Wiki Post Survey Results:

Question 1: How familiar are you with using Wikipedia?

Mean: 4.33

Median: 5

Question 2: How familiar are you with editing Wikipedia?

Mean: 3.20

Median: 3

Question 3: How much do you trust information on Wikipedia?

Mean: 3.63

Median: 4

Question 4: How would you describe the quality and quantity of Wikipedia sites dedicated to the genes and researchers important in chronobiology?

Mean: 2.85

Median: 3

Question 5. How comfortable are you with using online resources (Pubmed, Web of Citation Index, and Google Scholar) to find and cite scientific articles?

Mean: 4.35

Median: 4

Question 6: How comfortable are you with reading and interpreting scientific articles?

Mean: 4.18

Median: 4

Question 7: How comfortable are you with writing about science?

Mean: 3.8

Median: 4

Question 8: How much did you learn from this project?

Mean: 3.98

Median: 4

Question 9: How often do you expect to use your editing skills in the future?

Mean: 2.95

Median: 3

Question 10: How many hours did you spend on this project? Please give your best estimate and also comment on the positive and negative aspects of this experience. Additionally, please add your student ID number to the end of your answer so you may receive participation points.

  • 6
  • I spent about 5 hours on the first, 2 on the second and 4 on the third for a total of about 11 hours. My biggest criticism is that I often found myself editing text that was copied and pasted and sometime uncited by other students from websites. In general I thought this was a great project and i learned a lot about how to use wikipedia as well as about the two topics I was assigned.
  • I spent about 15-20 hours total on this project. Most of the time was spent looking for relevant articles and becoming comfortable with the editing format for Wikipedia.
  • Between researching and writing, I'd say around 9 hours; most of that time was spent researching for the gene. There was also quite a learning curve with the editing. I think having 3 different editing phases worked well, but it was frustrating to be working on the same site at the same time as other people. I think it would be more constructive to have people actually work in groups during each phase so they can collaborate rather than edit each other.
  • I spent about 7 hours total on this project. Probably about 3 hours on the first project and then 2 hours on the last two. I thought it was really beneficial to find scientific papers and learn how to summarize what was important from those papers. A negative aspect was that it was kind of stressful feeling like I was competing with the other editors of my wiki sites.
  • I spent about 6 hours on this project, roughly 2 hours for each site (3 total). This project went well the only problem may be the distribution of work. Because three people were editing a site, 1 person may have written a huge chunk and another person just some editing.
  • Probably around 12-15 hours - about 4 hours per site on average. Learning how to edit wikipedia was very cool. More importantly, though, I feel like I've contributed to the effort to increase public awareness and appreciation of the scientific aspect of biological clocks (which I've learned in this class can be significantly lacking). It was actually quite challenging at first to figure out how to make improvements to an existing site that would enhance the material and be scientifically accurate but not just look like random facts were thrown in. It seemed to get easier by the end though, and getting to look back at my first site again after all my classmates had edited it was very cool because I could definitely see the improvement.
  • I spent no more than 2 hours per site, probably less. It was a creative assignment which made it more fun, but it was also kind of ambiguous to know what to edit.
  • About 9 hours. The only frustrating part of editing was the use of code, which I thought wikipedia would have removed for some sort of basic editor by now. It makes it less accessible, but maybe this is a good thing? Also, I thought there could be a benefit to having a standardized page layout prescription, for genes and biographies. Overall I enjoyed contributing to the public knowledge base though and felt it was a good use of my abilities as a student.
  • approx 14h pro: I learned a lot through picking out the most essential information and synthesizing it. Also, I found myself looking for the newest papers and this forced me to keep updated with the field. Cons: I felt the grading rubric was too vague and actually made it more stressful to decide what meant doing a good job.
  • 15 hours. I thought it was a really cool experience to see my edits appearing on wiki and knowing that I had done enough work to stand by what I was putting up. I thought the critiques were presented a bit harshly and made me think that I had totally bombed the assignment. This was one of the most interesting, creative, and engaging things I've ever done at my four years at washu. Maybe a little disclaimer about how good we had done in the actual page with the criticisms itself would've helped a bit? You did do a good job in making us letting us know that we did what you wanted the next day though.
  • 3 hours. I enjoyed this experience because it was a new and different way to learn and convey information to the public.
  • 10 hours It was a little annoying to look at things in edit mode since it became really cluttered with references and other formatting edits that it became hard for me to keep track of where I was.
  • The research and editing per article took about 2+ hours; total time spent was about 7-8 hours on this project. I must admit it was rewarding (studying for the last exam, I looked something up on the newly made wiki article for per gene.) I didn't like the competition aspect of multiple people editing the same page.
  • For all three assignments added together, I would say about 6 hours or so. At first it took longer because I had to figure out how to edit and all that. However, the assignment became more and more clear as we moved on and got feedback, so it didn't take as long and I believe quality improved. I liked the way it was divided and how we weren't allowed to do too much, so the amount of work could be more equal.
  • Around 5 or 6 hours (but I'm super slow).
  • I spent about 6 hours on the project. The positive aspects of this experience were learning how to edit wikipedia pages and getting a more in depth understanding of a gene and a person involved in chronobiology. One thing that I saw as a negative aspect was that since edits were done by so many different people independently some of the information seemed randomly inserted without enough context or information went into too great of detail about certain things without giving a good overview. It might have been better if there had been more collaboration and communication among students editing the same page, but I am not sure what the best way to accomplish that would be.
