Mandatory internship at Wikimedia Armenia
Author: Lilit Tarkhanyan (Wikimedia Armenia)
Social Media channels or hashtags:
- Twitter: @wikimedia_am, Facebook: @WikimediaArmenia
- Hashtags: #WikimediaArmenia
Summary: The article tells about Wikimedia Armenia's largest collaboration with a University ever.
Earlier in February, 2019 Wikimedia Armenia and Yerevan Brusov State University of Languages and Social Sciences signed a Memorandum on collaboration in several ways: include Wikipedia editing in the education process of the University, to create an opportunity for students to get an internship at WMAM and to pass their mandatory internship at WMAM.
Based on this agreement 35 students of the Faculty of Translation and Intercultural Communication and the Faculty of Russian and Foreign Languages and International Communications had a mandatory internship at Wikimedia Armenia translating a number of articles for Armenian Wikipedia. As a first step, the students were introduced our organization and Wikimedia Movement, how the Wikimedia projects work. And for making the teaching process more effective the students were divided into groups of 10-15 which was followed by a number of workshops during which WMAM staff taught the students the editing tools.
The condition of the mandatory internship assigned by the University for each student was translating 30 pages information during 40 days. The students successfully completed their assignments on time and after checking the quality of the translations they were given marks by WMAM Education Program Coordinator.
At the end of the internship WMAM created a survey for the students to evaluate their internship at our organization. The survey showed that the students were mostly happy about their internship and marks. Some of them expressed willingness to continue translating articles for Armenian Wikipedia. WMAM has also given a feedback to the University on the students’ internship and performance. We will also continue our collaboration with the University to include the wikiediting in other educational processes of the University.