of the Project sites have 'did you know' sections- where will the histone methylation DYK be posted? I'm passing along this great news to the Histone Methylation team. Will be nice impetus for them to step up their game in tightening up the site. I'll review the history page and how it works in class tomorrow, and do another spiel on plagarism. Thanks for checking my student's articles for plagiarism. Do you have specific sites you use that test text for plagiarism? I usually just copy a section of material that is suspicious into a google search window and see what comes up. Its helped me track it down in the past. Hakeleh (talk) 13:41, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Did you know (WP:DYK) features "hooks" (one sentence containing an interesting factoid) from new or recently expanded (5x) on the Wikipedia front page at WP:Main Page below the day's featured article. Hooks are run in batches of ~7 and appear for ~6 hours. Histone methylation is in Queue 2 so it should appear within a day or so. Will save you a screenshot. The Main Page typically gets ~1 million views per day, and articles in DYK typically get 1k-10k clicks (meaning someone clicked on the article and went to read it). You can see the page views of an article by going to http://stats.grok.se/ and typing in the article name, or by clicking "Page view statistics" in the history tab. The page history tab should be easy to use. You basically click on the date you want to view, and if you need older revisions, you click "older 50" or "500" at the bottom. For plagiarism, we usually google suspected text, and spot-check the references to make sure it isn't copied. There are also some automated bots/programs used, but people are better. Cheers. Smallman12q (talk) 14:53, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The histone methylation dyk is up. I've saved a screenshot at http://i.imgur.com/XfO0lXv.png in case you miss it. Cheers.Smallman12q (talk) 00:15, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Thanks for the screen shot! I'll add it to my annual report (ha!). I'll let the students know. Very fun. Hakeleh (talk) 00:25, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The neural folds dyk is in Queue and should appear at night on April 15. You can see the spike in pageviews for histone methylation DYK. Also, for the more long-term, better quality articles get more views. I'll review/cleanup some of the articles Monday night. Cheers. Smallman12q (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 13:07, 14 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't really provide much feedback, but overall, for new editors, the articles turned out quite good! Wikilinking, secondary sources for most of the content, proper layout, and images were well done=). Cheers. Smallman12q (talk) 02:41, 3 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for all of your support, Smallman12q! The feedback I've received so far from the students has been very positive (they save the negative stuff for the anonymous evaluations, of course!). I thought it went very well. Of course I am working on grading them now! I'll be doing this same project again in the Fall (teaching the same class). Do you have suggestions on tweaks for next time around? Want to be our ambassador again (or perhaps I should let you recover before asking....!). Have a great summer. AND- thanks so much for the DYK nominations. I think we ended up with 4 pages up there! Students were VERY stoked about this (although possible not more than I was!). Very fun to see the page views bounce up. Hakeleh (talk) 15:23, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Hakeleh! I was poking through the course list for Fall 2013 and saw you are teaching a Developmental Biology course that doesn't have an online ambassador. I would love to be an ambassador for your course if you still need one! Best, Keilana|^{Parlez ici} 03:00, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's awesome, I'm so excited to join you guys! Feel free to shoot me an email (keilanawikigmail.com) as well, I would love to read those reflection comments. If you can convince someone to write about Drosophila development, I might jump out of my skin, that would be so fantastic! I think it's going to be a good semester. I think we should talk about logistics as well, I'm obviously not located in Boston but I'm quite willing to Skype/Google Hangout/phone students to give them all the support they need. Also, if you're looking for a second OA, I worked with User:Klortho last semester and he was a joy to work with. (Nicole Marthe Le Douarin just went on my to-do list for when I get back from Hong Kong. She is awesome!) I'm really stoked to work with you this semester! Best, Keilana|^{Parlez ici} 22:54, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Great! Now just need to get the course put together. I'm trying to construct a table with my WP course timeline. UGH. Thought it would be fun. Would you mind looking at the table in my sandbox? User:Hakeleh/sandbox. I can't get the text to stay in the right boxes. I started by adding the table template, then cutting and pasting my words into the right boxes in the Edit source window- then it doesn't display correctly. What's weird is that it does look okay on the Edit beta site, until I save it, then the boxes get messed up again.

The problem is in the beta editing, it sometimes doesn't handle tables very well. I'll fix it in the edit source. Sorry it's so confusing, can I help in any way? Keilana|^{Parlez ici} 03:47, 9 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ahh, sorry, I'm not sure where everything is supposed to go. Do you want to send me a word-processed table that I can convert into wikitext? That might be easier. Keilana|^{Parlez ici} 03:56, 9 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Kay! I did it! And just moved the table to my course page. I had made the table in excel, then saved it this time around in a tab delimited instead of csv delimited file. Then copy pasted and polished up some of the wikitext in the edit source box. Didn't even mess with the beta editor. Thanks very much for offering to fix it up for me- I was quite tied to the task, and once I fiddle a little this morning I realized I had it figured out. Don't worry- I'll use you A LOT in the coming months! AND- So far I have 22 students in the class, which means 7 groups working on 7 different wikipedia pages. I'll get in touch with klortho and see if he wants to join the party. If you two think that just one OA is enough for this course, then maybe we don't need klortho. You two can decide. Enjoy Hong Kong and the last days of summer! Hakeleh (talk) 15:05, 9 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

