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Archive 1Archive 2

People who want to be here vs people who have to be here

I think the main problem is people who want to be here vs people who have to be here. Up till now, people who've edited Wikipedia, who have created articles, etc., are here because (for whatever reason) they want to be here. In essence, they're motivated. Now, we're faced with a large influx of people who don't want to be here, who are here only because their class demands that they're here. Furthermore, in every class, some students get A's, some don't -- that's just a fact of life. Thus, we're faced with a large influx of less-than-stellar students (not saying they're all less than stellar, but I think it's safe to say that a majority of students don't make all straight A's in every class) who don't want to be here and are seeking to just do the absolute minimum (their belief of what the minimum is, not our definition). These are students who have, apparently, been successful writing papers to this point because they're plagiarized their way through every major paper. Until that changes, until these students really want to be here, there's not much we can do. I've posted on a few students talk pages -- I've seen several people post on other students talk pages, and I don't think any of the students have really responded -- there hasn't really been any constructive dialog. Perhaps if there was, that would change things, but given people's current motivations (to get the grade then to not return) I think we'd just get lip service if we attempted to force motivation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.23.82.57 (talk) 22:44, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

xe has a point --Guerillero | My Talk 00:48, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
I agree. There are certainly some motivated students, and we have acquired some good editors from the program, but to me the main benefits of the PPI (see next section) were the added content and improved articles, and the knowledge gained by the educators. If the USEP could reliably improve articles and bring the participating instructors to the point where they could, with little support, run classes with a Wikipedia component, then it would be a tremendous success. That in itself is the best way to increase retention of the students as editors; to get them to stay we should focus on making it a successful program, not vice versa. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:10, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm less convinced about this point. There are plenty of people who want to be editors on Wikipedia who cause trouble and/or can seem to be obstacles. Some of them have to be banned, and even so come back (as sock puppets or whatever). Equally, there can be plenty of students who are asked to be on Wikipedia as part of an assignment who can be useful and productive. Meanwhile, it's certainly true that not every student is stellar: we have good students and bad ones; and yes some plagiarize, others are lazy, etc. etc. But in that, they're fairly representative of the population at large, I think. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 05:30, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

The students have benefited by learning about Wikipedia, but the actual yield in high quality articles was quite low, and I don't see that the present term is likely to be much better. Agreed, not that much can be expected of many students in many classes in a short period of time, but since those are the constraints we will always intrinsically have, we should refocus of setting goals that can be accomplished. I've been a new college teacher in my life, and one thing I learned from it is that when you start out new, you always aim at more than can be reasonably completed, and they must be modified to avoid both the instructor and, more important, the students becoming frustrated. . DGG ( talk ) 06:24, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
Perhaps the biggest benefit (for some instructors, anyway) that has come out of this has been the large number of "assistant checking for plagiarism". Banaticus (talk) 07:58, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

WMF EP quantitative analysis conference 22 November

There's an online conference presenting quantitative analysis of the IEP (mostly) occurring at 16:00 UTC, 22 November (see here for your timezone). More information is available at outreach:Global Education Program Metrics and Activities Meeting. The general community is welcome to attend; we need a few people there to ask the hard questions and disrupt the inevitable WMF circlejerk. (I won't be attending myself, time = midnight for me).

I also note with disdain this official WMF blog post, which is extolling the virtues of expanding the EP without regard to community health.

