Ukrainian educator and trainer Maryna Chala on wikiprojects in education & how to teach Wikipedia to others – Diff

Maryna Chala is an experienced educator and trainer in the Ukrainian Wikimedia community. She has been contributing to Wikipedia for over fifteen years, has extensive experience using Wikimedia projects in her own classroom, and has long been teaching other educators how to work with Wikipedia. She is a certified trainer for the international “Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom” program and leads the “Wikipedia for Learning” course series for school teachers in Ukraine.

In a recent interview, we spoke with her about her personal experience with Wikipedia, compelling examples of using Wikimedia projects in education, and advice for educators who are just considering becoming more actively involved with the Wikimedia movement.

Tell us about yourself – where do you live and work in “real” life?

I live in Kropyvnytskyi – a city that changed its name three times in the twentieth century and once more in the twenty-first; a regional capital that, despite this status, few people in Ukraine can pinpoint on a map; a place where reality quickly strips away the unnecessary and leaves only what works.

I work as a methodologist at the Kirovohrad (yes, unfortunately the region still bears the old Soviet name Kirovohrad) Regional Institute of Postgraduate Pedagogical Education named after Vasyl Sukhomlynsky. I work with teachers on how to teach under conditions where the power can go out at any moment and an air-raid alert can interrupt any lesson. At the same time, I teach computer science and robotics at Maksymum Lyceum.

I’m also a volunteer on inclusive education projects – because education must work for everyone, especially when the country is going through its hardest times.

So my “real” life is education at the intersection of technology, responsibility, and a touch of stubborn optimism.

How did you get into Wikipedia? What was your first article about?

I officially registered on Wikipedia in April 2010, and that’s when my first article appeared – about [prominent Ukrainian educator] Oleksandr Khmura.

But what motivated me to stay active was my daughter, who really wanted there to be more Ukrainian-language content, especially about children’s and young adult literature. Her first article was about [Ukrainian web portal for children and young adults] BaraBuka, and she even had to fight to keep it from being deleted. That was a good lesson in how the community works.

At first I was simply supporting her, but then I got drawn in myself. I was captivated by the logic of structuring and co-creating knowledge.

What do you mainly focus on in your contributions to wikiprojects now? Has the war changed that in any way?

I continue editing myself, but I also devote a lot of time to the community: compiling article lists for contests, serving on juries, running webinars and training sessions for people who want to start editing.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has certainly shifted priorities. There is greater demand for quality Ukrainian-language content, for verified sources, for making sense of events. And at the same time, more people want to contribute something meaningful. So my role now is not just to write but to support others – explain the rules, help people find their footing, show them that even one well-written or improved article is a contribution to our collective resilience.

You work in education and actively edit Wikipedia at the same time. How do these two roles reinforce each other? Did your attitude toward Wikipedia change once you started editing it?

These roles complement each other. As a computer science teacher, I can’t simply tell students “don’t trust Wikipedia.” Instead, I show them how it works from the inside: how to verify sources, how to view the edit history, how to tell a well-developed article from a rough draft. And at some point, the students arrive at a very mature realization – that knowledge isn’t something fixed; it’s created by people. And they can be those people too.

On the other hand, working in education helps me in wiki projects. I can see where the gaps are, which topics are missing, which articles need clear, human language – even within an encyclopedic style – instead of bureaucratic jargon or impenetrable academic prose.

As for my attitude toward Wikipedia, it changed completely. It used to be just a convenient website. Now I know that behind every article there are people, debates, edits made at two in the morning, and a touch of perfectionism. And that Wikipedia isn’t “them over there” – it’s “us, right here.” And if something isn’t perfect, that’s not a reason to complain. It’s a reason to click edit.

You’re an experienced educator who actively uses wikiprojects in teaching. Tell us about some of the most interesting examples of how you personally use Wikipedia and its sister projects in the classroom.

What excites me most about working with wiki projects is the research format – when students don’t just “write an article” but go through the full cycle: from finding a topic and sources to publication, discussion, and revision. We create and improve articles, analyze their quality, and learn to accept edits without taking it personally. We examine edit histories, look for manipulation, and talk about neutrality. At some point, students begin to understand that information hygiene is a fundamental skill.

We also make active use of Wikimedia Commons: we discuss copyright, licensing, the public domain, and responsibility for images. Sometimes we take part in contests, which adds excitement and extends learning beyond the classroom.

My big dream is an inter-regional collaborative research project in which students from different parts of Ukraine would work together – researching the local history, culture, and science of their regions and filling the Ukrainian segment of Wikipedia with quality content. The value of collaboration, critical thinking, communication, and a sense of shared purpose that such a project would foster can hardly be overstated.

You’ve run many courses and training sessions about Wikipedia – “Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom” and others. How difficult is it to teach other people how Wikipedia works? What deserves special focus?

In a sense, I see Wikipedia as a model of society – a training ground for social maturity, if you will. It has rules, conflicts, mutual support, and shared responsibility. And if we learn to work constructively here, we have a better chance of being a little stronger in the wider world.

In the “Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom” course, I teach people to be not so much editors as informed consumers of wikiprojects: to verify sources, check edit histories, spot bias, and distinguish fact from opinion. Because before you change anything, you need to learn to read carefully.

On Wikipedia, a text isn’t “mine” – it belongs to everyone. It can be edited, trimmed, or questioned. And that’s where it gets really interesting: you need to learn not to take offense but to make your case. To use the talk page. To resolve disputes not through edit wars but through sources.

People are afraid of “breaking something.” So it’s important to explain that on Wikipedia, almost everything can be fixed. It’s an environment where mistakes – and correcting them – are an essential part of the process. And once that feeling of “I can do this” appears, the anxiety fades.

I also always stress the importance of thanking people for their contributions. A community is held together not only by rules but also by encouragement. A small “thank you” sometimes means more than a perfectly formatted footnote.

In my view, teaching people to work with Wikipedia is difficult not because of anything particularly technical – the hardest part is shifting someone from the mindset of “I consume content” to “I am responsible for its quality.”

How do you envision an ideal integration of Wikipedia into a lesson? Are there examples from your course graduates’ practice that have particularly inspired you?

• Reading an article like a researcher: Who wrote this? What sources does it rely on? Analyzing a finished article for its sources, neutrality, and structure. Then making small edits, and only after that creating or substantially expanding content;
• Every assignment should develop a specific skill: working with sources, academic writing, critical thinking, digital ethics;
• Clear criteria, self-assessment, peer assessment, reflection, and self-directed learning;
• Cultivating a culture of dialogue: making arguments, thanking others for edits, finding agreement;
• Research work: planning, searching, verifying, publishing – a question, a hypothesis, sources, and responsibility for the result.

From my course graduates’ practice, the project that stayed with me most was Olha Herinburg’s history lesson “How Stalin and Hitler Divided Europe.” It was an extraordinarily thoughtful and well-designed project that made use of Wikipedia’s multilingual and cross-cultural capabilities.

What advice would you give to educators who are just considering becoming more actively involved with wikiprojects?

I would advise starting very gently – without pressure and without expecting instant results. Give yourself permission to simply observe Wikipedia more closely at first: how an article is structured, where the sources come from, how people negotiate on a talk page. Once you understand the logic of the space, the anxiety lessens.

There’s no need to set yourself ambitious goals right away. Small steps work better: add a verified source, refine a wording, correct an inaccuracy. And it’s a surprisingly therapeutic experience – seeing that you can improve something in a shared knowledge space. It builds a sense of healthy, responsible agency.

And most importantly – don’t treat wiki projects as an extra burden. Only do it if you truly want to and have the capacity.

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