Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Research/Article quality/Results - Spring 2012 United States and Canada student article quality research results

Use the link to access the full text article from Wikipedia opening as follows: "To measure the impact of student work on article quality in the U.S. and Canada Education Programs, a group of Wikipedians led by Mike Christie repeated the article assessment study from the Public Policy Initiative for the Spring 2012 classes (which were active between January and May). 124 of the articles that students worked on were assessed on a 26-point quality scale that draws directly from the Wikipedia 1.0 assessment criteria (Stub/Start/C/B/GA/A/FA). This included 82 existing articles and 42 new articles. Of the 124 articles, 109 of them showed improvement after student work, meaning 87.9% of articles were improved by student edits. On average, existing articles improved by 2.94 points—from 11.26 to 14.20—while for new articles students averaged a score of 13.55. In rough practical terms, the average class started from either nonexistent articles or (typically) weak Start-class articles, and ended up with C-class articles or strong Start-class articles. Altogether (new and existing articles combined), on average students improved articles by about 6.5 points, which is 0.7 points more than the average improvements made by students in the Public Policy Initiative..."