Wikipedia Education Program Metrics and Activities Meeting/January 2012

Agenda edit

  • Welcome
  • Country updates:
    • United States (Jami)
    • Canada (Jami)
    • Egypt (Annie and Rochelle)
    • Brazil (Everton)
    • India (Hisham)
    • Israel (Hana)
  • Questions and wrap-up

United States edit

  • Classes have started
  • New Participation Requirements, motivated by community responses and information about support we get, patterns of success (better classes have stronger support from more Ambassadors)
    • Each class has to have 1 Amb/15 students
    • Every class has to have a Wikipedian present
    • Can't work with huge classes (over 100 students) in the short term
  • High interest this semester -- 55 professors in U.S., 10 professors in Canada were interested
  • About 35 classes and 1,000 students in U.S. and 8 classes, 250 students in Canada
  • Canada not just U of Toronto, also UBC and Ontario schools
  • Focus on quality over quantity
    • Have welcome packets for professors and Campus Ambassadors with clear expectations and information about the term
  • How do we turn the support structure over to the community?

Egypt edit

  • Pilot program in Cairo
  • Classes begin in early Feb
  • Early planning already underway
  • Starting small, based on learning points from other programs
  • Only 7 classes participating, and only top and most interested 5-15 students involved in contributing content
  • Solid support structure in place in Cairo -- 2-3 CA and 1 OA for each class; even stricter than U.S./Canada this term
    • 50% of CAs and 100% of OAs will be Wikipedians
  • Workshops at Cairo University and Ain Shams university for professors, 13 professors in each group, both the ones participating this term as well as 10 others
  • Workshops in Arabic, Wikipedians did wiki training before Rochelle's part
  • Focus on what you can get out of a Wikipedia assignment and why might you do it to harness your student's work into an encyclopedia forum, went through milestones in the term (outline, bibliography, first draft, peer review, etc.), assessment
  • Talk about challenges of grading this assignment, work in sandboxes to figure out what students have done
  • Professors thought plagiarism would be a problem, and thought Wikipedia is a good way to encourage students to be part of a community where it's not acceptable to plagiarize
  • Citation another issue; there isn't a style like MLA in Arabic, and the community's decision around citation style could come to influence publishing in the Arab World.
  • One professor wants to do video, will be interesting and challenging for everyone involved.
  • In workshops, Rochelle sat down with 6 of the 7 professors and went through their ideas, brainstorming, troubleshooting, etc. Emphasize learning goals for class, match the assignment to those learning goals. All had diverse ideas of how to use Wikipedia and were very enthusiastic.
  • All were going to do it with graduate students (small class) or an extracurricular activity

Brazil edit

  • Pilot program in Brazil
  • Starter in december (almost holidays)
  • contacted more than 10 professors (maybe around 15)
  • focused on the top universities in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro
  • we have a professor really committed to the program (Juliana Bastos) and 5-6 professors liked very much the idea of joining the program
  • Already have 5 CA candidates (talking in person/skype/phone), but we'll start recruiting more very soon
  • Classes start in March
  • we are focusing on professors committed to produce educational resources
  • challenges: explain about copyright, Wikipedia, collaborative process

India edit

  • Been looking at the various analyses done (Quantitative by Ayush, Independent Analysis by Tory Read)
  • Accepting the suggestions and learnings that have emerged
  • Need to take as much time as required to plan out potential version 2 of the pilot
    • Smaller classes
    • More robust support network
    • Training modifications
  • Step back and say where should we be doing it?
  • Looking at what's happening in other programs (esp. Egypt Pilot), selecting students, etc.

Israel edit

  • Hana is leading a program in Haifa University
  • Four classes participated last term (archeology, history, literature); more will join next term
  • Professors decide if it's part of the curriculum or a bonus assignment
  • About 10-12 students in each class, required
  • Have about 17 articles so far, about half in archaeology, half in Hebrew literature
  • Many are women, helping to close the gender gap
  • Contribute to Hebrew and to Arabic

Questions edit

  1. What was the editor community reaction when newbies started editing wikipedia (En, Ar...)? Tom
  • Challenges when students don't have enough support in the U.S.; working closely with Arabic Wikipedia community to make them aware of the program and participating in it early on.