Outreach Wiki

Education/Countries/Estonia

< Education | Countries

Primary Contacts

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Work in universities

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Education program in universities is mainly organized by University of Tartu (UT).

Universities involved

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Mart Noorma (Vice Rector for Academic Affairs in University of Tartu), Anna Koval (former manager of the Wikipedia Education Program) and Ivo Kruusamägi (wikipedian) at the University of Tartu in Estonia.

University of Tartu

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Well over 3500 articles have been written by the students of the University of Tartu.

There have been over 40 different courses that have involved article writing. The biggest of them (Väljendusõpetus) has contributed ca 1400 articles since 2011. Summary

University is involved with the Wikipedia promotion campaign miljon+

The University of Tartu has also donated pictures to Wikimedia Commons.

Starting from 2017 University of Tartu Viljandi Culture Academy and Pärnu College have also started testing letting students write wikiarticles.

Contact: Ivo Kruusamägi.

Tallinn University

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  • Back in 2009–2010, there was a course about the history of photography with ca 35 students. It involved the first wikiarticle writing exercise in the Estonian Wikipedia. Contact: Vahur Puik.
  • After that there has been one subject about the Estonian language, where students have constantly written articles into Wikipedia.
  • There has also been a subject Teadustekstide tõlkimine ja kirjutamine and few others.

Estonian University of Life Sciences

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Contact: Ursula Erik

Estonian National Defence College

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  • In cooperation with the University of Tartu there have been few subjects (like "military technologies") where students have also had a chance of writing wikiarticles.

Estonian Academy of Arts

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Mainor

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  • Starting from autumn 2017 Estonian Entrepreneurship University of Applied Sciences will start testing the use of Wikipedia as a substitute for written assignments.

Most notable subjects

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Estonian Composition and Conversation

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  • It is the biggest course that involves students writing wikiarticles in the University of Tartu with ca 140–270 participating students. It is carried out in the Faculty of Science and Technology and has been organised since 2010. Since 2011 writing a Wikipedia article has been an integral part of the course.
  • Students write a minimum of 8000 characters of text (without counting wiki-markup and references). The task has to be completed in 2 weeks after that they'll receive feedback and have to submit changes based on it.
  • The course helps to cover extensive lacunas in the field of natural sciences in Estonian Wikipedia. As of 2021 articles created in the framework of this course had generated 3% of the total content in articles in Estonian Wikipedia.
  • Over the years the course has provided ca 1400 articles, ca 85% of which are newly created articles and the rest significantly improved ones. Average article size is about 11,000 bytes (about 4 times more than average in Estonian Wikipedia).
  • By the beginning of 2021 those articles have been viewed for ca 8 million times.
  • In 2017/18 it was expanded to involve more of the 3rd year Bachelor students in the University of Tartu.
  • Contact: Ivo Kruusamägi.

Computer hardware II

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  • It is also held in the Faculty of Science and Technology of University of Tartu. Wikipedia has been used in course tasks since 2010, that makes it the oldest course in the University of Tartu with a task of writing wiki articles for Estonian Wikipedia.
  • So far the course has generated content for ca 600 articles, that makes it 2nd biggest course of that kind.
  • The course is the main contributor to the articles related to computer engineering in Estonian Wikipedia.
  • Contact: Ivo Kruusamägi.

About Free Culture on the Example of Wikipedia

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  • It is a special course about Wikipedia in the University of Tartu. Wikipedia is not the sole topic of the course and the whole field of open knowledge is explored, including copyright issues, crowdsourcing, encyclopedias, free software, information society, popular science, relations between Wikipedia and media, wiki software, Wikipedia in education, photography, etc.
  • It was introduced in 2011/12 as a 2 ECTS course under Institute of Journalism and Communication and continued in 2012/13 under Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science as a 3 ECTS course (Spring 2013, Spring 2014).
  • Contact: Ivo Kruusamägi.

Other subjects

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Some other subjects in UT involve geography (MMG, KRAP), informatics (introduction to informatics), international relations, linguistics, physics (plasma physics, nanomaterials, magnetic materials), psychology, pharmacognosy, Roman law etc.

Võro Wikipedia

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  • Võro Wikipedia started using university students already in 2007.
    • One of the administrators of Võro Wikipedia is teaching Võro language in the University of Tartu.
    • As a part of advanced Võro courses, students have had an obligation to write at least one article on Võro Wikipedia.
    • From autumn 2017 also students of Võro beginners' courses must write a short article.
    • As a result ca 100 new articles have been created (that correspond to 1/60 of all articles in the Võro Wikipedia project).
    • Contact: Võrok (Sulev Iva).

