Volume 15 Issue 1 2021 AMAE Open Issue Editors Patricia Sánchez The University of Texas at San Antonio Antonio J. Camacho AMAE, Inc. Associate Editors Julie L. Figueroa Sacramento State Lucila D. Ek The University of Texas at San Antonio Managing Editor Christian Fallas-Escobar The University of Texas at San Antonio http://amaejournal.utsa.edu Association of Mexican American Educators Journal A peer-reviewed, open access journal ISSN: 2377-9187 http://amaejournal.utsa.edu/ Ramirez & Marquez Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 57 Latinx Authorship and Representation in Digital Spaces: Wikipedia as a Tool to Decolonize the HSI Classroom Michael Ramirez Amanda Marquez Texas A&M University—Corpus Christi Abstract Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, is accessed by over 1.5 billion users each month, yet remains stigmatized in the academic world. Many faculty demonstrate reluctance in allowing students to use Wikipedia as part of their research and writing projects due to the open access nature of the site and have all but banned its use in their courses. In this article, we evaluate implications of our pedagogical decision to embed a Wikipedia editing assignment into our respective undergraduate courses at a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) in South Texas. First, we describe students’ initial reactions to Wikipedia as disrupting the classroom. Second, we examine the outcomes of the assignment in our Latinx students’ recognizing their work on Wikipedia as an act of decolonizing the classroom. In particular, we show the extent to which students a) claim authority, b) develop an ownership of knowledge, c) forge identities as public scholars, and d) develop a civic responsibility through their work on Wikipedia. We conclude with a discussion of recommendations for implementing assignments on digital citizenship in college classrooms, particularly in HSIs. Keywords: Wikipedia, digital spaces, decolonization, pedagogy, Hispanic-Serving Institutions Christian Fallas Escobar https://doi.org/10.24974/amae.15.1.418 Latinx Authorship and Representation in Digital Spaces Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 58 Introduction As college educators, we are tasked with training the next generation of writers, researchers, and scholars. Within our classrooms, students develop necessary scholarly research methods and critical thinking skills that they will carry with them into the professional world. Encouraging students to research and write about subjects about which they are passionate emboldens them to build their scholarly authority and contribute to the academic conversation. These premises have long influenced our respective strategies on how best to teach research and writing to our students at our Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). In the fall 2018 and fall 2019 semesters, we took a pedagogical risk by assigning Wikipedia editing into our courses in Mexican American History, Sociology, and a first-year learning community at the HSI at which we teach. We embedded this new course-long assignment in our respective courses with the overarching goal of teaching students to learn how to research and write for diverse audiences through the medium of Wikipedia.1 The assignment, an experiment in its own right, came with its own set of unintended consequences, namely, our Latinx students’ self-described opportunities to contribute work centered on their culture and themselves. In this article, we assess our pedagogical decision to embed a Wikipedia editing assignment into our respective undergraduate courses and trace the outcomes in student learning, course goals, and the unanticipated ways it can decolonize the college classroom. This study explores student experiences in writing for the often-controversial public forum of Wikipedia. We contribute to the literature on liberatory pedagogies on opportunities for Latinx students to insert themselves into academic work. In particular, this study asks: 1) What are the unanticipated outcomes of adopting a Wikipedia editing assignment for our Latinx students in the HSI classroom? and 2) To what extent does a Wikipedia editing assignment influence how Latinx students think about the college classroom and their roles as students? 1 Content on Wikipedia is crowdsourced: anyone with access to the internet can collaborate on creating pages and/or editing existing pages with additional and/or updated content. All content – the pages, citations, and foremost, the content of the articles themselves – is created by the public. As such, it is under constant construction, with additional information being added and edited constantly, at an average of one edit every 1.9 seconds (Wikipedia Statistics, 2021). Editors range from those with specialized and technical expertise on topics to those with general interest in the topic. All content must be “verifiable,” i.e., cited using a valid source. While some people do “vandalize” content from time to time, editors “follow” pages and are notified in real time of changes made to the pages. Typically, inaccurate information is removed within minutes, if not seconds, of it being posted. Ramirez & Marquez Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 59 Like most academics, we were initially skeptical of the reliability of the content on Wikipedia and have generally directed students to avoid the site when conducting historiographical and sociological research. However, Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, has evolved from an untrustworthy site of information to an effective and valuable teaching and learning tool that can be used to help students produce work for a diverse readership beyond the confines of academia (Di Lauro & Johinke, 2017; Evenstein Sigalov & Nachmias, 2017; Jemielniak & Aibar, 2016; Johinke & Di Lauro, 2020; O’Sullivan, 2012; Zou et al., 2020). Wiki Education, a nonprofit organization that bridges academia and Wikipedia, challenges scholars to “actively engag[e] in sharing their knowledge with the general public through Wikipedia” and has noticeably increased the numbers of educators who have adopted Wikipedia in their classrooms (Wiki Education, 2020). As the movement toward open access educational resources continues to expand (Colvard et al., 2018; Morris, 2019; Murphy, 2013), Wikipedia is uniquely situated to provide crucial content for readers via student writing. At the same time, however, Wikipedia does have its shortcomings. Bias has long plagued Wikipedia, yet not in the context in which many people think. Information on Wikipedia is, contrary to popular opinion, generally valid, verifiable, and true. Some inaccurate information has, of course, been added to Wikipedia, but most of these falsehoods are removed shortly after being published on the site (Halavais, 2004). The more legitimate, consequential biases on Wikipedia instead are those that reflect the limited and/or missing content and the narrow range of editors of the pages (called Wikipedians; Adams et al., 2019). The major culprit stems from systemic bias in Wikipedia. Wikipedia’s content is reflective of a racial and gender bias in the significantly lower rates of participation on the site as editors by women and people of color (Adams et al., 2019; Lim & Kwon, 2004; Racial Bias, 2020). The typical Wikipedian is a white, educated male from a middle class background (Systemic Bias, 2020). Low participation rates by women and racial and ethnic minorities influence not only demographic rates of editorship, but also the content itself, as topics of interest to these populations are underdeveloped, if not absent entirely (Ford & Wajcman, 2017; Hill & Shaw, 2013). The result is racial and gender bias within Wikipedia’s content. Wikipedia, therefore, can be an ideal space for students to challenge bias by integrating information about marginalized voices and perspectives that may reflect their own marginalization as contributors to the site’s content. Latinx Authorship and Representation in Digital Spaces Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 60 Our embedding Wikipedia editing in our undergraduate courses is particularly important given our institution’s status as an HSI in South Texas. Like most undergraduate students, and particularly those at our institution who arrive with less cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1984), students enter college as novice researchers and writers and need support in strengthening their digital literacy skills. Digital citizenship can best be developed within a learning context that engages digital literacy skills and academic research skills via Wikipedia. Combined together, students learn the value of research skills that enable them to evaluate, prepare, and present information to a public audience. Throughout the process, students will learn the skills necessary to embrace their digital citizenship as creators of knowledge. Enhancing these literacy skills and developing notions of digital citizenship are crucial for students as they begin to navigate an