Wikidata in the Classroom [1927] Members : #OER18

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Public Group Active 6 years ago

Thu, Apr 19 2018, 11:00am – 12:00pm

Authors: Ewan McAndrew

Room: Waterside 2

Theme: OER and Others

Type: Lightning Talks

Description

Wikidata, the database that anyone can edit, serves as the semantic backbone for structured data in Wikipedia and its sister projects. It represents a massive development step for online collaboration and is designed to further democratise “the sum of all human knowledge”, including all domains of scholarly and scientific knowledge. It has already become a hub for cultural heritage and a major focus point for sharing scholarly, as well as technical information. With 38 million unique data items added in just over five years, it is set to become the main open data repository worldwide.

The implementation of Wikidata in the curriculum therefore presents a massive opportunity for educators. A Wikidata assignment allows students to develop their understanding of, and engagement with, issues necessary in today’s digital economy such as: data completeness; data ethics; digital provenance; data analysis; data processing; as well as making practical use of a raft of tools and visualisations. The fact that Wikidata is also linked open data means that students can help connect to & leverage from a variety of other datasets in multiple languages; helping to fuel discovery through exploring the direct and indirect relationships at play in this semantic web of knowledge. This presentation will provide an example of this real-world application of teaching and learning as part of a Data Science for Design MSc and how Wikidata can enable insights in a variety of disciplines; be it in open science, digital humanities, cultural heritage, open government and much more.

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