Identifying and addressing knowledge gaps on Wikipedia presents a valuable opportunity for educators seeking to design assignments that are both academically useful and socially impactful. However, course coordinators often face the complex task of selecting appropriate knowledge gaps that balance pedagogical goals with real-world relevance.

In this blog post, we offer a framework to guide you in choosing knowledge gaps for your education program. While these ideas can be adapted for thematic edit-a-thons and other Wikimedia activities, our focus here is on “Editing Wikipedia in the Classroom” programs.

The academic integrity and public visibility of Wikipedia assignments require that student contributions be high quality, reflecting both the credibility of the institution and the educational intent of the program. The chosen topics should match students’ skills and knowledge levels to minimize the need for post-submission cleanup by the editing community. From experience, we know that insufficient guidance can lead to plagiarism and other cleanup issues, though such cases are becoming less common as course leaders grow more familiar with Wikipedia’s practices. Many educators also explore content from sister projects such as Wikidata, but for the purposes of this post, we limit our discussion to Wikipedia.

You’ve jumped into the fifth post in our series; check out our previous posts:

Post 1: An Overview of Wikipedia’s Structural Framework 

Post 2: Navigating Wikipedia’s Knowledge Discrepancies  

Post 3: Prioritizing Wikipedia’s Knowledge Gaps

Post 4: Tools and Workflows for Mapping Wikipedia’s Knowledge Gaps

Why knowledge gap selection matters

Well-chosen assignments not only enhance Wikipedia’s comprehensiveness but also deepen students’ understanding of course material, build appreciation for open-access knowledge, and inspire continued participation in Wikimedia projects.

In 2020, the Wiki Education Program accounted for 19% of English Wikipedia’s new active editors. Education programs are also important for diversifying the Wikimedia community. While only 18% of U.S.-based editors are women overall, participants in Wiki Education’s programs in 2024 were 58% women and 5% gender-diverse.

To sustain the engagement of these contributors, it is crucial to select knowledge gaps that resonate with students and encourage them to see themselves as part of a global movement to share free knowledge.

Making knowledge gaps visible

Finding knowledge gaps can itself be an education program project, although this approach has not yet been widely tried. For courses in which students are tasked with identifying knowledge gaps, we recommend reading the authors’ blog post Navigating Wikipedia’s Knowledge Gaps for a framework to describe knowledge discrepancies. In the remainder of this article, we focus on education programs where the course leader maps the knowledge gaps for students, who then work to bridge those gaps.

In large language editions like English Wikipedia, students may initially assume that “everything” is already covered, only to discover later how much is missing. Visualizing these gaps and showing students statistics about diversity imbalances and content skew can be motivating for them. The authors have also experienced that group projects often have more engagement than individual projects, as group work can also be a means for socializing. 

Approaches to identifying knowledge gaps

Below are some approaches, adapted from a presentation given by two of this post’s authors (Ziko and Netha) at the Wikipedia Education Conference in Bogotá, May 2025.

Find a topic area of interest. An ideal topic area is one that aligns closely with the learning objectives of the course while offering students an authentic and meaningful opportunity to contribute to the public knowledge commons. It should reflect the strategic priorities of the university, academic department, or the broader (inter)national context and be intellectually stimulating without exceeding the students’ cognitive or research capabilities. The topic should hold relevance for Wikipedia’s global readership and be suitable for both individual and collaborative work. Whenever possible, it should also address systemic content bias by incorporating diverse or underrepresented perspectives, ensuring that students’ contributions both enrich Wikipedia and broaden its inclusivity.

Analyze existing content. Scan articles in your subject area for missing or poorly structured topics. Look for pages that have only a few sentences or are tagged as a “stub” at the bottom of the page. Topics that are about remote areas or Indigenous populations are more likely to be incomplete or written without comprehensive points of view. Look for red links or underdeveloped sections. Find sections containing biased, outdated, disorganized, or unverified content to work on. Redlinked terms appearing in existing articles are also good starting points to work on. In an earlier post, we’ve shared the tools and workflows to help map these gaps. In regions where English is not the most dominant language, it is possible that content is already available in a non-English language Wikipedia but the content is missing or incomplete in English Wikipedia (or vice versa). Students may notice and analyze the disparity of content gaps between English and other languages. 

Consider topic completeness. For new programs, a good strategy for course leaders is to systematically index missing content within a defined topic area, allowing students to select items from this index for creation or expansion of articles. This approach is particularly useful in domains where topic completeness is desirable, such as documenting all hospitals within a given region or covering all nerves of the upper limb. However, it is for the course leaders to balance completeness of a topic area with the broader pedagogical objectives of the program. Navboxes (example) are useful tools in this process, as they facilitate the structured indexing of potential articles within a specific topic area.

Use search trends and news. Search trends can be valuable sources for identifying potential Wikipedia topics. Articles created from such topics are often read widely and can make a significant contribution to Wikipedia. While not every trending topic merits an article, trends can point to urgent and relevant gaps. Tools like Google Trends reveal what people are searching for online and allow filtering by region and time period.

Major news stories can help identify sudden gaps related to recent content on Wikipedia. While students can play a valuable role in addressing these gaps, their work must be grounded in reliable secondary sources, avoiding premature or speculative additions. In practice, however, articles connected to major news stories are often fast-moving, contentious, and subject to multiple perspectives, drawing intensive attention from experienced editors. These circumstances may make direct contributions challenging for student editors. In such cases, it is more appropriate for students to focus on related foundational articles or to contribute through tasks such as copyediting, which strengthen content without the risks of adding contested material. Working on topics connected to local news (where global attention is limited) can also provide meaningful opportunities for contribution. It is also important to remember that the relevance of trending or news-driven topics can be short-lived, and articles based solely on recent events may not retain their long-term significance. 

Check high-traffic articles. High-traffic articles often give a glimpse into what is important for people. Tools like Massviews could be used to see which articles in a category get the most pageviews, and one could then go further to check whether they are comprehensive. Keep in mind to interpret the data on high-traffic articles carefully; bot activity or sudden spikes in views can make you overestimate the traffic. 

Compare with other reference works. If a topic appears in a reputable encyclopedia, textbook, or database but not on Wikipedia, that’s a clear gap. Mapping Wikipedia’s coverage against such sources can reveal missing areas. In some cases, openly licensed materials can be adapted by students to fill these gaps.

Wrapping up

Our hope is that the approaches outlined here will guide the selection of impactful topics for students to work on. By empowering students to bridge these gaps, we not only strengthen Wikipedia’s content but also nurture a new generation of informed, engaged, and skilled contributors who appreciate the importance of sharing free knowledge.

Wikipedia Education Programs can be especially meaningful when they use data-driven methods to identify knowledge gaps that are relevant to students. Course leaders can use tools and collaborate with experienced Wikimedians to curate lists of such gaps, ensuring that students focus their efforts where they will have the greatest impact. In the near future, we may also see new tools for visualizing knowledge gaps, which could be adapted to support Education Programs.