increasingly multifaceted online terrain. The demographics of our students, and their having access to research databases and credible source material that the general public does not, make them ideal authors for the online platform. Accordingly, we contend that Wikipedia can serve as a powerful teaching and learning experience for Latinx students in the HSI classroom. Wikipedia has the potential to serve as a decolonizing tool in that it challenges students to reconsider the following: Whose knowledge counts? Why does it matter who writes and creates knowledge, and what is left out? Who can access knowledge? And finally, who has power and representation in digital spaces? In this article, we begin by examining scholars’ pedagogical techniques that shift the culture and practice of higher learning, particularly as they relate to students of color. We then analyze our students’ pre- and post-survey responses from the respective start and conclusion of our courses, as well as their reflections on the assignment, in an effort to make sense of how Wikipedia not only disrupts the standard format of the college classroom, but more importantly, the extent to which it acts to decolonize educational practices. Decolonizing the learning process is central to “both examine and radically transform unequal relations of power” (Reyes, 2019, p. 2). Adopting such praxis enables educators to employ a “pedagogy of and towards decoloniality [that] works to get at the roots of why things are the way they are, as well as works toward transformative possibilities that center the experiences, voices, and authority of historically minoritized peoples” (Reyes, 2019, p. 3). Wikipedia is one digital space where the experiences, histories, and knowledge of minoritized people can be made visible. We argue that Wikipedia is a means for Latinx instructors and students alike to decolonize the Ramirez & Marquez Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 61 college classroom, particularly at HSIs. We conclude with a discussion of the significance and implications of bringing Wikipedia into more college classrooms. Review of the Literature Higher education policy scholar Gina Ann Garcia (2018) contends that college organizational structures have historically shaped the curricula and pedagogy to become legitimized as tools of colonization. Rather than perpetuating coloniality, Garcia (2018) argues that: HSIs must aim for technological practices that are grounded in principles of liberation. This means that the curriculum, or what is taught, should center the experiences of racially minoritized people, including their history and current state of oppression, while privileging their ways of knowing. (p. 135) HSIs should be grounded in liberatory pedagogical practices: those that center principles of social change and transformation through education based on consciousness raising and community engagement in order to reconceptualize what counts as accepted knowledge. What counts as knowledge is largely influenced by the educational elite—a space that has historically devalued and minimized other non-institutional modes of knowledge, including cultural and community knowledge (Baytiyeh & Pfaffman, 2010; Hegarty, 2015). Likewise, teaching is a service, one that should aim to decolonize pedagogical practices (Garcia, 2019; Garcia et al., 2019; Garcia & Okhidoi, 2015; García-Louis, 2019; Nuñez et al., 2010). Traditional teaching practices do not serve all students, and certainly not Latinx students in college contexts. According to decolonial studies scholar G.T. Reyes (2019): Coloniality is reified in cultural and structural ways within education. Policies, institutions, groups of people, and individuals are key agents implicated in the (re)production of coloniality in ways that are normalized, naturalized, and rationalized. This in turn renders coloniality to become invisible in everyday practices and behaviors. That is, the “way things are,” even if undesirable, becomes accepted. (p. 3) Adopting a decolonial approach in classroom practice can enable Latinx students to center their experiences and validate their cultures, which has been long ignored in scholarship and the college classroom in general (Cuadraz, 2005; R. Garcia, 2018; García-Louis, 2019). Latinx Authorship and Representation in Digital Spaces Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 62 Employing liberatory pedagogies centering students of color has a long reach in outcomes for students of color outside of the classroom. Students in classes that employ liberatory pedagogies report a boost in their sense of belonging—something particularly important in college contexts in which they continue to be underrepresented and “othered” (Cook-Sather & Felten, 2017; Johnson et al., 2007). Previous work has found that these students’ educational trajectories include increased academic achievement after these courses conclude, suggesting they take these lessons with them and apply them in future educational endeavors (Villalpando, 2004). Liberatory pedagogies are increasingly embedded in contexts beyond the traditional face-to-face classroom, particularly virtual spaces. In Everyone’s An Author, Lunsford et al. (2012) contend that college students are writing in digital spaces and in forms that remain on the fringes of what is acknowledged as formal academic writing. For younger cohorts of college students, these spaces are where students are most comfortable. The familiarity of virtual platforms facilitates students’ desires to join ongoing conversations. Lunsford (as quoted in Vidergar, 2014) insists that students are “writing more today than they ever have in the history of the world, and it’s because of social media. [Students themselves] may think it’s not writing, but it is writing, and it’s important writing” (paragraph 5). Educators should likewise envision a goal to “teach students about writing that makes things happen and is ‘growing and living’” (Vidergar, 2014, paragraph 6). The collaborative nature of a digital writing environment reinforces the notion that in order for students to thrive in a world beyond the confines of the classroom, they must be granted control over how to communicate their ideas to embrace their authorship. Digital spaces, including Wikipedia, are venues that educators can adopt as learning tools to meet traditional course goals, but also as unique spaces to empower students in ways they tend not to experience in traditional classrooms. First, writing in digital spaces is a learning tool, expanding the knowledge and skills students generate in classroom contexts. The communal and shared space of the digital world is a means for students to engage in cooperative learning and sharpen writing, research, and collaborative skills (Di Lauro & Johinke, 2017; Evenstein Sigalov & Nachmias, 2017; Johinke & Di Lauro, 2020; McDowell, 2017; O’Sullivan, 2016; Zou et al., 2020). At the undergraduate level, digital spaces may be among the few spaces in which students can undergo peer review (Cummings, 2020; Johinke, 2020; Johinke Ramirez & Marquez Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 63 & Di Lauro 2020). Students suggest digital writing work to be more satisfying and engaging than traditional writing assignments (Tay, 2015). Additionally, Johinke (2020) indicates that digital writing can be framed as marketable skills students can use in their employment search post- graduation. It is writing with attention to building a skill set in the digital marketplace. Second, Wikipedia is one digital space in particular with the potential to accomplish a liberatory approach to teaching. The site itself, one that educational institutions and professors often regard as haphazard and/or illegitimate, is accessed by 1.5 billion internet users each month on the global scale (Chen, 2010; Jemielniak & Aibar, 2016). Students’ contributions to the site directly improve Wikipedia and can educate readers from a variety of backgrounds. Its open-access organization embraces the notion that knowledge is communal, especially since those with fewer formal credentials and less access to paywall academic publishing resources can contribute (Baytiyeh & Pfaffman, 2010; DiMaggio et al., 2004; Dowell & Bridges, 2019; Hegarty, 2015). Our students’ training in research and writing, coupled with their accessibility to credible sources and research databases—resources inaccessible to much of the general public—makes them the ideal authors for the online platform. Therefore, we contend that Wikipedia can serve as a powerful teaching and learning tool in the HSI college classroom. Scholars in a range of disciplines have integrated Wikipedia in the classroom to support students to use their writing to create Wikipedia pages for underrepresented subjects, topics, and biographies in the digital encyclopedia. For one, anthropologists have used Wikipedia in the classroom to have students fill content gaps of Native Americans and indigenous peoples (Bjork-James, 2021; Pharao Hansen, 2016). Likewise, Wikipedia has proven useful to Africana Studies