NUI Galway on Wikimedia Commons

The Quad by Malbe554

Just over a week ago I had a workshop for academic staff (on the PG Diploma in Academic Practice module in Learning Technologies) where we discussed the use of wikis in teaching and learning. As well as demonstrating how Blackboard wikis work and might be used to support collaborative group work, I also tried out a Wikipedia familiarisation session, in the style of Martin Poulter. This was based mostly on the talk I gave at EdTech earlier this year, on Academic Writing and Wikipedia.

The purpose of the Wikipedia familiarisation session is to highlight certain academic qualities of Wikimedia articles - the quality scale, citation guidelines, peer review, authorship, collaboration. I also talked about some of Wikipedia's sister projects, hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, that can be used to enhance teaching and learning activities, such as Wikiversity, Wiktionary, Wikinews and Wikimedia Commons.

To add a practical element, without a full-blown editing session, I asked each person in the group to take one or more pictures (using a smartphone or other device) of the place where he/she works, and to create a wikipedia account in advance of our workshop. During the workshop, then, each person uploaded a new media file to Wikimedia Commons, which was later tagged with National University of Ireland, Galway.

This had the advantage of each person creating an account and making a real contribution to Wikimedia Commons. Moreover, the collection of images of NUI Galway has been expanded and enhanced.

Some of the newly uploaded images are below. As you can see, they have all been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license.

Old Civil Engineering Building
By Theorydave (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Office View of the Quadrangle
By Kardoy1 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Earth and Ocean Science, NUIG
By TiernanHenry (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Áras de Brún
By Niallmadden (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Aras Moyola
By Mary R Mulry (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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