Wikipedia Education Program Metrics and Activities Meeting/February 2012

Agenda:

  • Welcome
  • Updates from countries:
    • United States
    • Canada
    • Egypt
    • Brazil
    • India

United States edit

  • Classes have started
  • Deadline was Friday to meet new participation requirements; Online Ambassadors really stepped up and only 6 classes didn't meet requirements.
  • Most classes who didn't meet requirements came through APS or ASA initiatives, rather than our Ambassadors; working with them to determine best practices for joining in the fall
  • Starting to plan an in-person meeting in March to determine how to push the U.S. program forward as a volunteer-led initiative. Want our Ambassadors to pick the group

Canada edit

  • 12 classes currently running, a lot of excitement
  • Biggest challenge we've faced is how to get classes started in places outside of Ontario; didn't have people on the ground on the east coast and BC
    • Now classes at UBC, New Brunswick, Alberta
  • Canadian program is developing well
  • Professors are also interested in doing outreach, recruiting Ambassadors and other professors, hosting an outreach event or two
  • A number of the professors have used Wikipedia before, so mix of newbies
  • Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto (largest museum in Canada), have been looking at what GLAM people have been doing; teach classes, connected to U of Toronto, see museum as something that's evolving -- classes or some kind of outreach events there?

Egypt edit

  • Classes just getting started
  • New identi.ca feed to include an Ambassador-driven news system

Brazil edit

Update from Everton:

Ambassadors recruitment and professors edit

We have found online ambassadors through an announcement on the Portuguese village pump

http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Esplanada/geral/Campanha_para_embaixadores_no_projeto_Wimedia_Brasil_Educa%C3%A7%C3%A3o_(5fev2012)

but we still need more ambassador with experience on Wikipedia, so we'll have to train some people interested in joing the program as soon as possible.

Courses edit

4 to 5 courses

http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Wikimedia_Brasil_Educa%C3%A7%C3%A3o/Cursos

If we don't find experienced ambassadors for Vera, we won't work this semester and maybe we can included FGV Rio to the program.

Meetings with professors and training edit

I, Jessie and Otavio (a campus ambassador) had a meeting last week on Rio de Janeiro with the professors Juliana and Edivaldo and next March 3 we are meeting professors from São Paulo and bringing Juliana and Otavio here. We will use this meeting to agree with professors on how we are going to work during this semester and train them on details of Wikipedia.

We are also going to train volunteers willing to join the program as ambassadors (campus and online). We still need to agree on the day this will be done, so I believe it's a good idea to do that during the meeting of the Brazilian community and WMF staff (Maryana, Steven, Megan and Matthew) we can use to recruit more ambassadors and train new editor.

Note for Frank edit

A new group of professors from FGV wants very much join the program (Carlos Affonso, Bruno Magrani and Ronaldo Lemos) to improve articles related to intelectual property. They already have experience with students constructing wiki articles and are 3rd year students, so they said they can use their experience to improve Wikipedia articles.

Frank and Barry are very worried about increasing the number of classes here (so I am, for me the quality is more important than quantity), but I think this can be done and this can be a good group of professors working with us. I am also already informing professors if we don't find ambassadors for them, we cannot work this semester.

We could have a skype meeting to discuss this.

India edit

  • Program in currently paused
  • Tory's report has come in, as well as Mani and Ayush's quantitative data; evaluating these
  • Professors who don't have Ambassadors?
    • Piotr; Brian Carver, others from Czech Republic too -- generally must be active on Wikipedia before, have good organization skills, explain about copyright
  • Quality over quantity?
    • We are interested in experimentation, but we need to avoid repeating mistakes
    • Working toward doing a strategic focus on our outreach and recruiting efforts -- what are our ideal professors and classes for a Wikipedia assignment? Find a formula for our successful courses, which will inform our recruitment moving forward.
  • Work in sandboxes vs live space?
    • Make sure students aren't staying in sandboxes, but they're a good place to start and a good place to have students work if you're concerned about the quality of students' contributions.

Wrapup edit