Talk:Wikipedia Education Program Metrics and Activities Meeting

October meeting

Unfortunatly I cannot attend the meeting. Is it possible for a next meeting to plan a meeting on another time? At 16:00 I'm in the car to pick up my kids. I'm very interested in how to start an eduction program. Just a few months ago I started a Dutch version of Wikiversity. I also contacted some schools/ universities, but until now I couldn't convince them to join. Maybe you have some tips to get started. Is it possible to make minutes of the meeting? Timboliu (talk) 19:16, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi Timboliu, thanks for getting in touch! Yes, we can take notes and publish a short summary of the outcomes. Hope you can make it to the November meeting. --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 19:19, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Frank, if a next meeting can be scheduled on another time I will certainly try to attend. Great initiative by the way! Timboliu (talk) 19:26, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Which time would work best for you? --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 20:19, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Other organizations’ programs

I will not attend the meeting, but I would just say it could be valuable in a general perspective to contact and work with other organizations working on education. I have specifically in mind Creative Commons whose the community is very active in this field, particularly in the OER (after the special delegation in Warsaw said :). ~ Seb35 [^_^] 20:40, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Agenda

Is it a good idea to put "success stories" on a synchronous meeting agenda? Would it be better to have attendees post a link to a textual description of their progress? I'm concerned that the meeting time would be consumed by items which do not require interactive discussion. I would go so far as to suggest that attendees be asked to prepare proposed metrics

Also "open discussion" should be after "trends" and "what works and what doesn't" as those are specific concepts which are worthwhile to cover.

I'm going to boldly adjust the agenda to reflect these concerns. 69.171.160.53 07:39, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Technology for the next meeting

Have you decided which technology are we going to use? An IRC channel? For the number of atendees, it seems the better one. Is so, which channel? --Everton137 (talk) 01:02, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I thought the WebEx A/V teleconference worked well, but I wonder whether it would be more inclusive if it were etherpad only or etherpad and IRC. The synchronous audio channel was non-optimal, and I wonder whether using it disadvantages English as a Foreign Language listeners and speakers. I am glad someone was taking notes on the etherpad because I would have missed many points if they had not. (Thank you, possibly identifiable note-taker!) James Salsman (talk) 21:21, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Chapter notification

Is there any way that chapters could be notified of this? I know we have some people in WM-AU who are involved with universities and it might help towards getting them to participate if we knew so we could poke and prod people. --LauraHale (talk) 06:13, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Points and questions excerpted from meeting etherpad

See here: Global Education Program Metrics and Activities Meeting/October 2011

November meeting

Time is 3am local for me. :( Unable to make it. Would love to connect more with people involved with this, especially as my university has classes using WMF projects in their coursework and I'm doing outreach to colleges in January/February. --LauraHale (talk) 00:25, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi Laura -- finding a time that works for everyone is really difficult, but I think it might be worth alternating every other meeting to allow for different time zones to participate. What about 02:00 UTC for the December meeting? -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 00:28, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

info for the 22nd meeting

Is there any kind of premailer (I guess posted) for the 22nd meeting? Also, is there a specific agenda (all I see is the general one)? Just hoping being tight, will help us get more done. (not make work.) 69.255.27.249 07:04, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Name

Why this page has so difficult and long name which doesnt has much with its aims?--Juandev (talk) 00:02, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

What name do you propose, Juandev? --Everton137 (talk) 17:00, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Why are we using Webex?

Hi, may someone, please, explain me why are we using Webex service for our meetings? For the number of people who attended last time, wouldn't be enough the combination skype + etherpad + IRC channel? I have also problems in typing while holding a phone, so I cannot participate very actively on the etherpad. Is the Internet connection speedy of some people attending this meetings the main reason? Have you discussed somewhere about alternatives? If so, where? Wouldn't be good to try to save some money as well? Thanks, --Everton137 (talk) 15:25, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Having routinely used (voice) Skype, I wouldn't recommend it for any more than 5 participants - distortion dominates the sound above that. Using a standard telephone conference call system might be a good option (that's the approach we take for full WMUK board meetings nowadays), and people can connect into that via Skype if they want. Mike Peel (talk) 16:32, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Mike. How do I connect to this telephone conference call using skype? Is it possible to do so with Webex? --Everton137 (talk) 16:53, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi Tom, I've been trying to find a good alternative since before we started the meeting. We have had up to about 20 people participating in the meeting; ideally, we'll want something that will work with more than that, as we anticipate the amount of interest in the meeting to grow over time. We also need the capability of muting participants (you may have noticed the sound quality dropped dramatically after we had the Q&A because everyone was unmuted) and screen sharing (we have shown slides in the past and will again for February's meeting). We've looked into a number of solutions, and our IT team has demoed several for me, but we haven't found one that can replace WebEx yet. Please note that WebEx is used for all WMF call-in meetings; we all know it isn't ideal, but we haven't found a good alternative yet. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 17:03, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Alternatives

