Instructor Notes

Editing Wikidata items with learners

If you want your learners to edit Wikidata items in the real instance, note that participants need to be registrated in Wikidata for four days to be able to edit wikidata items. If they are not registered they can use the wikidata test instance

Organize your lesson with your instructors

If you do the lesson together with other instructors, it can be helpful to divide the individual sections of the lesson among themselves and thus create a schedule. This could look like this:

Episode Time Content Method Teacher
1 10 min What is Wikidata? Vortrag Konrad
1 10 min Introduction into Interface Live “Coding” Rabea
1 10 min Wikidata Game Spiel Rabea
1 2 min Linking Wikidata with other Wiki resources Demonstration Rabea

Here is the template for your schedule:

Episode Time Content Method Teacher
1 10 min What is Wikidata Presentation
1 10 min Introduction into Interface Live Coding
1 10 min Wikidata Game Game
1 2 min Linking Wikidata with other Wiki resources Demonstration
2 5 min Concepts foundations Presentation
2 10 min RDF triple in work of a librarian Exercise
2 5 min RDF Triple Mae Jemison Exercise
2 10 min How Wikidata compares with other data sets Presentation
3 2 min Intro Presentation
3 10 min Create a new item Live Coding
3 10 min Add new statements Live Coding
3 10 min Questions Discussion
4 2 min Intro Presentation
4 Add references Live Coding
4 Citations link in Wikidata
4 Norms Presentation
4 Finding stable identifiers Live Coding
4 Use cases for good practice
5 10 min What is SPARQL? Presentation
5 10 min How to query Live Coding
5 10 min Query on “The Meaning of It All” Exercise
6 Intro Presentation
6 Bulk upload/harvests
6 Bulk edits
6 Bulk creation/harvesting
6 Performance
Feedback 20 min One up one down Discussion

What is Wikidata?

Instructor Note

If you want a more structured activity, here are two options that work well as an introduction:

Note that these activities involve editing, so they may be better suited for later in the lesson once learners are more familiar with Wikidata.

There are also some Wikidata-specific games and tools that can be used as ice-breakers, but availability may vary — test them before the lesson:


Underlying concepts of Wikidata

Introduction to editing

Instructor Note

This exercise uses the test instance of Wikidata by default to avoid cluttering the live database with practice entries. If you want to make the exercise more hands-on, an alternative is to have learners find their own institution’s library in Wikidata and add a missing statement (e.g.  coordinates, official website, or an external identifier like ISNI). This requires some preparation in advance.

Note: Based on learner feedback, the focus of this lesson has shifted towards SPARQL queries. This exercise can be kept short or skipped if time is limited.


Advanced editing

Instructor Note

This exercise works best with authors who have many publications already in Wikidata, such as researchers active in open science or life sciences communities. Encourage learners to try their own name or the name of a colleague.


Introduction to querying