OH NO- I messed up the course page wizard when I cut and pasted my timeline table. I clearly deleted the information that said it was part of the wizard and shouldn't be deleted. UGH. And- I can't revert to the previous version- says there is a database error. Ah well- the novice fraking everything up. Can you fix it?Hakeleh (talk) 15:15, 9 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed it! This stuff is addictive. I MUST DO SOMETHING ELSE to prepare my family for the oncoming school year!!! Oh- I left an invitation on Klortho's talk page.Hakeleh (talk) 15:36, 9 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry about that database error... known issue, and I hope we can get the history working like it should in the coming weeks.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 15:36, 9 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oh- so that aspect of it is not something that I messed up! That's comforting for me, anyway. And I found the text I needed to add to the end of my table so the wizard was happier. Thanks for keeping watch over my stuff. You are super! Hakeleh (talk) 15:56, 9 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, guys, I'm afraid I have to decline ... as I mentioned on my talk page, I am just overextended. I have a very intense project at work that will run through October, as well as a class I'm taking, and I'm hoping to OA for User:Sherry_Ogg. With 22 students, I would suggest that you get a second OA, though. Keilana is awesome and incredible, but that's a lot of students. Cheers! Klortho (talk) 22:14, 9 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Hakeleh. Please check your email; you've got mail!
Message added 18:53, 20 August 2013 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Keilana|^{Parlez ici} 18:53, 20 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia chemistry has had an uneven experience with these homework assignments. See this discussion Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Chemistry#New_articles_from_a_class_project. Some suggestions:

• Wikipedia chemistry is delighted to have new contributors, feel free to ask for help.
• Wikipedia does not exist to support homework, and all content risks revision and even deletion - happens to all of us.
• Quality of contributions to Wikipedia is often inversely proportional to length, and most of the best contributions to this forum are brief.
• Contributors to themes touching on human health are always encouraged to review WP:MEDRS.
• Students and especially Wikipedia both benefit when content is supported by reviews and books per WP:SECONDARY. Inexperienced students often cite primary journals but they might lack the expertise to select such sources judiciously. Best to avoid them. It is very bad idea to require each student to add a fixed number of references - Wikipedia editors prefer emphasis on quality vs quantity.
• Students are encouraged to add material incrementally, vs dropping an "essay bomb" on articles. Students will get better feedback from the community of editors.
• Per the chemistry MOS, chemistry articles emphasize chemistry, not safety, since safety is authoritatively covered in the MSDS. See here
• You are warmly encouraged to communicate with the community of editors, for example Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemistry, which can offer advice on topic selection!

Best wishes, --Smokefoot (talk) 00:06, 3 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed in a couple threads you expressed concerns about students' access to certain sources. Have you heard of the Wikipedia Library? Its purpose is, more or less, to facilitate good research and to get good sources in the hands of Wikipedia editors. To that end it has partnered with a number of databases/journals to provide free access to Wikipedians. But to address the matter of access to specific sources e.g. Smokefoot recommends, there's the Resource Exchange. Basically the idea is that you request a particular article and if someone there has access to it -- and if it's through a database that allows sharing for educational purposes -- they will send it to you. I would advise taking a look at the Exchange policy though, as it does sometimes wade into the murky areas of fair use. Just an idea. If you use it, I'd be curious to hear about your experience. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:35, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hadn't heard of this, Ryan. Will look into, let the students know and will try to let you know what we figure out. Hakeleh (talk) 15:40, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I recommend tasking the kids to use "grown-up" citations obtainable by big searching engines, e.g. Web of Science, Scifinder. Get good high-level journal and book sources like you and I are expected to tap into for our "real world" of publications and proposals. I dont see any reason to dumb it down for them much less Wikipedia. At least where I teach, our advanced undergrads are expected to learn about good peer-reviewed citations. These students often seem to go for esoteric or parochial (US state-based DNR or EHS sites for example). Yes, virtually all the good stuff is subscription based, but at your institution, that poses no barrier. My usual very strongly stated case, I know...--Smokefoot (talk) 15:53, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, we do this. Our library has an excellent engine that simultaneously searches Web of Science, Scifinder, Toxnet, and a bunch of other databases in Biology and my students learn to use this early in semester. Our issue isn't that we can't find or don't have access to good sources, it is instead that for some topics there are not yet GOOD secondary sources, and all we have are GOOD primary sources, which I realize we should 'try' to steer clear of in WP for reasons of difficulty in correct interpretation (though I can handle some of this, as I expressed to you in different post), AND difficulty of general public in physically AND intellectually accessing primary sources. Hakeleh (talk) 16:15, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Got it. If I understand you, I thought there might be a problem with the absence of good sources, just not much out there in books and reviews. My sympathies because primary sources are trickier for students to deal with; you and I even have a hard time understanding them at times. Also, my students are completely impressed by anything published even in a crappy journal or by unimpressive research group. And they were very frustrated by my seemingly capricious judgement of what is crap and what is good. So I had to run my course-Wikipedia thing in reverse: we roamed around in topic-space for areas where the great sources exist and then wrote our wiki articles. This is the reason I was (ineptly) supplying your students with reviews that they could extract from. If I understand what you are trying to do (I am not paying huge attention), your writing goals are very ambitious. Good luck. --Smokefoot (talk) 16:39, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]