  • 14 hours. Positive: It was a unique and interesting project. I learned more about Wikipedia editing. Negative: I didn't know when to stop. Instructions should be clearer in this regard. Resulted in anxiety over whether what I wrote was good enough.
  • I probably spent a total of about 7 hours on this project. The positive aspects of the project was being able to see change immediately and to be able to go back and edit more of your work when done, being able to fix things I hadn't caught before. Not exactly a negative aspect but a disconcerting aspect is to see other people go back and change things you did, in both phrasing and information. Sometimes this was simply because those particular portions needed more work and I had not gotten back to it. But other times I think people changed something simply to their personal preference, which is frustrating when you worked hard on that sentence or section. Overall though I found the project very interesting and immediately fulfilling.
  • 2 hours
  • 8hrs total for the three edits I enjoyed being able to apply my knowledge to a real-life application. Editing Wikipedia made me feel like I was reaching out to the general public and teaching them. That was great. However, I felt that there were too many people assigned to each site. It made put more pressure on us to contribute to the site, especially since we were graded on the quality of our edits. I felt that the second edit of the first site was difficult for a similar reason. It would have been nice to assign one person to one site, but I understand that that is not necessarily feasible given the number of students in our class.
  • Hours spent: 5 This project was enjoyable because it allowed me to not only learn about the material but also learn how to interpret the work of other scientists and explain it is a way that is comprehensible to the masses, a skill I can imagine using in the future. One difficult aspect was the fact that I did not coordinate with other students working on the same site, so I was unsure about editing their work. I addition, sometimes it was hard to add information, because there is only so much that can be written that is relevant and other students had already written it.
  • 15 hours
  • 10 hours
  • 4 hours. Positive: Get to understand how Wiki works.
  • ~6 hours Positive: learned a great deal about editing Wikipedia as well as about the 2 articles that I edited. Negative: It was hard at the beginning to figure out if I was doing enough or making the right types of edits.
  • ~6 The editing of wikipedia was a bit technical, which was somewhat annoying. What worried me more, however, was the uncertainty of what, exactly, I needed to do to get a good grade. One of my articles, Pittendrigh, had virtually nothing about him, so it was easy to write 250 words on the man, but my other article, Melanopsin, was already more filled in. I was worried that just "filling in the gaps" would not be enough. I know it is hard to articulate a more precise measure of grading, but that uncertainty of what I should be doing was the most stressful part of the project to me.
  • 8 hours I thought the project was a great idea. I think everyone learned a lot and we were able to add a lot of good information. I thought that 3 edits may have been a bit much. I was reaching for more information at the end.
  • 2hrs Positive: I learned how to edit wikipedia articles Negative: I feel that this should be an extra credit assignment, or we should get more info about how to edit wikipedia before doing the assignment.
  • I spent about 7 hrs on the project as a whole. I enjoyed the collaborative experience. The editing took longer than I expected especially entering in sources. Also, I felt that the quality of the edits and changes went down by the 3rd edits so it might be better to do fewer edits or emphasize quality over quantity.
  • Wiki 1- 2 hours Wiki 2 - 1 hours Wiki 3- 2 hours
  • About 3 hours total. I liked feeling like I was fixing and improving the site to benefit the people looking for info on Wikipedia. What I didn't like was that I didn't feel like I was an authority enough on the subject and so it was hard knowing if I was justified in adding, editing, or deleting info that other people had added. What was also hard was not being able to collaborate with my classmates who were working on the same Wiki site as me; I wish we would have been able to compile the information to add and delete together so that I didn't feel like I had nothing to say when other people already edited what I was going to edit.
  • 3-5 hours per Wiki edit. I spent the majority of the time looking for and reading literature. It was interesting to read current research papers on certain genes/proteins. It was also very gratifying to see that a wiki article develop into a mini-review article. I think would be very helpful in the future if more gene/proteins/molecules had wiki articles that were complete and reasonably up to date on current research. It would make quick searches much easier. Wiki editing was a novel experience, so I think the students would benefit from a "how to edit wiki" lecture. It also become hard by the third edit to contribute new and pertinent information. Perhaps 2 wiki edits and a technical/grammatical edit of the 1st edit would be better.
  • I spent about 4.5 hours each week starting from the first week before an edit was due up until the end of the semester. It was really fun to search for the material firsthand, like a treasure hunt. I really learned a lot about the founding and current research in the field and how to evaluate scientific papers and will take those skills with me next year and beyond. The only negative aspect was the timing on the wiki edits. I think it would have been better to start on the wikis two weeks earlier and to have had more time between edits.
  • I spent around 9 hours on this project. It made me really understand the entries I was responsible for and further improved my skills at finding and summarizing scientific articles. Using the coding to enter in references and special characters was slightly tedious, but other than that, I enjoyed the project.
  • ~1.5 hours for each wiki assignment
  • 10 hours spent on the project I would guess Mostly a positive experience. Negative aspects: there's no final edit that puts the page together into a logical, cohesive article.
  • I spent maybe 25-30hrs on this project. I thought this project was a really innovative way for students to research about a gene or a person and become 'experts' on their subjects. I liked it a lot. The one negative aspect was that if you were a few minutes late in submitting your information and someone else had uploaded the same stuff, you had to find new information to upload, which could be time consuming. You were basically fighting with other users (both in the class as well as public users) for information, which could get annoying.
  • 5 hours; it was a good way to get me to think in more general terms.
  • 6 Hour