P.S. Why aren't the Foundation staff posting this? (Cross posted to WT:IEP.) MER-C 05:50, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Is the Foundation implying the English Wikipedia community (who frequent these pages) isn't a key stakeholder?! That's ludicrous and nowhere near good enough, especially since one of the many, many problems with the IEP was zero community consultation. Even the WMF acknowledge this. They most certainly had the opportunity to do so: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] etc. Furthermore, this was not announced on the second mailing list you linked to and not everyone here knows about the myriad mailing lists, blogs and obscure wikis where these things are discussed.
It is in the WMF's best interest to consult with the en.wp community. To that extent, any failure to consult with the editors on the English Wikipedia on-wiki may (and at this rate, will) be used as evidence in a request for arbitration against the Foundation to halt any future iteration of the IEP. MER-C 08:08, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
MER-C, I'd be happy to leave a note for you of the next meeting on your talk page as well if you sign the interest list on outreachwiki:Global Education Program Metrics and Activities Meeting. Everyone who got a message on their Outreach wiki talk page signed up on that list. The English Wikipedia community is certainly a key stakeholder in the U.S. Education Program, the Canada Education Program, and the India Education Program. But we have interest from the Middle East, Germany, Brazil, and other countries whose language Wikipedia communities are also stakeholders. This meeting is designed to be a high-level overview about issues that are applicable to *all* Education Programs, so everyone has a general understanding of the basics of what is happening in each country, and the chapters representatives who are just starting to work on their programs can hear learning points from more experienced program leaders. That means we likely won't spend more than 5-10 minutes on India or the United States. I imagine the India 5 minutes will be full of things like "we had major issues with students copying and pasting into Wikipedia; check with professors you work with to gauge students' writing quality before you start planning" and "we didn't involve the community early enough; we encourage others starting education programs to work with the community from the planning process on" -- it won't get any more detailed than that. I do hope you're able to join us if you're interested in education programs in many different language Wikipedias, and I highly recommend you join the Education list Cindamuse linked to above if you're interested in Wikipedia education programs around the world. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 16:47, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
Is there no awareness at "high levels" that the number one lesson learned is that we allowed far and above the number of participants that a proper well managed "pilot" should have? In my view the other problems are mostly due to our inability to cover our backsides once that colossal mistake was noticed but I have yet to see anyone acknowledge that. Jojalozzo 04:11, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
The original program was not only expanded too rapidly, but had from the start goals for article completeness and substantiality that very few classes could meet. This should have been rethought before expanding, sure, but we're past that point, and we need to figure out how to go forward. We all know the things that went wrong. DGG ( talk ) 06:18, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
You may think we all agree on what went wrong but the size of the "pilot" has not been mentioned by designers here or in the IEP talk page or in the review article. According to designers, the main cause of the problems was not having the resources to handle the problems such as not getting enough ambassadors ready in time. From the diagnoses I am reading, "going forward" won't need more than increasing the numbers of ambassadors and trainers and better preparation for handling the load of inappropriate contributions, nothing about shrinking way back to a really manageable level or running the project in an isolated sandbox. Jojalozzo 00:08, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
That's the impression I got from the outreach wiki page, especially with the description under "upcoming meetings". The point remains: I didn't know about the outreach wiki page until I read the official WMF blog post yesterday. You need to be proactive and post notices here where people are more likely to notice them. And if you did so, you wouldn't have to correct any notices posted by the community. MER-C 11:18, 19 November 2011 (UTC) Copyedited MER-C 04:27, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Instructor orientation and other ideas

I'm starting a new section here to tease out a few great ideas I saw above.

  1. It seems like everyone is in agreement that some sort of instructor orientation to Wikipedia is necessary. So, what should we put in this? What are the key facets of Wikipedia that instructors need to know before embarking on such a project, even with the support of Ambassadors in class and on-wiki?
  2. A way for instructors to "graduate out" of the program. I'm intrigued by this idea. What would be a reasonable term that a professor could be expected to have support from Ambassadors before he or she could do the assignment without that support, do you think? Two terms? Three?
  3. More materials for students should be developed. As Mike Christie notes above, part of our problem is that students don't necessarily read or watch the materials we do give them. But we'd love to get feedback on the materials we've collected for students, because I know some of them could be better. What's missing? What's out of date? What could be clearer? What could be more newbie-friendly?
  4. Taking some of the load off of experienced Online Ambassadors. I'm especially interested in hearing from Online Ambassadors here -- of the things you do as part of your OA role, what do you think we could take off your plate and give to less experienced editors, and what do you think requires experience? What can we do to recruit more experienced Online Ambassadors?
  5. Prioritizing instructors based on interest. Obviously professors who want their students to achieve GA status is good, but one problem here is that the GA backlog may not enable anyone to achieve this before the end of the term when grades are due, especially if 30+ students all submit articles to the GA process at once. What could we do to overcome these issues? How else can we prioritize our involvement with interested professors? How can we measure this?

