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finely grained scale has been created specifically to help instructors. The students see their work being published online for a global audience, perhaps becoming more widely read than their own tutors. This exposure, and the prospect of their work being evaluated by strangers, can motivate students to work especially hard. One university professor remarked that this was the first assignment in which students took a keen interest in the library. A downside is that students might experience stage fright when taking their first steps. This can be handled by creating the first drafts elsewhere, perhaps in a virtual learning environment, and adding them to Wikipedia once they have been checked.

Wikipedia Academy Goettingen 2006 - Jimmy Wales (Physics World, 24(09) approx crop)
Wikipedia Academy Goettingen 2006 - Jimmy Wales (Physics World, 24(09) approx crop)

How it all began Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, at a Wikipedia Academy event in Göttingen, Germany, in 2006.

Creative Commons CC-BY-SA/Philipp Bachmann

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optimizing designs

Wikipedia provides two kinds of help for educational assignments. Campus ambassadors are trained to work with staff and students in person, giving them the confidence to use the site. Online ambassadors are experienced Wikipedians – perhaps geographically remote—who monitor and support the students’ contributions. With this volunteer help, which is available if you get in touch with us, instructors and students can take part without having to learn every little detail of Wikipedia.

Wikipedia’s sister projects can also assist education. Wikibooks is another project that invites educational assignments from universities and schools. Unlike Wikipedia, it is not constrained to an encyclopedic style: it allows “how to” books or textbooks, so classes can be set the task of actually writing the textbook for their course. Wikiversity hosts a variety of educational resources and course pages.

In summary, Wikipedia and its related projects have an ambitious goal that we believe is worth pursuing in its own right. Berners-Lee saw that the Web was incomplete without a global, comprehensive, up-to-date encyclopedia. This is what the Wikipedia community is working to provide. If you have access to books about physics, you can help, even in a small way. We can testify that it is rewarding work that develops your knowledge of the subject, while potentially reaching an audience of millions. Clicking the edit button is just the first step.

Physics World September 2011