Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Stanford Law School/Advanced Legal Research (Spring)

This Course Wikipedia Resources Connect
Questions? Ask us:

contact@wikiedu.org

Course name
Advanced Legal Research
Institution
Stanford Law School
Instructor
Katie Ott
Wikipedia Expert
Ian (Wiki Ed)
Subject
Legal Research
Course dates
2022-03-29 00:00:00 UTC – 2022-06-04 23:59:59 UTC
Approximate number of student editors
20


Students will create an original article, or edit an existing one, on a particular legal topic.

Student Assigned Reviewing
LRW2022 California Art Preservation Act
Alrstudent22 Failure to appear
Mizzo22
Queenlyrewrites Constitution of New Mexico
Imcastrodale
Aa2709 Independent State Legislature Doctrine
Capelje
David Chananel Queen v. Hepburn
Riba1645 California Racial Justice Act
Borahae93
Nfelsen
Sgakang
Legal Pad 77 ADA Compliance Kit
Mtorx Mens rea
Jasmine.robinson1294
Nb162600 Multi-Ethnic Placement Act
Chrocchi

Timeline

Week 1

Course meetings
Wednesday, 30 March 2022   |   Friday, 1 April 2022
In class - Introduction to the Wikipedia assignment

Welcome to your Wikipedia assignment's course timeline. This page guides you through the steps you'll need to complete for your Wikipedia assignment, with links to training modules and your classmates' work spaces. Please ignore the dates under/next to the section headings.

Your course has been assigned a Wikipedia Expert. You can reach them through the Get Help button at the top of this page. They're a good person to contact with questions about editing Wikipedia, or about this Wiki Edu website; for questions about the assignment, please contact your instructors.

We expect you to complete the trainings and exercises in this section by Friday, April 22. We'd also like you to have finalized a topic by that date. We strongly recommend that you check in with us about your topic ideas before the due date; the "Topic Selection" section below, as well as the Canvas module for this assignment, contains some tips and resources for choosing a topic. 

Resources:

Assignment - Get started on Wikipedia

Create an account and join this course page, using the enrollment link your instructor sent you. (Because of Wikipedia's technical restraints, you may receive a message that you cannot create an account. To resolve this, please try again off campus or the next day.)

Assignment - Evaluate Wikipedia
Assignment - Add to an article
Assignment - Drafting your own contributions

Reach out to your Wikipedia Expert if you have questions using the Get Help button at the top of this page.

Resource: Editing Wikipedia, pages 7–9

Week 2

Course meetings
Wednesday, 6 April 2022   |   Friday, 8 April 2022
Assignment - Choose your topic

Resource: Editing Wikipedia, page 6

What makes a good topic for this course? In addition to the tips in the modules above, we suggest selecting a topic that...

  • Involves several of the sources and skills we've introduced in class; e.g., an article about a statute that includes some of its legislative history and/or implementing regulations, or a biographical article about a judge that includes some of their major decisions. 
  • Is primarily or exclusively about US law. We won't cover foreign and international legal research in this course. 
  • Isn't too large or too small. This is hard to judge, and we'll let you know if we think there's a potential issue with your topic, but keep point #1 above in mind and think realistically about the timeframe. 

Suggested resources for finding topics:

Assignment - Exercise

Week 3

Course meetings
Wednesday, 13 April 2022   |   Friday, 15 April 2022
Assignment - Begin moving your work to Wikipedia

Now that you've improved your draft based on others' feedback, it's time to move your work live - to the "mainspace."

Resource: Editing Wikipedia, page 13

Assignment - Continue improving your article

Now's the time to revisit your text and refine your work. You may do more research and find missing information; rewrite the lead section to represent all major points; reorganize the text to communicate the information better; or add images and other media.

Assignment - Final article

It's the final week to develop your article.

  • Read Editing Wikipedia page 15 to review a final check-list before completing your assignment.
  • To submit your article, upload your research log to the assignment in Canvas. Don't worry if another Wikipedia user has made (or will make) edits to your article; we'll only be grading based on your own work, whether it "sticks" in the article or not.