Wikipedia is the world’s largest encyclopedia, with hundreds of millions of articles, photographs, and more developed over the past 25 years by volunteer contributors in over 300 languages. It is also the world’s largest open educational resource, with every part of Wikipedia being freely licensed and open for re-use. How can Wikipedia be used for teaching and in higher education? What are some tools to help understand Wikipedia’s contents? And anyone can edit Wikipedia: so what are some ways to get started contributing?
In conjunction with the OEGlobal conference being hosted October 7-9, 2026 at MIT, Phoebe Ayers and Andrew Lih will give an introduction to working on Wikipedia, including contributing text, photos and more, teaching with Wikipedia, and innovative new ways to visualize and work with Wikipedia content. We'll discuss some of the possible impacts and uses of AI tools in Wikipedia, and we’ll spotlight ways in which MIT knowledge and especially MIT OpenCourseWare is being used by the community. This will be followed by a hands-on workshop where participants can experiment with editing Wikipedia and learn about best practices and tools for contributing.
Any amount of experience editing Wikipedia is ok, beginners welcome! Please bring a laptop for the hands-on portion.
The workshop will be held from 1:00PM-4:00PM. The first hour and a half will be an overview of Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikimedia as an open educational resource, and demonstrations of tools for editing -- including some new and experimental tools. The remaining time will be used for group exercises and hands-on editing practice. Attendees are welcome to come for any portion.
This workshop will be in-person and held in the Hayden Library Nexus, on the MIT campus. Find a map here:https://whereis.mit.edu/?go=14
This workshop is free but registration is required. OEGlobal conference attendance is not required, all are welcome.
