article on LGBTQ+ media representation, focusing on the possibilities of new digital media platforms. In this student’s final reflection paper, they wrote, “With more than 70 countries that criminalize LGBTQ+ people and their identities, it is vital to have a tool like Wikipedia that serves as a resource for LGBTQ+ people.” In the same class, another student elected to translate an article from English Wikipedia into Spanish, her first language, as the Spanish Wikipedia article had little information on a topic she had researched previously. In her final reflection paper she wrote, “As a Hispanic woman, I feel a responsibility to contribute information from a perspective that is lacking within the overall collaborative space. I can use Wikipedia to showcase how fun research can be.”
As Freire (2003) wrote, “Students, as they are increasingly posed with problems relating to themselves in the world and with the world, will feel increasingly challenged and obliged to respond to that challenge . . . the resulting comprehension tends to be increasingly critical and thus constantly less alienated . . . and gradually the students come to regard themselves as committed” (Freire [1970], p. 81). Similarly, speaking of her experiences with engaged pedagogy, hooks (1994) wrote that her students “want an education that is healing to the uninformed, unknowing spirit” and want instructors to address “the connection between what they are learning and their overall life experiences” (p. 19). Later she said, “The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created. The classroom, with all its limitations remains a location of possibility. . . . is is education as the practice of freedom” (p. 207). Although not all students explained their contributions in relation to their identities, several did elect to create articles for or contribute to articles that actively tried to improve gender and racial representation in what is available on Wikipedia. And the students’ reflections on their work further informed our ongoing iteration of the assignment.
Lessons Learned
Bringing Wikipedia into the classroom required some trial and error. Several students in the fall 2019 semester, for example, opted to make