in reorganizing online space to be more illustrative of the diversity of race, class, and gender in the social world (Ezell, 2021). What is more, professors teaching in social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences report being similarly motivated to use Wikipedia editing inform their critical pedagogy and help teach issues of social equity (Xing & Vetter, 2020). Historians, in particular, have set about constructing assignments that blend research, technology, and digital literacy skills. The use of Wikipedia to meld learning processes is central to building critical thinking skills and taking ownership of their authority as creators of knowledge (Chandler & Gregory, 2010). While many disciplines have worked to fill content gaps and improve representation on Wikipedia, there is still a greater need for the particular inclusion of Latinx centered subjects, topics, and biographies on the platform. Students tasked Latinx Authorship and Representation in Digital Spaces Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 64 with creating pages can serve the Latinx community by augmenting their visibility on Wikipedia, as well as “diversify Wikipedia by creating a platform for students of color to engage in acts of authorship on a site that lacks racial and gender diversity” (Montez, 2017, p. 1). Creating Wikipedia pages can be a way for Latinx and all students of color to contribute knowledge about their communities, histories, and provide a public service, thereby enacting their authority in a digital space with a broad readership. Theoretical Framework In this study, we use Critical Race Theory (CRT), supplemented by LatCrit Theory, to examine our students’ experiences in our classrooms. CRT is a framework to understand the many arms, intersections, experiences, and implications of oppression (Tierney, 1993). While other theoretical perspectives have long studied the foundations and consequences of inequalities, CRT is distinct in its intentional goal of freeing the oppressed (Matsuda, 1991). It is not just knowledge for knowledge’s sake, but attuned to applying solutions to the problems uncovered in research. This philosophy grounds our vision as we critically examine our students’ experiences with Wikipedia to “identify, analyze, and transform those structural and cultural aspects of education that maintain subordinate and dominant racial positions in and out of the classroom” (Solorzano & Yosso, 2002, p. 25). We adopt elements of the long line of work in CRT in education, particularly Solorzano et al.’s (2005), Solorzano and Yosso’s (2001), and Solorzano and Bernal’s (2001) treatments in which they devise the five central foundations that inform a CRT pedagogy in education. The five key themes in CRT are distinct, yet interactive. First, inequality stems from the intersection of subordination (Crenshaw, 1989, 1993). Inequality is not additive; nor does one dimension of inequality mirror another, per se. Racial inequality is not interchangeable with gender inequality or vice versa. Though often built on similar foundations, each inequality is constructed and reified on particular rationales in our cultural history. Thus, inequalities comprise a “matrix of domination” that are difficult to untangle from one another (Collins, 2000, p. 225). Second, CRT begins with an attempt to challenge dominant ideology. The rhetoric of “equal opportunity” is a claim to mitigate or subdue attention, much less social change. Third, CRT embeds a clear social justice component in its foundation and goals. It is a theory that attempts to not just understand inequality, but liberate those studied (Matsuda, 1991). Fourth, CRT Ramirez & Marquez Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 65 attends to the lived experience of students as valid and valued contributions to knowledge. As Solorzano and Yosso (2001) suggest, “The experiential knowledge of Students of Color is legitimate, appropriate, and critical to understanding, analyzing, and teaching about racial subordination” (p. 473). Scholarship can and should draw on the broad wealth of experience students’ bring to the classroom. And fifth, CRT recommends an interdisciplinary contribution from an array of fields, each of which starts with their own perspective of social reality, methods, and writing norms. A singular focus in one field is challenged, citing the limitations any single field has on understanding the complexities of the social world. Finally, LatCrit Theory is an extension of CRT (Bernal, 2002; Solorzano & Bernal 2001; Solorzano & Yosso, 2001). Its unique contributions to CRT include its attentiveness to the positionality of Latinx populations, identities, and situational statuses in the social world. Students of a color are “holders and creators of knowledge” and often experience further marginalization, when “their histories, experiences, cultures and languages are devalued, misinterpreted, or omitted in formal educational settings” (Bernal, 2002, p. 106). LatCrit, as a gendered and raced epistemological framework, can therefore help student researchers and writers transform their own epistemological practices by inserting their own experiences to engage with research and writing opportunities. In doing so, students are empowered to center their experiences and embrace their authority as co-creators of knowledge in the evolving terrain of both educational and digital landscapes alike. CRT and LatCrit Theory provide a scaffolding for us to make sense of how students at our HSI engage with digital citizenship. Furthermore, as many students in our classes opt to engage with Latinx content in their coursework, these dual frames are naturally aligned with what our students do in class and how their experiences can be employed in extending the reach of CRT’s goals and outcomes. The Present Study In this study, we analyze the perspectives of Latinx students in our courses, in an attempt to assess their evaluations of and experiences in learning to edit content for Wikipedia. To honor our students’ narratives, we designed our methodology with an intention to center their experiences and provide an opportunity for the findings to reflect the significance of their work. The design of this study situates findings through an interpretive analysis of student Latinx Authorship and Representation in Digital Spaces Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 66 experiences as demonstrated through a combination of survey responses, reflections, and the material they wrote and added to Wikipedia. This study is motivated by two primary research questions: 1) What are the unanticipated outcomes of adopting a Wikipedia editing assignment for our Latinx students in the HSI classroom? and 2) To what extent does a Wikipedia editing assignment influence how Latinx students think about the college classroom and their roles as students? We focus on the experiences of our students as they edited content on Wikipedia for our classes in which they were enrolled. In the fall 2018 and fall 2019 semesters, we embedded a Wikipedia assignment into our respective courses in Mexican American History, Sociology of Gender (twice), and a First-Year Learning Community which centered on the theme, “writing goes out into the world and makes things happen” (Roozen, 2016, p. 17). The decision to include Wikipedia as a course-long assignment was collectively made among the two of us. No other professors at our institution have assigned any such work using Wikipedia. Background to the Study Our decision to adopt a Wikipedia editing assignment into our classes was not one we took lightly. Author1 had experience editing Wikipedia articles through his participation in the Wikipedia Fellows Program. Author 2 developed a burgeoning interest in Wikipedia through her invitation to participate in a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon during Hispanic Heritage Month on our campus. We both were toying with the idea to use the assignment in our courses in the fall of 2018, something we knew would be an experiment of sorts. Ultimately deciding to take the plunge together, we drafted our assignment ideas and structured the training content in our respective courses in tandem with one another. We also held bi-monthly meetings to discuss how our classes were going—what was working, what was dissolving into chaos, and devising mutually constructive suggestions as we progressed through the semester. Our goal in implementing this assignment was to provide a new context for students to practice research and writing, albeit in a public domain. Before the semester started, we submitted the required proposal for our respective courses to be considered for inclusion by Wiki Education. Once accepted, we were admitted to the (cost-free) program and assigned an invaluable Wiki Education advisor who acted as our contact person throughout the semester. The advisor also provided additional oversight on students’ work, ensuring they were not plagiarizing or using inappropriate sources. Wiki Ramirez & Marquez Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 