What other ideas do you have? How else can we expand Wikipedia's use as a teaching tool (thereby increasing article quality and participation) without sacrificing quality of support? -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 22:53, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm going to put in subheads for answering different points, in the hope that this will make separate threads easier to read. I'll unindent some of the threads as a result; please revert if you don't like the outcome. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:45, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
Very useful, thanks, Mike! -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 02:16, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Point 1: Instructor orientation

Read key policy pages; understand NOR and SYNTH

Re point 1: as well as any more general material, I think it's important that they should read the actual words of the three key content policies, WP:Verifiability, WP:No original research and WP:Neutral point of view, and also the main WP:Notability guideline and (long though it is) WP:What Wikipedia is not. That's a fair amount to read, but so much comes back to those primary documents that anyone trying to understand Wikipedia really cannot skip them.

One aspect of No original research needs emphasis: the essence of a good student paper is often marshalling established facts to draw a new conclusion, but in Wikipedia terms that is "synthesis" and not allowed: "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources." JohnCD (talk) 23:26, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Agreed engaged teachers are key. Worth going slower to do this.

Have been reading a lot of old talk threads.

I think committed instructors are key. If you look at Jimmy Butler or JbMurray (both efforts pre funding), you see that they still struggled even with committed instructors. But have basically delivered decent content and a few returning editors. And a big part of it getting over the goal line was those special teachers.

I think Wiki is MUCH better off growing slowly and organically and picking the juiciest targets than with a super "mass approach". Wiki is not set up to take on an eductional mission in addition to all the other work it does and the community getting spread thin. We need to clearly be getting either content (good content, relevant content) or hooked good editors...to justify the time spent on these endeavors. (Forget the grant...that is just money...but you only have so many Mike Christie. He is TOP NOTCH. People like that are rare and should be mentoring students or classes that are worthy of it.) I totally disagree with an old comment by the head of the Education department (DEC10) saying that it didn't matter how much content or returning editors we got. NOPE. We are not a service for schools (let wikiversity do that). We need to do this stuff because it ends up driving ongoing valuable participation OR creation of important content (as determined by GA+ and high hit count).

I realize there is a big staffed up group at WMF and so there is a demand to want some big shebang. But I think we see more and more that a few good classes are better than lots of mediocre ones. Especially given the state of development of the en-Wiki. The India case showed it most clearly (you should not be targeting average, early uni Indian editors...it's just not worth it. That was a case of an actual negative impact. But even if the impact is just "neutral", then you've wasted volunteer time. I say find more Jimmy Butlers and more JBMurrays. Try going after the graduate department at Harvard. Aim higher. And be choosey. A starting hurdle is the instructor himself demonstrating editing ON WIKI, the term before.

I loooooved the idea of spending money and going after unis and doing on person visits. (At first.) And there is a role for a group of WMF employees. Sure, definitely. But it needs to be smarter. I worry that you will lose community buyin soon. And that would be a shame as I, you all, and the community all lurve the idea of getting more kids interested in editing.

Sorry if this seems a kick in the teeth. But...needs to be on the table. 71.246.144.154 (talk) 01:00, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

How to find suitable topics

They should know techniques for searching Wikipedia for existing articles to avoid duplicate or quasi-duplicate articles. They should be made aware of places to find articles that are actively needed or priority stubs to expand. Point them to the key WikiProjects in their subject area(s). They have lots of helpful listings in this respect. Other sources are Wikipedia:Most wanted articles and WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles. – Voceditenore (talk) 14:58, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

General comment

Thanks, all! These are really useful and timely as we are now actively working on developing an online instructor orientation that participating professors would need to go through before joining our program. The key policies and choosing topics are both great ideas -- what else should we include? We're thinking of things like how to use watchlists, how to use talk pages, how to track a user's contributions, etc. What else are we missing? For example, what kinds of community interactions should they be aware of? How much should they know about DYK/GA/FA or other places where peer review of articles happens? We're in the brainstorming phase, so I'd love to get everyone's thoughts on the list. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 17:28, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

