Adding Immigrants Quantitative Sources for Latino Histories

Wikipedia Project

For this project, you will add helpful quantitative data to a Wikipedia article about immigration, demonstrating both your ability to identify high-quality, relevant sources and concisely present information from descriptive or inferential statistics. This assignment is worth 75 points: 25 for process, and 50 for the article + memo.

Class Wikipedia Portal

Project Overview

Wikipedia Project Steps: 

Note: this is also covered on our Wikipedia portal, but I thought it would be helpful to talk you through the process for this work.

  1. Identify a Wikipedia article related to class themes that needs more information
  2. Find a high-quality scholarly source related to the article topic (book chapter or article) that relies on quantitative data as evidence.
  3. Find a high-quality web source  (Pew Research Center, the Migration Policy Institute, The World Bank, the CIA factbook) with quantitative information related to your article.
  4. Compose a well-written annotated bibliography entry for your scholarly source.  
  5. Find a statistical examples from your scholarly source that can be incorporated as evidence to improve your Wikipedia article. 
  6. Find a piece of quantitative evidence from a reliable Web source (PEW Research Center, the Migration Policy Institute, The World Bank, the CIA Factbook) that would improve your Wikipedia article.  
  7. Following the Perdue OWL rules for writing with statistics, integrate these two pieces of quantitative evidence into your Wikipedia article (at least one two sentences for each example).  Make sure that you introduce the evidence, and then explain what it means.
  8. For example: “Drawing on a 2005 survey of U.S. immigrant detention centers, political scientist [Name] found that X% of those detained were unaccompanied minors. [footnote with full citation] This suggests that…..
  9. All work live on Wikipedia, Project memo submitted to Moodle as a Pdf, and slide posted to our collaborative Google Slideshow before class on Friday, March 31. 

Wikipedia Process Specifications

  • Complete all of the required trainings on our class Wikipedia portal.
  • Write thoughtful forum posts documenting your process and approach (Note: see schedule for full description/specifications).
    • Wednesday, 3/1: Post critiquing your Immigration-themed Wikipedia article. 
    • Friday 3/10: post detailing your article improvement plans and two source annotations (See forum post instructions for what you’ll need to include for your annotation).

Wikipedia Article Improvement Specs

For your chosen Wikipedia article, you should:
  • Present a piece of quantitative evidence from your relevant, high-quality scholarly source that improve your chosen Wikipedia entry’s coverage of immigration or immigrant communities. 
  • Present a piece of quantitative evidence from your relevant, high-quality web source. 
  • For each quantitative example you add, you must:
    • Follow the Purdue OWL’s guidelines for writing with statistics (including using framing language to indicate the source of your data, explaining what the information means, and being clear about what population the data describes/whether it can be generalized.)
    • Provide sufficient context to interpret the quantitative information and its significance.
    • Clearly and concisely explain what the quantitative evidence means.
    • Incorporate correctly formatted citations for each piece of new information (footnoted in the “Sources” section)
    • Incorporate internal wikilinks where appropriate.
  • Correct any factual errors, broken links, or inappropriate evidence
  • Write with clarity and style, using the tone appropriate for Wikipedia.
Wikipedia Project Memo

This 2 to 3 page memo should devote a paragraph to each of the following seven questions:

  1. Why did you select this Wikipedia entry (or section from a larger article) to improve? What is the larger historical significance of this entry, and how does your work make it better?
  2. What state was the Wikipedia entry in before your intervention? What perspectives were represented?  What types of evidence (qualitative, quantitative) were presented?
  3. How did you choose the quantitative sources you used as evidence for this Wikipedia entry?  Why were these the best choice of evidence for improving your entry?
  4. Discuss the specific content you have learned through the Wikipedia project. For example, have you gone deeper in a topic and/or learned new material? Give particular tasks you performed or examples of things you did in this digital project and discuss how they helped in your learning of the material.
  5. Discuss the specific skills you have learned through the Wikipedia project. For example, have you further developed skills and/or learned new ones? Give particular tasks you performed or examples of things you did in this digital project and discuss how they helped in your development of old and/or new skills.
  6. Discuss how you think you will use the specific content and skills you developed through this digital project in the future. Give examples of courses, projects, or other areas where you think they could be of use.
  7. Did the fact that your Wikipedia contributions will be publicly available affect how you approached its design and execution? Give examples of discussions you had, considerations/decisions you made, or ways you anticipated others would use it.

All work live on Wikipedia, Project memo submitted to Moodle as a Pdf, and slide posted to our collaborative Google Slideshow by 9am on Friday, March 31.

Wikipedia Project Rubric

CriteriaSatisfactoryGoodExcellent
Choice of Quantitative EvidenceYour two quantitative sources meet the requirements for this project, but may not be the best choice to improve the article either because of their relevance or scope. The quantitative evidence
you preset is directly
relevant, reliable, and
improves the information
presented about
immigration.		Your selection of a scholarly
source and high-quality web source to improve your Wikipedia article show your
strong research skills and
thoughtfulness in deciding what quantitative evidence is best to improve your article
QL Communication & Presentation of
Statistical
Evidence		You incorporate 2 relevant quantitative examples, but need to present more contextual information to guide your reader about how to interpret them. Full citations.Your Wikipedia additions
present clear context for the 2 pieces of quantitative
evidence your present about
immigration. You make the
take-away message of each statistic clear. Full citations.		Your Wikipedia writings present clear and complete introductions of the 2 examples of quantitative
evidence your present about
immigration. Your writing is explicit about how you’re using each statistic, what population it represents, and the link to the larger points of the article. Full citations.
Project MemoWhile your memo addresses most of the 7 questions, you could be more detailed and/or reflective in your assessment of your work.Candid memo that shows
how you applied historical
thinking and quantitative
literacy in your approach to
this assignment. Completely
addresses the 7 questions.		Thoughtful, reflective memo
that demonstrates your historical thinking and quantitative literacy
in explaining your choice
of Wikipedia entry, initial issues with its coverage of immigration, and your strategies for improving it while following Wikipedia’s communication guidelines.
Wikipedia ShowcaseYour slide presents an
overview of your work but needs development to highlight the larger contributions you made to public history.		Your slide fulfills all of the
requirements and serves to
engage your classmates in a discussion of your contributions and their larger historical significance		Your Google slide skillfully communicates your contributions to Wikipedia,
explaining your research and
writing strategy, and how your
work contributes to improving
representation of Latino immigration on Wikipedia.
Wikipedia ConventionsAppropriate tone. Some understanding of
Wikipedia mechanics.		Encyclopedic, neutral
tone. Strong command of
Wikipedia mechanics,
including the use of
formatting and footnotes.		Encyclopedic, neutral tone. Comprehensive command of Wikipedia mechanics, including the use of formatting, internal links, and footnotes.

Finding Quantitative Sources

Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Article on COW Databases

Web Source 

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