67 Education created and tailored a “Wikipedia Dashboard” for each of our classes to use for the semester. After creating a Wikipedia account, students enrolled in their class’s respective dashboard, which included a range of resources, trainings, and access to the assigned advisor. This space is useful to professors, as it allows them to select the training students are required to complete as the semester progressed. Students used the dashboard to “sign up” for the particular article on which their work for the semester would focus, where they could see the listing of their classmates’ selected articles. Students were also granted a “sandbox” which acted as a personal drafting space in which they could design ideas, outlines, a working copy of their additions, and build citations. Both Authors 1 and 2 required students to use the sandbox as the drafting page on which we respectively traced and commented on students’ work in progress. We reviewed drafts multiple times and approved the final copy before granting students permission to add those additions to Wikipedia. We began the introduction to the assignment by spending class time discussing the intention of Wikipedia, the “Five Pillars” of Wikipedia, and basics of how editing works. We spent significant time discussing the hidden editorship of Wikipedia. Though Wikipedia is open to all, people of color and women (and especially Latinx populations) are obscenely underrepresented in Wikipedia editing. With the Wikipedia assignment, in particular, we were attentive to students’ backgrounds, home majors, and personal interests in allowing them space to carve the direction of their work. Most notably, we allowed all of our students to select the topic and specific article they would devote their work for the semester. For Author 1’s gender course, he required a gendered component to their selection. Students did not necessarily have to select a gendered concept per se, but could consider adding content relevant to gender to a page missing that information. To take one of many examples, one student contributed work on gender differences to the page on Criminal Sentencing. Other students made similar decisions. For Author 2’s Mexican American Women’s History course, students were required to choose some aspect of Mexican American women’s contributions to U.S. history. Students could either create a new Wikipedia article or add to an existing article that did not contain that critical information. For example, one student created a page for the Farah Strike, a strike led by Mexican American women workers in El Paso, Texas, whereas another chose to add Pachucas to the Pachuco page, highlighting the visibility of Pachucas to their male counterparts in U.S. Latinx Authorship and Representation in Digital Spaces Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 68 history and popular culture. Students in Author 2’s First-Year Learning Communities Program added biographical content to existing pages of prominent historical figures of color, most notably, women of color. Setting Our institutional home influenced both our pedagogical focus for our classes, as well as the methodological decisions we made for this study. Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi (TAMU-CC) is a four-year public institution located on the Gulf of Mexico that enrolls more than 12,000 students and is part of the larger Texas A&M University System. TAMU-CC’s proximity to the cultural border with Latin America informs its institutional focus. The student population is representative of the region of South Texas with nearly 50% Hispanic enrollment and, as a result, claims the designation as an HSI. Equally important, more than 40% of our students are first-generation college students. Our student population, largely Latinx and first- generation college students, furthered our pedagogical drive to use the Wikipedia assignment to improve our students’ educational experience and perhaps see their identities and community histories reflected in academic content. Participants In total, we had 105 students complete our courses with the Wikipedia assignment. With the exception of the First-Year Learning Community (in which all students were first-year students on our campus), all of the students in the upper-level courses were classified as juniors and seniors. The students were overwhelmingly (approximately 91%) students in the College of Liberal Arts. Many of the Mexican American History students were History majors and/or Mexican American Studies minors. Over half of the Sociology of Gender students were Sociology majors or minors, with the remaining a range of liberal arts majors (generally History, Psychology, and Criminal Justice, among others). Reflective of our institution at large, approximately 60% of our students identified as women. About 70% of the 105 students (a total of 73) identified as Latinx, with a far greater percentage (approximately 90%) of Mexican American History students identifying as such. It is these 73 Latinx students’ responses and experiences on which we focus in this study.2 2 Our analysis suggests Black and white students’ experiences in Wikipedia decolonizing their classroom experiences are similar to Latinx students. This dimension, however, is beyond the scope of the present study. Ramirez & Marquez Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 69 Data Sources and Procedures Data for this study come from four sources: a pre-survey, a post-survey, end-of- semester student reflections, and the content students added to the Wikipedia pages themselves. We encouraged students to complete the surveys, consisting of a combination of closed- and open-ended questions, to gauge their initial thoughts on Wikipedia and document their experiences as they worked through the semester. The pre-survey asked students about their familiarity with Wikipedia, their assessment on the accuracy of its content, and their regularity of accessing content on it for personal or classroom use. The post-survey, completed at the conclusion of the semester, gauged the extent to which students’ perceptions of Wikipedia changed over the course of the semester. We also asked a series of questions in which students reflected on their experience becoming Wikipedians and their assessment of the work they added and/or edited to their respective Wikipedia pages. Finally, we analyzed the work students did for the assignment itself. In particular, we took note of what Wikipedia pages students selected to edit or create, as well as the content they added to the pages. In their drafts, surveys, and reflections, students often emphasized the rationale for selecting the pages they decided to edit for the semester, suggesting a blending of educational, pedagogical, and personal reasons for selecting them in particular. We received IRB approval for our data collection. Students decided whether to allow us to use their survey data for this project with no impact on their course grade. Of the 111 students enrolled in these classes, 89 of them completed the pre-survey, 105 of them completed the post-survey, and 105 of them agreed to participate in the study by agreeing to include their survey results. Data Analysis Well after the conclusion of the fall 2019 semester, we downloaded and reviewed survey data for analysis. We used a grounded theory method (Charmaz, 1983; Strauss & Corbin, 1990) for analyzing our data. While we were attentive in our analysis to pedagogical concerns and student outcomes of the Wikipedia assignment, we did not anticipate many themes contingent on decolonization in the classroom. These unanticipated findings truly were the result of our open and axial coding in which we recognized the recurring themes in students’ independent reflections of their work on Wikipedia. Latinx Authorship and Representation in Digital Spaces Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 70 Positionality Just as the identities of those we study are important, so too are our identities and backgrounds as it may influence our positionality in the research process, as others have suggested (Couture et al., 2012; Day, 2012; Landen, 2011; McCorkel & Myers, 2003; Ramirez, 2014; Razon & Ross, 2012). Author 2 identifies as a working-class academic female who holds a Master’s Degree in History. Having primarily taught in university settings for a decade, her training has centered on Mexican American History, U.S. Women’s History and the History of Gender and Sexuality. Much of her course content centers on the marginalized status of Mexican Americans in American history and a reconceptualization of Mexican Americans visibility within U.S. historical narratives. She incorporates a decolonial lens in the material she embeds in her courses’ topics, readings, and perspectives. She adopts this pedagogy in all of her courses, from first-year learning communities to upper-level courses in History. Author 1 identifies as a middle class, Latinx man who holds a PhD in sociology. Having taught in university settings for well over a decade, his