Wikipedia Education Program/News/3 October 2012
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Welcome to the Wikipedia Education Program Update -- a newsletter from the Wikimedia Foundation about efforts to bring Wikipedia into higher education classrooms. The newsletter is released on the first and third Tuesday of each month. To be notified of the latest issue, add this page to your watchlist or email LiAnna Davis (ldaviswikimedia.org), the Wikipedia Education Program Communications Manager, to be added to the distribution list. Research shows students improve English Wikipedia editResearch data released today shows that Spring 2012 students in the U.S. and Canada programs improved the quality of articles by an average of 6.5 points on a 26-point assessment scale, with 87.9 percent of articles showing noticeable improvement after student edits. The new research is part of our ongoing efforts to determine success factors for future classes in the U.S. and Canada Education Programs. See the results. Workshops introduce education program in Brazil editTwo more workshops have introduced Brazilians to the idea of using Wikipedia as a teaching tool in higher education courses. On September 22, a group of experienced Campus Ambassadors and professors led an orientation in Rio de Janeiro for new program participants. More than 300 people attended a presentation in Porto Alegre the following weekend, with many of them joining three workshops afterward. Read more about the second event (in Portuguese). Professor argues for Wikipedia's use in class editWikipedia belongs in university classrooms, argued Michigan State University professor Jonathan Obar in a piece posted on Read Write Web. The highly informative article walks people through why Wikipedia is a valuable tool for both teaching and research, and explains the benefits for each in terms of student learning. Read the article. Cairo students' translation work featured editThe Wikimedia Foundation blog featured a post highlighting the work of two students from the Cairo Pilot, Helana Fola and Mina Saber. Helana and Mina are both French literature students at Ain Shams University, and they discovered a skill for French to Arabic translation through their work with the Cairo Pilot. Learn more about their experiences with the program. Professor from Brazil profiled on blog editEdivaldo Moura Santos, a professor of physics at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, started using Wikipedia in his classroom in spring 2012 as part of the Wikipedia Education Program. His students improved articles on electromagnetism, and he was thrilled with the unique experience it afforded them, especially in regard to student learning and engagement. His work was featured in a blog post on the Wikimedia Foundation blog. Read the post. |