Add bellow alternatives to Webex you may know about and your experience with them. --Everton137 (talk) 16:53, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

EVO

Goods:

I've used it for a meeting with five people. It's possible to share your screen and has an audio-video conference system. It uses Java, so it's platform independent. I've used it under Linux operational system. --Everton137 (talk) 16:53, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Odds:

I cannot remember of any regarding its usage, maybe too much time to download the Java app at the first time. It's not free software. ---Everton137 (talk) 16:53, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

When to use: should be tested beforehand.

Skype

Goods:

Very popular and almost any popular operational system has one functional version. --Everton137 (talk) 16:53, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Odds:

May have distortion problems when too many people are involved. According to Mike Peel, it's not adequate for more than 5 people. I've used for Open Knowledge Foundation meetings with around 10 people and it worked well tho. It's not free software. --Everton137 (talk) 16:53, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

When to use:

Can be a good alternative for meetings up to 5 people, using together with IRC and some etherpad. --Everton137 (talk) 16:56, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Big Blue button

Goods: Open source, multilanguage , desktop sharing, webcam, voip, presentation, record --Chandres (talk) 18:56, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Odds:

When to use:

Volunteers needed!

I'm looking for a volunteer to lead the March or any future meeting! All you need to do is welcome everyone to the meeting, make sure the people giving each update are following the agenda, and facilitate the Q&A session. No advanced preparation is necessary! Just show up when the meeting starts.

Please leave a message here if you're available to lead this month's or any future meetings. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 21:48, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Please let me know if you're able to lead the April meeting! -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 20:30, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

I can chair the meeting if you like. I haven't attended one of these metrics meetings previously, but I've attended plenty of WebEx meetings and I've chaired one in the distant past so I think I should be able to handle it. Would you please post the agenda so that I can look at it ahead of time? Having a schedule with the agenda would be good also. Thanks, Pine^(talk) 07:44, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Pine! I'll get the agenda and more information your way as soon as I have it. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 15:59, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Making the meeting more effective

As some sharp eyes noticed, we didn't have a meeting in May! I held off on scheduling a meeting because it seemed like we should take a step back and determine what the most effective way of runnings these meetings would be. Our main goal in starting the meeting was a monthly time for everyone among the different programs to share learnings, but the important thing is that the people who show up to the meetings get what they came for, as everyone's time is precious. So I'd like to start a discussion here. Why are you interested in the meetings? What would you like to have covered or not covered? What makes you come to the meeting or not show up? How should we alter the meeting? -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 23:59, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

• I found the current meeting format interesting and informative, and potentially useful for groups keeping each other accountable, but I didn't feel that the meeting was cross-pollinating practices among groups. I think this may be because few, if any, national and sub-national education groups are well organized and large enough to have structured "educate the educator" programs, and I get the impression that few of these education groups have meetings or publications of their own where they share information and questions within their groups. I think that it might be useful to encourage national and sub-national groups to share what they learn from these meetings in publications to their members. I think that information could be made to flow up as well as down, if people who attend the meetings are encouraged to conduct surveys of their own members and report the results back to the monthly meeting for compilation and dissemination. At all levels, I think it would be good to work on engaging ambassadors and professors in a similar way to the efforts to engage and retain editors in general, and give all participants on every Wikimedia project the sense that they belong to an internationally collaborative and mutually supportive education community of professors, ambassadors, students, researchers, and WMF staff. Pine^(talk) 06:22, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks for the initiative LiAnna. I was thinking about this topic aswell. I find the idea of a meeting very good and I'd love to share more. Let me think about this and write you feedback through the mailinglist. I'll try to get back to you as soon as possible. --Elly Koepf (WMDE) (talk) 08:10, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Ask the reporting organizations to prepare their report on wiki before the meeting, and then announce the URLs for review and ask if there are any last minute changes before taking reports. 71.212.249.178 05:33, 14 July 2012 (UTC)