training has focused on race, class, and gender inequality. Most of his work has embedded a strong gender component, as has his course load in sociology and women’s studies. His work has recently taken a sharpened focus on race and ethnicity, particularly Latinx populations. Finally, our roles as instructors for our respective classes in which we adopted the Wikipedia assignment bears some discussion. We are attentive to our holding powerful positions in our classrooms. As instructors, we create the syllabi, course goals, and assignments. Students are required to complete the work we assign if they wish to do well in the class. To be sure, neither one of us adopts an authoritarian style in our classes. We are flexible when our students’ lives and research interests may prompt a modification of our classes. Findings In the findings that follow, we trace the outcomes our Latinx students suggested as most notable as they worked on their Wikipedia editing projects in our courses. They were consistent in their evaluations on the impact the assignment had to their learning outcomes, identities, and assessments of the HSI classroom. Our first research question was: What are the unanticipated outcomes of adopting a Wikipedia editing assignment for our Latinx students in the HSI classroom? Outside of being a vehicle for research and writing, students recognized the unintended consequences of bringing Ramirez & Marquez Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 71 Wikipedia into the classroom. As will be demonstrated below, Wikipedia disrupts the norms of the college classroom, as it brings a collaborative medium into their coursework and challenges the myths of Wikipedia as dangerous. Students also identify the broader impacts Wikipedia has on their developing identities as student-scholars, tied more explicitly to the second question we pose. Our second research question was: To what extent does a Wikipedia editing assignment influence how Latinx students think about the college classroom and their roles as students? Our findings suggest students understand their work on Wikipedia as an act of decolonizing the classroom at our HSI. In particular, our analysis shows the extent to which students a) claim authority, b) develop an ownership of knowledge, c) forge identities as public scholars, and d) develop a civic responsibility through their work on Wikipedia. Disrupting the Classroom Within the first several class sessions with our students, we recognized the very act of acknowledging the utility of Wikipedia in our courses troubles the traditional college classroom. Our assigning a course project in which students are tasked to create content for Wikipedia was particularly jarring for students. During the first weeks of classes when the project was introduced, students were asked to complete a pre-survey to allow us to gauge their initial impressions and experiences with Wikipedia. Students’ pre-survey responses indicated they were initially dismayed by their college professors’ invitation to focus their work on Wikipedia, a website they stated in the pre-survey that was typically admonished, if not banned altogether, by other professors. Our students’ thoughts at the start of the semester on Wikipedia almost uniformly expressed hesitation, distrust, and even disdain of Wikipedia. The pre-survey data indicated a static view of Wikipedia, regardless of major or classification. A vast majority of students (71%) shared sentiments that Wikipedia was unreliable, inaccurate, and a site to be avoided. Some students shared the sentiment that Wikipedia was even “outlawed” for academic research in other courses on campus. For instance, Soledad,3 a senior Latina in Sociology of Gender, stated, “I’ve always been told, ‘do not use Wikipedia!’ When doing research projects, professors have always told me they would not accept Wikipedia as a scholarly source.” Likewise, Carlos, a Latinx junior Criminal Justice major, similarly situated his experience as such in the pre-survey: 3 All names are pseudonyms. Latinx Authorship and Representation in Digital Spaces Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 72 When I think of Wikipedia, the first thing that comes to mind is false information. Throughout my years of education, I have always been told not to trust Wikipedia because it is not a reliable source. Anyone can edit the articles, change the information, and make it false. Many students, of whom Soledad and Carlos are two, suggested that part of their educational socialization took the form of adopting the norms of their professors in what constitutes valid information, data, and sources. Their evaluations of Wikipedia (and other forms of data and/or writing) do not emerge entirely on students’ own, but are effectively informed by their professors’ thoughts, beliefs, and uninformed and faulty assumptions. Students’ collective perspective of viewing Wikipedia as a dangerous and untrustworthy site partly reflects the internalization of the educational elites’ view on who generates and has ownership of academic knowledge. As we reflected on students’ early perspectives, we recognized the shock they expressed was indicative of institutional forces at play in their college experience. As the semester progressed, students began to reevaluate their critical lens of Wikipedia and other digital content. Students shifted to viewing their contributions to Wikipedia as a tool for learning, writing, and sharing knowledge. Making knowledge accessible to the public as student scholars empowered students to reconsider what counts as a legitimate and credible source. This shift signaled the beginnings of their challenging dominant pedagogical ideology, consistent with themes of CRT. Decolonizing the Classroom As we reached the end of the semester, students shared their thoughts on the assignment in a post-survey constructed in tandem by Authors 1 and 2. In assessing their thoughts on the Wikipedia project, we—as instructors—began to recognize the extent to which students were not simply adding missing literature to a public domain. More importantly, the students’ work was a tool they themselves controlled and empowered them as public scholars and digital citizens. The following theme is presented in sub-themes indicating the extent to which students a) claim authority as scholars, b) develop an ownership of knowledge, c) forge identities as public scholars, and d) develop a civic responsibility through their work on Wikipedia. Ramirez & Marquez Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 73 Becoming An Authority We encouraged our students to select possible topics relevant to larger course themes and suggested they spend time reviewing the respective Wikipedia articles to assess missing content. In survey results, class discussions, and written reflections throughout the semester, students suggested that developing the authority to recognize missing content was something with which they were uncomfortable and a task typically not part of their learning objectives in previous courses. As we neared the conclusion of our courses, well over 90% of our students were able to reflect on and assess the development of their critical lens, voices in their work, and their claims to authority in their writing. To take one of many examples, Heather, a Latina junior sociology major, relayed the shift in authority she developed throughout the semester: It feels great to have contributed to something other people will read. It was empowering to do the research and make valuable contributions. I feel more confident in my research capabilities now, in terms of reviewing literature and synthesizing it in a way that demonstrates its relevance and importance. Similarly, Arianna, a Latina junior history major, shared: When comparing this assignment to traditional research papers, I felt that I actually ended up learning more about my chosen topic than I would have otherwise. I feel like this assignment was way more insightful and valuable than a research paper would’ve been, as it’s much more personal. Ultimately, I think that having to make my research public versus keeping my research private in a paper actually made me work harder and encouraged me to learn more, as I wasn’t just writing this information out for a grade, or for one other person. Not only was I educating myself, I was educating others, and that’s a big responsibility! Everything I was writing was going to end up reaching thousands of people, so everything I wrote had to be sourced responsibly. Completing my research for Wikipedia actually made me search for more thorough and well- developed sources and made me think critically about the information that needed to be presented to the world… I honestly think I ended up exercising a new way of learning. Our students found a deep significance in the work they completed for Wikipedia. They suggested they achieved deep learning in this format, as well as felt the bar for producing “good” work was higher in that their writing would be accessible to the larger public. Over Latinx