They definitely need training in how to put pages on watch and strong encouragement to put all their student's articles and talk pages on their watch list, particularly if you are short on OAs, but frankly why are they using WP for an assignment if they're not even willing to monitor their students' progress? Also how to read article histories, including how to compare versions and how to use What links here. You can let them know about GA, FA, and DYK. But be aware that GA and FA have backlogs, and are not a viable means of getting others to provide quick and detailed help as an article is developing. The FA process will basically throw out any article which (A) hasn't had a detailed peer review first. There's a shortage of editors who do peer review work, and it's mostly arranged informally through networks of experienced editors who've already produced high-quality content and evaluate each other's articles. (B) isn't already reasonably close to FA requirements to begin with. The GA process is much more variable. Some of the reviewers are pretty inexperienced. Note that with DYK, someone else should nominate the article (their OA or CA perhaps?). If you self-nominate, you are required to review an article in exchange, and newbies aren't up to that. A few very active, large, and highly organized WikiProjects will offer timely peer reviews in their subject area. WikiProject Military History springs to mind, but most of them cannot provide this, especially in bulk. Voceditenore (talk) 19:13, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
Keep it simple...scholar (KISS): Tell them to write a DYK and read the JB Murray essay. have some people on hand to assist them when they have questions (or a board where they can ask questions). But make them do some practical work. If you develop a bunch of content...they won't read it...and it won't teach them the way a little mucking around on the Wiki would.71.246.144.154 (talk) 19:52, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Policy vs. mechanics. I asked Sgelbman, the instructor of a course on U.S. politics, a couple of questions related to this discussion. Regarding instructor orientation, she said was that she would prefer policy orientation to help with markup mechanics, though she qualified this by saying that she had some prior Wikipedia edits and was quick with markup languages, so she may be an outlier. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:50, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

One solution would be to have self-identified teacher/instructor/professor editors help (I suspect some are lurking who are not self-identified, but lots have identified). These could help the leaders of the course with the steep learning curve and in some cases replace Online Ambassadors. Have if be done it in rotations so the regular editors don't burn out and don't feel they have to leave their own material forever. Truthkeeper (talk) 22:19, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Point 2: Instructor graduation from the program

I'd like instructors to edit on Wikipedia, but I don't see how to give them an incentive to do so, since the reason we want them to learn is so that we can provide them better support. However, if there is a way to provide incentives, then I would love to see them at least take an article to GA. I think they and their students would benefit immensely. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:07, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Require X amount of semester before editing by instructors. Have some "ambassador attention" and materials to help ease them into it. Designed for them iow. Don't accept any teachers who don't complete it (in terms of helping their classes). Yeah...that will cut down the numbers a lot, but so...you wanted to do that anyway...here is a mechanism. Be bold.71.246.144.154 (talk) 01:21, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
In my view the incentive is twofold: 1., writing and feeling pride in material within their subject area that's published instantly; 2., knowing the articles they've written are well-done (hopefully!) and feeling confident in allowing their students to use that work as sources. In other words it legitimizes Wikipedia in academia by having teachers/instructors/profs add their expertise here. They should adhere to our policies and write in an encyclopedia manner. Obviously Awadewit is a prime example of an academic who adds to the encyclopedia. Truthkeeper (talk) 22:25, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Point 3: more materials for students

Just in regard to point 3, I agree that students don't read the materials. Which is why the idea is to require them to read the materials as part of the course requirements, with a formative evaluation to confirm that it has been completed. I've been thinking about this for a while, so I threw together a basic syllabus at Wikiversity - the intent is to write a basic course that could be done in a short time, but summarises for the students core issues that they need to know, and that could be included in the first part of a university course engaging with WP without taking too much time from core course material (each section is meant to be very short, in spite of the number of topics - the main value comes from the introduction and the assessment to push the concept). We did the same with plagiarism where I teach - the students didn't read the materials, so we required them to do so by writing a very short course and providing a short assessment piece, then adding that course to the first part of an existing first-year core topic. Worm is doing something similar when mentoring, so it has been used elsewhere on wiki. - Bilby (talk) 00:01, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Point 4: Online Ambassadors

I don't like the idea of new editors as OAs; I think a student that needs mentoring needs someone clearly more experienced. The professors who are willing to take the risk of running a class on Wikipedia deserve the best support we can give them. I would address this by throttling back the number of classes to a level we can effectively support. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:07, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