Work in secondary schools

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  • Wikipedia in schools
    • In the schoolyear 2010/2011 Ivo Kruusamägi and Teele Vaalma visited altogether 15 schools in Estonia, introduced Wikipedia and its editing rules and conducted a survey regarding the general awareness about Wikipedia among students and teachers.
    • Contact: Ivo Kruusamägi and Teele Vaalma.
  • Cooperation with Estonian Ministry of Education and Research
    • Since the year 2013 there have been talks with the Ministry about their possible support for piloting a large scope project for introducing Wikipedia in secondary schools of Estonia. On the 1st of December 2013 the project of "Wikipedization of Research Writings of Secondary School Students" kicked off.
    • The project included payed staff for training (1 FTE) and for coordination activities (0.5 FTE), totalling 1.5 FTE.
    • Although contacts were established with 12 schools, only 6 of them participated in the project.
    • Altogether 93 students and 20 teachers participated in Wikipedia lectures and workshops in schools. A total of 41 students wrote at least 1 article on Estonian Wikipedia during the workshop.
    • The goal of the project was not reached, as only 6 secondary school students engaged in wikipedization of their research writings.
    • A total of 19 articles were created and 11 significantly improved, based on the research writings of the students, which equals 101 341 bytes of Wikipedia editing.
    • Contact: Teele Vaalma and Kaarel Vaidla.
  • Article writing in Narva Language Lyceum
    • Geography teacher of the school has integrated Wikipedia-related tasks to the study of Geography.
    • It was done in the years 2013 and 2014.
    • As students are in need of an significant amount of assistance (Estonian is not their native language and they have never contributed to Wikipedia before), this initiative may be discontinued as an ineffective one.
    • Contact: Geonarva.
  • E-course for secondary school students
    • As the "Wikipedization of Research Writings of Secondary School Students" pilot project was unsuccessful, it was restructured in the end of the year 2014, with a new goal to provide a Wikipedia related e-course for interested secondary school students. In January 2015 the 5-member project team consisting of a teacher of Estonian language, educational technologist, specialist of academic writing and communication, wikipedian and coordinator started its work.
    • During the course all participants will be working on their own Wikipedia article and will provide feedback for other participants.
    • The E-course will use the platforms of Moodle and the Estonian Wikipedia and was available as an optional subject for the schoolyear 2016/2017.
    • Contact: Kaarel Vaidla.

Projects with wider scope

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Heinrich Laakman as depicted by a participant (User:Kukkurt) of Tartu Art School project
  • Environmental Awareness Project
    • Project enrolled in the end of the year 2014 with an aim to increase environmental awareness by creating nature and environment related articles on Wikipedia. Both secondary schools and universities, as well as environmental education centres were involved with the project.
    • Project was funded by Estonian Environmental Investment Centre and was terminated in 2015.
    • Contact: Kaarel Vaidla
 
Ivo Kruusamägi (center) on seminar for Fenno-Ugric Wikipedias 2014 in Estonia
  • Fenno-Ugric cooperation
    • Although not strictly an educational project, it includes several educational aspects.
    • In Spring 2014 Wikimedia Eesti applied for Erasmus+ funding to support this project on international level, but the application was rejected.
    • Contact: Sven-Erik Soosaar
  • Digital education competition
    • Starting from 2017 there is also a competition, that specifically targets university students and aims to increase the quality and quantity of vital articles.
    • It started from the cooperation with the biggest bank in Estonia (Swedbank) and focused first on the topics of economy and finance.
    • At spring 2017 it involved 37 articles with an added byte count of nearly 400 kb.
  • KAE maailma
    • Article competition for schoolchildren. Organized in autumn 2017.

Image projects

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  • Tartu Art School image project.
    • The main idea behind it is that the students can also provide free images and pictures through an education program.
    • Enrolled during spring semester 2014 when the project concentrated mainly on portraits and as of November 2015 there are 27 portraits in Wikimedia Commons.
    • Contact: Kaarel Vaidla

Software

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To make it easier to provide feedback, a tool named WikiComment has been developed. Contact: Ivo Kruusamägi
Minority Translate tool that is being developed for small wikis (like many Fenno-Ugric wikis are), could potentially be used in education (translation and languages studies). Contact: Ivo Kruusamägi

Additional Information

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Blog posts
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