Authorship and Representation in Digital Spaces Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 74 time, students began to embrace the democratizing space that Wikipedia proposes. They were now writing for a real, public, global audience, not their conventional audience of one (i.e., the professor who would read the paper once, assign it a grade, only for it never to be revisited again). These elements culminated in their feeling a sense of responsibility and subsequently claiming more authority in their work than that had in other assignments, demonstrating the impact of liberatory pedagogical practices. Ownership of Knowledge Though we guided them throughout the semester, students were largely responsible for self-directing their work and learned to hold themselves accountable for their progress. In the process, they developed a sense of ownership of their work and learning. Their scholarship was enhanced as they became familiar with their topic and, hence, more knowledgeable in their content area. Monica, a junior Latina liberal arts student pursuing pre-law, felt a strong satisfaction in her work, something notably absent from work she and other students completed in other courses with a research component: Overall, I felt the most satisfying part of the assignment was on our final Wikipedia day when our classmates could come together with our final work and officially publish it on a public platform used by thousands of people every day. It was very rewarding knowing that our hard work and education could reach far beyond our classroom and be publicized on a free educational website with information on almost every subject. Likewise, Evelina, a junior-level Latina in Sociology of Gender, stated: Ultimately, I feel very self-satisfied to have been a part of the Wikipedia editor community because my education and research can contribute to something bigger for those without the same privilege of attending a university or any type of higher education. Now that I am familiar with the process, I would love to edit other articles on Wikipedia in the future as I continue my education. I definitely enjoyed using Wikipedia for a classroom assignment. I felt this assignment was very unique and granted college students, like myself, the opportunity to contribute to something greater than just submitting a general research project to a college professor for a final grade, not to mention that people all over the world with internet access can acquire accurate and Ramirez & Marquez Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 75 informative information for free on Wikipedia regardless of their background. Overall, I can leave this class knowing that I was able to be a part of something beyond the classroom and contribute to the public’s knowledge of sociology of the family. As these students suggest, the publicly-accessible component of this assignment—with the potential to reach an audience “far beyond our classroom”—aided in many students’ recognizing the contributions they as college students could make in creating and sharing knowledge for the world. The students felt that the work they added to Wikipedia, though a communal document, was theirs. It certainly was not a sense of ownership in a “grab bag” selfish sense, but instead a claim of ownership mirroring a CRT orientation in that they had the power to create knowledge to benefit the world outside of our classroom, university, and regional locale. Developing Identities as Public Scholars Not only did students internalize a sense of expertise in their topic, they also felt their work contributed to others’ learning. They stepped into the role of the instructor with their audience being the larger digital world of those who would potentially access their work. They approached this task with caution, as it is a responsibility to which they were not accustomed. As the semester concluded, however, students felt it was their responsibility as citizens of higher learning to create and make publicly available the knowledge to which they had access as college students, demonstrating an internalization of CRT. For example, Ashley, a Latina senior history major, is one such student of many who was riveted with the growing sense of responsibility from her work: When we first started the Wikipedia project, I was very nervous and scared. The thought of the world seeing my writing really frightened me and I didn’t think I would be able to publish my work. After I published my [writing] on Wikipedia, I felt a feeling of relief and was proud of myself that I pushed past my fear and edited Wikipedia. Working with Wikipedia empowered me as an individual and scholar by challenging my fears of public writing and made me push towards becoming more confident as a student. In the beginning of the year, I never imagined that I would come this far as a student and edit Wikipedia, but now, nothing feels impossible. I feel like I don’t need to set limits Latinx Authorship and Representation in Digital Spaces Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 76 whether it comes to public writing or speaking. The most important thing I’ve learned in this course is that it’s okay to showcase your knowledge, your voice. The anxiety and fear many students expressed early in the semester was something they were ultimately able to overcome. While we, of course, did not expect or want our students’ feelings of anxiety to be a part of this course assignment, they worked through these anxieties to develop their identities as true public scholars. By the end of the semester, their fears shifted to feelings of pride and self-awareness of their responsibility as “mere” college students. We both noted the extent to which this unanticipated outcome was relayed by a majority of students in our courses, as illustrated by Miguel, a senior Latinx criminal justice major: [Publishing my work on Wikipedia] feels great actually. Although some may brush it off, I actually value my experience and training. Knowledge is power, and Wikipedia is ripe with knowledge. It is a great responsibility to be able to edit, add, or remove information from Wikipedia. Danielle, a Latina junior sociology major, voiced similar sentiments: The most rewarding element of this project was understanding that as “just” college students we are able to provide information to hundreds if not thousands of people. We are able to use the privilege of our education to benefit others by providing scholarly information to the public. I think it’s also a great way for students who might find interest in research to be able to practice synthesizing and exploring resources where articles can be found. The Wikipedia assignment, though quite different from traditional papers, still contributed to students’ meeting global course goals and learning outcomes. Nearly all students felt that their work on Wikipedia helped them become better researchers, writers, and aided in their learning of course content aligned within our respective courses. Our students also acknowledged a shift in their identities as college students. They navigated a new, somewhat uncomfortable space: they occupied their familiar position as students in a college classroom, but also maneuvered into a newfound role as a public educator through creating work for the world via Wikipedia. They essentially began developing identities as public scholars who contributed important, and once missing, knowledge to the public realm. Students felt empowered to co- Ramirez & Marquez Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 77 create knowledge and were cognizant of it as such, consistent with goals of LatCrit Theory. The recognition of the sheer numbers of readers of their work aided in our students’ feeling like true scholars with an undeniable potential to make knowledge more accessible in the world. Civic Responsibility of Wikipedians As the semester progressed, students felt a growing trepidation in knowing their work would be accessible to the world. Assignments in other courses are “private” in that typically, only the instructors read their work, perhaps just once, before they “lock it up in a cabinet” after grading it. The Wikipedia assignment is both public and long-term, as it remains in view long after the semester ends. These dimensions of the assignment prompted students to recognize the responsibility of their additions to the articles they edited. Many students, including Cecilia, a senior Latina in Sociology of Gender, made this self-realization as the semester concluded: This assignment exceeds traditional research papers in that it feels a bit more purposeful. We were able to share research with the public, who might not have access to academic journals, papers, or studies. Rather than the information just being for our own and our professor’s eyes, the research we did was able to have a larger impact, which was gratifying. Diana, a junior Latina criminal justice major, shared her satisfaction with sharing her work on the public forum of Wikipedia: With traditional research assignments, I feel that the hard work