  • "Give to less experienced editors". Absolutely not, this should be obvious from the IEP. I second Mike's comment on reducing the number of classes: quality over quantity applies here as well. MER-C 05:54, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Support quality. I asked Sgelbman, the instructor of a course on U.S. politics, a couple of questions related to this discussion. You can see her comments here, but in sum she said the ambassador support was fine but she'd have liked to have had access to support prior to the start of the class. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:00, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Do an OA inventory This may seem kind of obvious but how can anything be decided without a truly accurate picture of how many active OAs you actually have? I'd suggest this as a priority. I looked at the list, one has completely retired from Wikipedia; two have explictly marked themselves as "UNAVAILABLE"; at least one other one I know plans not to continue with OA work; and quite a few of the rest have not signed up for any classes this term. There are a lot of courses listed for this current term which appear to have no OAs at all. My impression is that you don't have enough for the current numbers of students, let alone increasing it. I also agree with Mike Christie that the numbers of OAs needed should be based on a ratio of OA to students, not to classes. The latter leads to wide discrepancies in the amount of support given to individual classes. In some cases the ratio to students to OA is so high that an OA simply cannot provide the kind attention that was "advertised" to professors. Voceditenore (talk) 13:22, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

At the last steering committee meeting we highlighted this at a top priority. --Guerillero | My Talk 19:43, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
I was asked to be OA for two different courses. I accepted one with 30 students. The class is editing 10 articles (3 students to each article). The students never used the talk pages, and neither the students nor the professor ever contacted me during the term, even though I left contact information at the beginning of the term encouraging them to contact me with questions or for any assistance; and during the term I tried to leave notes for the Campus Ambassadors, the instructor and the students, commenting on some of the students' sandbox drafts. Now, suddenly the students have added lots of material to all 10 articles over the past two days (they're all a mess, without in-line cites, rambling, etc.), so I'm scrambling to clean them up and add [citation needed] dozens of times. This experience did not indicate to me that the Online Ambassadors are being used very effectively. It seems to me that reducing the number of classes would help the foundation, or whoever is organizing, to better coordinate between the classes and the OA resources. -- Ssilvers (talk) 21:59, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Point 5: Prioritizing classes

  • I'd go for classes whose topic material is not well covered in Wikipedia (and who have actually displayed English language compentency). That way, students don't have to try to improve an already decent article. MER-C 05:54, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
    I think this is a good idea in theory, but in practice it's hard to find anything but the most specialized topics that don't have enough holes for a class of students. E.g. I wouldn't recommend students trying to improve the articles on the governors of Kentucky, or the members of the Gregorian mission, but any class advanced enough to be focused on such a narrow topic might actually be able to contribute at that level.
    If we restrict the number of classes, then we do have to have a way to prioritize them. I would like to say that prior successful courses are a good sign -- again with the goal of giving instructors sufficient experience that they need no further support -- but I'm not sure I know how to identify successful courses. The quantitative metric Amy Roth used for the PPI would work, but it's very time consuming to evaluate. Perhaps any instructor who is willing to work on an article themselves should be given priority? Or whose class achieves at least one GA? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:43, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
    As an aside here, why did we accept a class in the USEP this term with almost 200 students? That was definitely going for quantity at the expense of quality. OAs signing up to support classes hasn't worked very well. My data is a week or so old, but for the classes for which the number of students is listed, and for which one or more OAs have signed up, the student-to-OA ratio ranges from 5 to 75 (and one-third of the classes had no OA as of a week ago). Since most OAs have signed up for more than one class, I would say the OAs have been asked to spread themselves pretty thinly. -- Donald Albury 14:42, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
  • Teaching Fellows? I had a look at the requirements page for Teaching Fellow status. Frankly, those requirements are what any successful college project needs. Possibly prioritise those whose instructors are willing to sign up? For those who aren't willing, then provide them with all the online instructions etc. and possibly Campus Ambassadors but make it clear that they may not receive the same level of online support. Voceditenore (talk) 15:13, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
    Hi Voceditenore, that's actually the idea behind creating the Teaching Fellows: We try to prioritize support for professors who are willing to do the assignment as we'd like them to, and we provide the Teaching Fellow designation they can add to their CVs. We still offer support to other professors, but we try to focus our energies on Teaching Fellows. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 17:20, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
    Well, adding that to their CV is probably a pretty minor incentive, given what's actually required for tenure and advancement at most universities. Perhaps you need to be a little more forthright with those who don't sign up to be a WTF, i.e., they may not get any support at all from online ambassadors because there may simply not be enough to go around next term. From what I can see, that's pretty much the case now. There's nothing wrong with being honest in what you can provide. Any instructor worth their salt would appreciate it and respect the program even more. Voceditenore (talk) 18:33, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
    We need to remember that anyone can start a class project with or without our approval or assistance, and regardless of the program. We need to help these people also--because if we don't the possibility of major work fixing the errors that result. But in explaining to instructors, I find a substantial talk necessary in person in advance, and I would personally not formally involve myself as OA in a course where I could not do this or the equivalent. However, the need for instruction is less when the Wikipedia- related assignment is of small extent--I consider a perfectly proper project of adding a reference or two to undercited articles an appropriate short-time assignment--with the emphasis on finding good references, not our intricate reference formating --for which we can now rely on the "cite" extension, which really simplifies this for students. DGG ( talk ) 18:33, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Ratios

