African Art Editing in Wikipedia: Battling Misinformation, Motivating Engagement, Maintaining Class Content

Following the 2021 publication of the co-authored article, “Editing Wikipedia, Discovering Inquiry: Collaboration on a Modern and Contemporary African Art History Course” in Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, I have expanded my pedagogical inclusion of Wikipedia editing into three separate African art courses – African Art: Ancient Empires to Colonial Contact, The TransAtlantic: Cross-Cultural Representations, and African Art: Modern to Contemporary.

This paper discusses the integration of pedagogical scaffolding provided by the WikiEdu platform into these courses. I contrast this free-standing, non-profit platform and its use with prior experiences of teaching with independently generated Wikipedia-oriented course modules and scaffolding in the Canvas platform. I address the challenge of integrating wiki-editing as a semester-long independent project amidst the delivery of a coherent art historical syllabus within the time periods of each course.

I will present examples of the daunting and yet highly motivating process of choosing one’s Wikipedia page, particularly for students of color, gender non-binary students, and women. Through a historical contextualization of underrepresentation or difficulties in tracking editor demographics within the Wikipedia editing pool, I suggest ways to encourage student engagement in the editorial process. The extreme contrasts between ancient African art versus modern and contemporary research and source selection will be highlighted. And, publicly available student examples will be presented.