that is done is often unacknowledged as a professor quickly reads your research along with numerous other papers, inputs a grade, and the research is never shared elsewhere. I am most satisfied with the idea that anyone who visits the page will be able to see the work that I put into editing the article and could potentially receive information that they otherwise would have never known. The public nature of their work lent itself to students feeling a sense of duty to ensure their contributions were valid, noteworthy, and accurate. With these expectations in mind, students likened their contributions to Wikipedia as a civic responsibility—work to be completed for the Latinx Authorship and Representation in Digital Spaces Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 78 greater good. It was not unlike voting, improving their local community, or contributing to the common good. As students became more invested in the project, they felt a growing responsibility to close gaps in work absent from Wikipedia. Students’ drive to do so echoes CRT and LatCrit Theory’s attention to inserting the underrepresented into the canon of knowledge. Due to their work, individual figures, if not entire populations, long neglected from scholarship (and the world at large) now have representation on Wikipedia. Students who developed this awareness, such as Lauren, a Latina senior history major, understood the impact of their work: It makes me happy and hopeful that Chicana/o studies, especially a class revolving around Mexican American women’s history, is an option at a Hispanic-Serving Institution. The most interesting discoveries I made during Mexican American Women’s History course is the underrepresentation of Mexican [and] Mexican American topics within Wikipedia’s database. It is astonishing (kinda!) that there is so little written about important events in Chicana/o history, such as The Farah Strike, The Pecan Shellers’ Strike, and Mexican American History in Texas!! My goal for the winter break is to add to the ‘Mexican American History in Texas’ Wikipedia page, because the lack of representation on an already marginalized community is crippling to the future of Chicana/o history and studies. A Latina senior sociology major, Liliana focused her work on adding material to highlight LGBTQ+ populations of color: When I first browsed the Lesbian page, I couldn’t believe that a section on lesbians of color was missing! To me, lesbians of color seem like such an integral part of the community that it was shocking to not find any information on it. Lesbians of color are ignored, rejected, and left out of lesbian spaces all too often, and I didn’t want Wikipedia to contribute to that. I also wanted lesbians of color themselves to be able to go onto Wikipedia and read about themselves and what factors they have to deal with as opposed to white lesbians, such as the issue of intersectionality or specific therapeutic challenges. The Lesbian page is really popular, and thousands of people visit on a monthly basis, so I also wanted to contribute to this topic because it would help educate and enlighten a lot of people. Ramirez & Marquez Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 79 Involving students in the process of sharing knowledge and content is what ultimately makes Wikipedia a decolonial tool. The work they added to Wikipedia was purposeful. It was not “just for a grade,” but developed into a personal mission for students to improve representation of those without power or access to submit the material themselves. Though our students’ work was not voluntary per se (it was, after all, assigned as a required project for class), they treated it as an ethical responsibility they had to make knowledge “right” in the world, as anyone with an internet connection could theoretically access their writing on the web. Students clearly adopted CRT and LatCrit orientations demonstrated by first centering their attention on the position of Latinx populations and then challenging dominant ideology by legitimizing the insertion of Latinx culture on Wikipedia. Finally, Wikipedia informed students’ perspectives on knowledge they gained in college, as well as highlighted its limitations. They often used their newfound perspectives to evaluate course goals, materials, and pedagogies from other classes in which they were enrolled. As Mateo, a Latinx history major, noted: Growing up in South Texas and not knowing the history of your culture or the land around you is something that needs to be changed. We as historians need to be more accountable and document the voices that are not being heard and go back through history and find where the marginalized groups have been left out of history. Writing for Wikipedia was an opportunity for students to give back to their community, in this case to give knowledge to the public to expand the view of their culture’s contributions to society. The civic lesson they take away from the assignment is their learning to give back to those who came before them. Wikipedia provides a rare opportunity to allow students to literally and symbolically insert their culture into its realm of knowledge, consistent with CRT and LatCrit orientations and goals. Discussion: Wikipedia as a Site of Disruption and Resistance In this article, we explored our HSI’s Latinx student reflections on our pedagogical approach to adopting Wikipedia in the classroom. Our findings were twofold: 1) our assigning Wikipedia disrupted students’ expectations and practices of writing and research in the college classroom and 2) our students found Wikipedia to be a useful tool for decolonizing the college classroom in their learning how to share knowledge on underrepresented populations and Latinx Authorship and Representation in Digital Spaces Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 80 topics, often centered on their Latinx identities and cultures. Our findings contribute to embedding Wikipedia in the classroom, HSI student outcomes, and decolonizing exclusionary pedagogies, as discussed below. First, our seemingly simple decision to assign Wikipedia as a course-long project is a legitimate act of disruption and, likewise, a serendipitous attempt to decenter traditional pedagogical approaches to teaching research and writing. We did not fully recognize these consequences until students reflected on the process at the conclusion of the semester. Assigning a Wikipedia project is one of the more significant pedagogical decisions we have undertaken in our courses. It compelled us as educators to reconsider how we define legitimate knowledge, learning, and assessment of learning to engage our students in writing and research (Garcia & Okhidoi, 2015). It is our task as educators to embrace the notion that the classroom can be the site to transform subjectivities and knowledge (R. Garcia, 2018). We argue that instructors in the HSI college classroom have a responsibility to empower students of color, first-generation students, and underserved students. Writing, our students learn, can be an act of resistance. Beyond gaining increasingly important digital literacy skills, writing for Wikipedia helps students appreciate the process and value of thorough research. Students of color, especially those of Latinx descent who remain largely underrepresented on the platform, are called to serve as authorities on the histories that belongs to their culture, themselves, and their communities (García-Louis, 2019; Hein & Miller, 2004). As they drafted their work for Wikipedia, their emerging identities as scholars profoundly impacted the ways in which they enact the notion that writing is a “knowledge- making activity” (Dowell & Bridges, 2019; Estrem, 2016, p.19; Roozen, 2016; Selwyn & Gorard, 2016). The very act of learning the workings of Wikipedia, therefore, decenters the writing process for traditional academic research and writing pedagogies. More specifically, it troubles the conventions of traditional curricular frameworks as the sole, primary, and best context in which to learn. Students subsequently developed pride, self-actualization, and confidence that may not be typical of traditional assignments. Their personal, academic growth led to an overall improvement in achieving student learning outcomes and the enhancement of writing, reading, research, and digital literacy skills. Ramirez & Marquez Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 81 Second, Wikipedia is a tool students discover to decolonize the classroom. For some students, particularly those from underrepresented and marginalized backgrounds, their work was something they framed as a means of decolonizing their views about knowledge (G.A. Garcia, 2018; R. Garcia, 2018; Stein & de Andreotti, 2016). Our intention in embedding Wikipedia into our courses was not to decolonize the classroom per se—this unanticipated outcome was entirely something the students did and recognized in their work. The work our students completed on Wikipedia is the real work of decolonization. As they gained experience with/in Wikipedia, students