MENA Wikipedia Education Program meeting, Iman Ezzeldin

These courses draw together a mix of TV, Theatre and Playwriting. Her course is taught in Arabic. She studied at Ain Shams for her undergrad and received her PhD in Rome. Just to give a sense of the what curriculum involves, graduating senior have to submit a project where students more rigorous pieces of work around the idea of a play or drama. They focus on a single subject matter that must be referenced. The course works by having 3 or more writers/students work on a play together.

Background

Professor at Ain Shams:
Dr. Iman Ezzeldin from Ain Shams University. She teaches in the Faculty of Drama.

Some of the subjects in the past include

Phaedra
Cleopatra
Shakespeare
History of Censorship in Egypt
Egyptian Arabic Theatre
Cinema
Dissidence in Society: Comparisons in Theatre Plays
Theatre of the Revolution
Voices of the Marginalized

She has connections with professors in: Media, Communications, Antiquities, Arabic Literature, Library Sciences, Geography
The great aspect of her class that relates to the GEP project is that her student usually collaborate on the project, students who have already graduated would still be interested in submitting their research to Wikipedia.
When they reference, they used the Chicago Manual style
SInce the students enrolled in the class tend to be older (4th year), they are already versed on how to cite. 4 out of 114 students were caught this past year for plagiarizing, which is decent percentage considering how little there is available about the subject, however there are more resources available on the subject of Drama
She keeps in touch with students who have already graduated through Facebook, so she can convince these students to go back and edit
She supervises aout 37 students on their research

Next Steps

She will email me a syllabus (SY follow up)
Connect Dr. Iman with Annie Lin if we want her to get briefed on the GEP program
Create a timetable with Dr. Iman so we can understand how the curriculum will work with their semester

Quotes

Dr. Iman; "It's much more important to have edits/documents not in Egyptian Arabic. Why? Because we have books/journals about Egyptian Arabic Theatre so FusHa would be best.

Opportunities

Students are quite technologically savvy. They can depend on themselves to learn material, so they could work with the Online Ambassadors
Create incentives; as a supervisor she has 10/20 points that she can grant for the students' grades (which is large). She has control of 10 of those points so she could have potential sway in the wiki curriculum/adopting
She has five contacts at the university who could be follow up professors
* Dr. Iman has 113 students each with projects and about 23-28 projects
Question: "How is it for the students working in groups?" Some of them have a difficult time working in groups. We could have the students try to submit at least three articles as a group

Challenges

The Wiki editing would be difficult but Dr. Iman assured us that we will learn and reiterate through trial and error
Limited Computer Facilities at the School. We might have to do the Online Ambassador program instead
Students tend to be older so they will graduate quickly after taking her course
She is the main gatekeeper so without her, it might be difficult, but she put us in touch with many other professors
2nd year students are not ideal because there are not many in the program

Contacts From Professor Iman Ezzeldin

Contact Info on the Office Wiki