Wikinews:Education/Grading tips
Wikinews Training
Classroom
Tips for grading students' Wikipedia contributions
Grading Wikinews assignments can be a challenge. Depending on the complexity of your assignment, designing a grading rubric for it may be easy or challenging.
Three key tips that will help you when you grade Wikinews assignments:
- 1. Know all the students' usernames on Wikinews
- Without knowing the students' usernames on Wikinews, you won't be able to grade them.
- Create a page for the course on Wikinews before the term starts. Make sure all students enroll the course page.
- Once all students have signed the list, you can come back later and click on "user contributions" (in the menu bar on the left hand side of your browser screen) to review all of the student's activities on Wikinews.
- 2. Be specific about your expectations
- Being specific about what you expect your students to do is crucial for grading.
- Note: Please do not grade students based on what gets published in Wikinews. There are many factors that may contribute to a student’s content not getting published, some of which may be beyond a student's control. Beyond that, an article that a student submits for publication may be extensively worked on by other reporters and reviewers, with not all of the finished product being the student's own work.
- 3. Consider review criteria when assessing student performance
- Wikinews has five primary review criteria for articles submitted for publication. Consider student performance against these criteria when developing a grading rubric based on educational objectives for contributing to Wikinews. Make this clear to students and to any reviewers assisting the class.