developed an ownership of their authority in this public, digital space, a lesson that students tend not to gain from traditional research projects in our and others’ experience (Fredericksen, 2002; McDowell, 2017; Nuñez et al., 2010). Their writing grew towards a higher purpose and would make “something good happen in the world” (Lunsford, 2016, p. 44). The larger project of colonization in the institution of education not only narrows the parameters of what counts as knowledge but also which populations and histories warrant being centered in the college classroom (Alberto, 2017; García-Louis, 2019; Urrieta, 2017; Urrieta et al., 2019). Our students’ work is a stark reminder that “power is exerted, resisted, and yielded to in every classroom; every classroom is situated within an institution, state, and nation—all locations in which resources, knowledge, and access must be negotiated” (Seward, 2019, p. 2). Institutions of public higher education are prime spaces for negotiations of power and authority to be not just disrupted, but fundamentally reconfigured. The real intellectual work of decolonization is in the hands of students as they make the composing decisions and publish their writing on Wikipedia. Students’ contributions are nested in LatCrit Theory in their embedding their experiences into research and writing. Their work, completed by Latinx students and often focused on Latinx populations, cultures and histories, addresses dual issues of representation in both expanding editorship on Wikipedia and filling gaps on missing content on the site. Decolonization is long-term work and demands sustained engagement to be successful (Stein & de Andreotti, 2016). We are under no impression that writing for Wikipedia is the sole resolution to decolonizing the classroom. It can be, however, one component that works toward the larger project of decolonization, particularly for Latinx students at HSIs. Latinx Authorship and Representation in Digital Spaces Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 82 Not only is CRT a frame to make sense of students’ contributions to Wikipedia, our students recounting the significance of their work also aligns with CRT’s five central themes in education (Solorzano & Bernal, 2001; Solorzano et al., 2005; Solorzano & Yosso, 2001). In particular, our students’ work challenges the dominant ideology in higher education, as illustrated in their discovery of their using Wikipedia as a tool to decolonize the classroom. Additionally, Wikipedia is a means to bring their experiential knowledge, something long detached from institutions of higher learning, into the classroom and the digital world far beyond. Furthermore, this study expands liberatory pedagogies in illustrating the power of writing in facilitating Latinx students to decolonize the classroom while inserting their culture and selves into the field of knowledge. Implications Adopting Wikipedia in the classroom has implications to college pedagogies in a range of disciplines and presumably beyond the confines of the short time during which students are enrolled in our classes and our universities. Tasking Latinx students with writing for Wikipedia naturally aligns with tenets of CRT and LatCrit Theory in their centering their experiences in their contributions to knowledge. Our students’ work was emancipatory in several respects. Without our prompting, students challenged dominant ideology through their inserting missing content not central to existing knowledge on those subjects. Students at HSIs become co- creators of knowledge as they literally create information available for the public viewing on Wikipedia. Students in the liberal arts, such as ours in social science and the humanities, furthered their critical thinking skills as they read Wikipedia with the higher purpose of deciphering whose narratives are included and whose are missing. They enhance their skills as producers of knowledge in their incorporating academic knowledge into a publicly-accessible platform. Students in our courses developed a sense of community through the Wikipedia assignment that other projects tend not to. We suggest that adopting a Wikipedia assignment, particularly in First-Year Experience courses, could similarly build community among students new to campus life. Just as our students felt a sense of accomplishment in their work, this outcome could be particularly critical among first-year students in bolstering their academic self-efficacy and correspondingly building a sense of belonging and their burgeoning identities as student scholars. Ramirez & Marquez Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 83 Much content of Wikipedia bears a striking resemblance to the history of STEM: the exclusion and/or minimization of the contributions of women and people of color. Using a Wikipedia assignment in the sciences could decolonize STEM, foremost by adding missing content on (and even creating pages for) scientists of color and women absent from Wikipedia. Likewise, tasking students with the overt intention of adding and expanding material on more diverse populations to existing Wikipedia pages would do the sciences well, similar to our students who added Latinx research to general pages that included material on white and/or cisgendered populations. Our assignment bears implications at the graduate level as well. Wikipedia editing is a genre of writing that graduate students could use to craft their academic writing and professional and/or technical writing. Writing for Wikipedia could help graduate students synthesize diverse material for public consumption and help as they begin learning the hard work of constructing suitable literature reviews for seminar papers, theses, and dissertations. Finally, writing for Wikipedia bears implications to larger goals of higher education and a liberal arts education, notably in training students to become lifelong learners, writers, and active citizens. For instance, once trained for Wikipedia in our classrooms, students can use these skills at their will in future editing on the site. In this sense, Wikipedia can be lifelong. Students can take the training and use it on their own outside of class, as well over half of our students suggested they intended to do at the conclusion of our courses. Furthermore, the work they do on Wikipedia is potentially permanent. The articles students edit can likely remain in place on the web, and their contributions will last long after the conclusion of the semester. Finally, students’ work on Wikipedia is a form of engagement with communities outside the university—and in the case of the virtual space of Wikipedia, a global reach. We suspect many students who become Wikipedians will feel similar to ours: as active and engaged public citizens. Our findings suggest Wikipedia is a site to explore students’ representation and its impact on their identities as college students and creators of knowledge. Research should expand on our preliminary findings in which Wikipedia changes students’ identities and opens their perspectives on knowledge-making and accessibility. Do other students feel a similar shift in their personal identities upon adding material to Wikipedia? An approach in which researchers more explicitly trace student’s longitudinal progress over the course (and in the Latinx Authorship and Representation in Digital Spaces Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 84 semesters after the course concludes) would provide a more nuanced picture on this aspect of identity development among Latinx students in HSIs as well. Future studies should examine the outcomes that Wikipedia writing in the classroom has in a broader range of courses, not only in other disciplines in the liberal arts, but in STEM, nursing, and business courses, among others. Do students in other disciplines view Wikipedia as a tool for decolonization? Do their perspectives on knowledge in their home disciplines shift as they recognize what material is missing from Wikipedia? Conclusion Becoming a Wikipedian functions to trouble and decenter the classroom and students’ larger educational experience and what they carry with them as legitimate knowledge. Students see it as a tool for learning, writing, and social change via making knowledge accessible. The act of editing or creating a Wikipedia strengthens students’ perspectives on the legitimacy of their scholarship and shifts understandings of how and where learning can occur. As critical writers, readers, and Wikipedians, our Latinx students will know what it means to engage with others in ever-evolving 21st century digital contexts. Ramirez & Marquez Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal © 2021, Volume 15, Issue I 85 References Adams, J., Brückner, H., & Naslund, C. (2019). Who counts as a notable sociologist on Wikipedia? Gender, race, and the “professor test.” Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, 5, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023118823946 Alberto, L. (2017). 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