Talk:Wikipedia Education Program/Wikimania 2012

Education Program Discussion, Sunday, July 15 notes

• Dojo to review students' work
  • (we do have the education noticeboard now, which will have some overlap)

Case studies

Case Study: Czech Republic (Petr Broz)

• Established a page where they put in information for students. add their username and which articles they chose to write on
• special help for students; help documentation on normal Wikipedia help pages is too much
  • keep it 5 steps
• gave students a sample article written by an Ambassador so they can understand what they should be doing. Caused all articles to look similar.
• created watchlist for all student articles.
• documented in English and Czech on the Czech Wikipedia.
  • some of the english documentation: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/05/22/the-czech-ambassador-program-at-one-year/ link to the report in English http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedie:WikiProjekt_Chr%C3%A1n%C4%9Bn%C3%A1_%C3%BAzem%C3%AD/P%C5%99F_UK/Report-en
• Surveyed students at the end of the term about their satisfaction
  • Complexity of editing/wikitext is the main complaint
• Created stubs for students (added infoboxes, categories, etc.) so all the students needed to do was add writing.
• Alert admins that students will be writing and not using edit summaries.
• Created a youtube video on how to edit
• Did not use sandboxes; students worked on Wikipedia.
• Time consuming but effective.
• Use Faceook for students to ask questions. Facebook is evil but everyone is using it. :)
• Discussion:
  • Visual editor should help students get over technical challenges.
  • Translation is a good way of getting students started.
  • Stick with simple stuff, don't worry about templates. emphasize it's not the visual, it's the writing that matters. Wikipedians can add infoboxes, categories, etc. Tell students it's okay to not be perfect; make sure professors also say that to students. BUT: if people don't come add to articles, students lose motivation.
  • Make the grade based on the learning objectives of the course; some professors want more community engagement, some care more about quality of content.
  • Students ARE Wikipedians once they create a user acccount. Don't think of them as students editing Wikipeia, but think of them as Wikipeidans.

Overview of the project in Czech: http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedie:WikiProjekt_Chr%C3%A1n%C4%9Bn%C3%A1_%C3%BAzem%C3%AD Summary Report in English: http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedie:WikiProjekt_Chr%C3%A1n%C4%9Bn%C3%A1_%C3%BAzem%C3%AD/P%C5%99F_UK/Report-en

Case study: UC Berkeley (Kevin Gorman)

• Course with large student and professor engagement because Kevin Gorman spent a lot of time talking about why it's important; subject matter is not well covered on Wikipedia.
• Instructional design. Lower division survey class that filled general education requirement.
• Start with annotated bibliography, put them into groups.
• Highlight accessibility of information, not POV.
• Students were given a list of articles, picked interest and then were grouped. Improved one page or a subset of related pages based on their interests.
• Discussion:
  • Having expert picking topics is a really good idea; they know what's missing and what the availability of reliable sources on those topics are. Having an Ambassador work with professor using categories to create that list is incredibly useful. Make sure a Wikipedian looks over the topics to remove problematic topics (not encyclopedic, likely to attract fights). Giving students choice from that list helps a lot.

Engaging community

• How do you drive community members to review student work?
  • Related WikiProjects help, but because students are on a time crunch, it's hard to figure out enough people to come help.
• Leigh: professor has to take a strong role in reviewing student work; can't just rely on volunteers (regular Wikipedians, Ambassadors, etc.) to review student work
• Ambassadors who are previous students are good mentors for student work because they know the subject matter and assignment.
• In Cairo, using a Facebook page to engage with Ambassadors for each class.

Methods of sharing learnings

Newsletter

• Editorial team (Alex, Kevin, Leigh, Beat, maybe Neelanjan) will be in charge of sending out newsletter
  • Program leaders from different countries — including Foundation ones — will contribute content to it
  • There will be just ONE education newsletter
• An on-wiki education newsletter: Reports about education things you've been involved with.
  • "Signpost" on the English Wikipedia
  • Other newsletters for other languages
  • No documentation because there's no accountability. Regular call for populating a newsletter.
  • Leigh will get it started.
• Comprehensive list of Wikipedia education projects around the world, along with short description of what is happening and learnings
  • Could be part of the regular education newsletter
• Leigh Thelmadatter and Kevin Gorman will lead the effort to start a community-driven on-wiki Education newsletter.
• Needs to be split via country or language, and in multiple languages
  • Translation if possible

Mailing lists

• There are is an Education mailing list
  • We need better publicity around the mailing list: many people don't know about it. Also needs better description of it publicly.
  • Re-energize Education mailing list: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
    • (Education list run by janbart at wikimedia.org, cormaggio at gmail.com, louriepieterse at yahoo.com)
  • Write in your own language.
• We have too many mailing lists, we need to condense them. But we also shouldn't have just one large mailing list — it will have so many topics that it will be very difficult to follow.

Facebook page

• Currently inactive
• Needs better publicity

Pages on-wiki

• Current pages on-wiki about the education program are confusing for finding the relevant information — need to be fewer of them, clearer, easier to navigate, have links to the education newsletter and mailing list

Things we didn't get to

• Engaging academic institutions/societies
• Involving GLAM, senior citizens, and other partners
• Getting programs started
• Methods of sharing learnings