Wikidata in the Classroom: Enhancing Civic Engagement through Open Data
On 12 and 13 March 2026, the éducLab Pasteur in Rennes hosted the second Wikidata Challenge, aimed at fostering upper secondary school students’ understanding of open data.
A Community-Oriented Educational Centre
The éducLab Pasteur is an educational centre operated by the City of Rennes. Co-developed with a range of partners as part of the heritage redevelopment of the Pasteur building, it opened in 2021 with the mission of serving as a resource hub in support of the local digital and education strategy.
It is a space dedicated to digital and community education, where knowledge is co-constructed, shared and disseminated, and where creativity is combined with collective reflection to promote solidarity, autonomy and individual empowerment.
Wikidata in the Classroom Challenge
The Wikidata in the Classroom Challenge is based on a partnership between the French Ministry of National Education and Wikimedia France, with the participation of Arcom. It aims to familiarise upper secondary school students with open data by engaging them in exploring a societal issue through the use of such data.
As part of this challenge, 27 students, organised into mixed teams with a majority of girls, worked on handling, analysing and structuring raw data. They were supervised by two teachers from complementary subject areas: humanities and computer science.
The challenge was conducted in two phases. In schools, until January, students formed their teams, explored the theme and were introduced to their research topics. At the EducLab Pasteur, on 12 and 13 March 2026, the challenge took the form of a hackathon, during which students produced articles addressing each of the identified issues and contributed to Wikidata.
Gender and Civic Engagement
The 2026 theme, Gender and Civic Engagement, was explored from different perspectives by the six teams, including women in the media, in the presidential elections, and women’s engagement in the 21st century.
Two award-winning projects are already available online: At the Risk of Their Lives – Fighting for Gender Equality in Iran (Datactivist Prize) and Women’s Role in Piracy (Jury’s Special Prize).
Author: Isabelle Dufrêne
