Wikipedia Education Program Metrics and Activities Meeting/December 2011

Agenda edit

Updates from:

Have been getting pushback from ENWP community about the level of support we've had from Ambassadors and whether that's enough
Decided to make stricter requirements to be a part of the program
Trying to determine how many Ambassadors students are needed per student
Trying to recruit more Online Ambassadors to add more support for students
Students who are working just in sandboxes or in Word and then dumping content at the end of the semester is where we have problems (essays, articles up for deletion, etc.)
Regional Ambassadors are now getting more involved
Aiming on more quality professors (in terms of fit for the Wikipedia program) than quantity

Had similar issues in Canada to the U.S.
Some classes went really well -- in particular, the class at the law school went very well. Contributed more than a dozen good contributions on Canadian law. Those classes contributed some very good material.
One class had problems with not involving students early enough in the semester and doing an essay dump in the end; because students weren't involved.
Need follow up and follow through from students who may or may not be paying attention in class
Should implement some kind of pass/fail system for professors, including asking professors to leave if they're not willing to engage with their students on-wiki
- Requires that we're managing professors a little more
Another issue with a class:
- 1700 student class
- Wants to make sure quality is better next term
- Hope he can join a meeting to have him discuss whether a class of 1,000+ students is something we should be doing
Expanding in Canada, moving beyond Toronto region
Want to recruit Ambassadors across Canada

Program is still on hold in India
CCI cleanup will take about another month or so
Tori Read was in India, interviewed staff, CAs, professors, directors, admins, editors
- Report due mid-January
Ayush is still working on data from the paper
LiAnna/Frank's analysis from interviews done
Working on both quantitative and qualitative analysis
Expect to take 3-4 months off for the analysis

Annie and Frank were in Cairo for 10 days
- Annie and Essam and Moushira and Frank talked to professors at Cairo University and Ein Champs University, and GUC (German University Cairo)
- Got enough profs on board for spring
- Drama
- Politics
- Spanish
- Etc.
- Four classes follow traditional approach -- students research, write articles
- Two classes will do translations from other Wikipedia language versions
Community on Arabic Wikipedia is small; Max of 90 students in program, probably less (60-90 students total)
No mandatory assignments; profs will choose the 10 best students
12 CAs, 6 will be WPians
6 OAs (User:Ciphers -- thought leader on ARWP, says we'll find enough OAs)
Think we have 3-4 CAs who are WPians, need 2 more, and need another 6 that we'll train
Setting up support structure will be the biggest challenge
10-20 WP total who live in Cairo
In general, people at universities in Cairo are very enthusiastic about this program; political situation
- Tabling
- In class presentations
Students asked smart questions, enthusiasm
Alignment with mission: improve the amount an quality of Arabic content on the Web; encouraging to see
Go back to Middle East in January with profs workshops and CA training
Hopefully political situation will be calm and quiet
Start small pilot at the end of January

Cologne, had a meeting with 10 longterm Wikipedians, signed up to be part of the program
Germans are planning to do something different from the model we've followed in the past
Students get support from TAs and profs (Tutoren, get trained by Referenten); Germans have 0% Wikipedians helping students, but Wikipedians (Referenten are 100% WP) helping the TA/profs
Want to support through FAQ, mailing list, course pages on wiki
Slightly different model; not calling it Ambassadors.
Interested to ese how it plays out
Workshop went well, 1.5 days, slides uploaded here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:K%C3%B6ln_Orientierungsworkshop_f%C3%BCr_Referenten_Dezember_2011.pdf
Good meetup with community in Cologne; also meetup tonight with Hamburg as well.

Maybe we should avoid large classes because they cause more problems
Also need to recruit CAs who aren't necessarily the TA as well; they serve first as a TA and second as a CA
Large classes are harder; until someone can bring us a plan that makes sense and we think it will work with the community
Professor orientation: should have a short quiz at the end (a la IRB test)