Jyldyz Bekbalaeva, Aisuluu Namasbek kyzy, Shirin Tumenbaeva, and Zhuzumkan Askhatbekova

“ As students progressed in their assignments, they became more aware of issues around gender justice in the region, studying them from various perspectives. Creating Wikipedia pages on feminist activists and female political leaders of the Central Asia region not only allowed students to address the lack of content in the local languages but also became a small, yet important, step in minimizing the impact of patriarchal history on the representation of women in the region. is also is an avenue to help raise awareness of women’s issues in communities where such online content could be limited. ”

“ University members can find many benefits in using Wikipedia to fulfill their academic missions. At AUCA, the library-faculty collaboration provided new opportunities for instruction, learning, and participation. The partnership worked well and enriched team members’ and students’ experiences. Faculty members experimented with using open resources and new ways of engaging students in discussion. Students had an opportunity to participate in collaborative knowledge production and sharing and to contribute to the advancement of important topics in the public discourse. ”

“ Students come from twenty-five countries around the world, including all the Central Asian countries, as well as Afghanistan, China, Pakistan, Russia, and South Korea, among others. AUCA faculty and librarians implement various instructional approaches to support learning and to promote critical inquiry and free expression. Wikipedia has become one of such tools helping to complement classroom learning and library instruction at the university. ”

“ Library-faculty Wikipedia-centered collaboration can open new opportunities to develop information and media literacy, student agency, and civic participation. is chapter shares faculty and librarians’ experience with using Wikipedia as a teaching tool as part of an initial pilot project aimed at using open educational resources. e library-faculty team from the American University of Central Asia worked together to use Wikipedia as a tool for collaborative learning and civic participation among students in sociology classes. ”

“ For example, a well-known Village Girl project aiming to empower young girls in rural areas evolved from a small community project into a big countrywide initiative (“Village Girl Project,” 2019) . A Wikipedia page gathered information about that project and its activities and included information about the young woman activist who initiated the initiative.
Women in STEM became another topic of interest for students. One of the pages was dedicated to the First Satellite Launch in Kyrgyzstan project, the very first girls-only space program (BBC News, 2018) . ”

“ Working with Wikipedia, the team also learned about some gaps that could be addressed on the platform, such as the lack of global coverage and geographic and language underrepresentation. Gender imbalance in Wikipedia has been continuously studied in recent years. Graells-Garrido et al. (2015) argued that multiple groups are underrepresented in Wikipedia and one of these groups is women. Women only constitute 16 percent of the Wikipedia editors, which affects the generated content. ”

“ It was important to help students understand the collaborative culture and philosophy of the platform, so they could feel connected to the Wikipedia community while bringing their perspectives into the construction of knowledge. ”

“ Students were given freedom in selecting topics, individuals, or events to cover in their assignments. Several students wrote Wikipedia pages about outstanding women they had known in their communities. One student wrote about one of the first female members of parliament in her country and the contribution of that woman to fighting gender inequality. ”

“ Students in the General Sociology for Non-Sociologists class were given the assignment to write about a pressing societal issue in their immediate surroundings as reflected through the lens of common sociological theories. ”

“ Each university committed to producing 500 articles in the first half of the year in exchange for Wi-Fi installation on their campuses. Kyrgyz Wikipedia has grown rapidly from 1,300 entries at the beginning of the project to 23,000 entries by the end of the project. ”

“ OER and open educational practices can receive a great deal of support at di erent levels within an institution, but past experiences have shown that small-scale projects and tailored support for educators lead to more effective results (Jong et al., 2019) . ”