Following on the section above, in fact, Jbmurray may have the records (if not, the memory) to comment on the ratios involved in his students' FAs, at WP:MMM. How many students, how many articles, how many classes, to how many experienced FA Wikipedians collaborating and mentoring those students via WP:FAT? My recollection is that so many of the "regulars" of the FA writing and reviewing community were involved in helping out there, that my problem as FAC delegate was there were few uninvolved reviewers left to give independent review of the FACs, so I had to wait and hope that "uninvolved" knowledgeable reviewers would weigh in. I'd guess the ratio of mentors to students was much greater than one, but perhaps Jbmurray has some data. One disengaged inxperienced Wikipedian professor with more than half a dozen classes of several hundred students working on scores of articles cannot supervise work as occurred with the significant amount of mentorship that WP:FAT provided to WP:MMM-- we had an entire team of experienced Wikipedia FA writers guiding those students. Doesn't scale. Yes, regular editors are doing some professors' work for them, because they overstretched. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:27, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Then you might be very interested to see what Sue Gardner has to say about FA, and the way it's driving away new contributors. We need to re-focus on quantity, not quality apparently. Malleus Fatuorum 23:39, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
I take with a very big grain of salt anything about content creation coming from someone who ... doesn't. Also, I think what she actually said in that session (taped) was somewhat misrepresented-- it started out about DYK, where some folks don't seem to understand the extent of the copyvio problem-- although I acknowledge that her views on "quality" are ... bizarre at best. Anyone who thinks FA standards are too high ... has low standards. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:32, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
I don't see it quite like that. She seemed to express some distaste for the idea that some articles could never be FAs, as if that was a bad thing. But my fundamental disagreement with over the quality vs. quantity debate. She's just looking at the numbers of editors, not what those editors are doing. As I said, nuttier than a bag of squirrels. Malleus Fatuorum 02:50, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
Could we get a link to the session, please? Sounds like something I for one would like to look at. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:00, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
On your talk-- be prepared for an alternate reality. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:19, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

FWIW, I think it's the opposite: We don't need more articles about obscure and unimportant topics; we need to focus on the quality of the most important topics. -- Ssilvers (talk) 22:05, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Where the focus should be

OA effort put into improving the students' understanding of Wikipedia is not wasted, but it has no long term benefits to USEP, because the student population changes almost completely every semester. That implies that the focus of training should be the instructors. I know that the CAs do a lot to help the instructors, and that's very useful, but the CAs are (usually) not very experienced Wikipedians, so there are limits to what they can convey.

I think that after the semester is over, or perhaps even before that point, we should survey the instructors to find out whether any of them would be interested in improving a Wikipedia article themselves, with appropriate support. If any of them are willing to improve content I think we should ask a couple of experienced Wikipedian content editors to work with them -- they may not think they'll need help, but they will. I think we would find that the professors who do this would have a much better understanding of policies -- copyright, NPOV, V, etc. -- and would be better positioned to run successful classes. Some would need less OA support, and might be able to switch to a mode of only calling on OAs when they need support for specific issues. That in turn would improve our OA bandwidth.

If we actively search out the professors who are willing to spend some time learning exactly what it takes to improve Wikipedia content, we will be finding the professors who will most reward the community for supporting their classes. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:23, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

I largely agree with this. I also think, however, that effort should be put into supporting educational technologists / IT people at universities. These are the people who at present are often supporting Blackboard etc. They are, on the whole, interested in other options such as Wikipedia, but often don't know where to start. Send WMF people to Open Education conferences, for instance: then you'll be reaching the people whose job is to support professors on campus. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 14:59, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
Thanks Mike, I couldn't agree more. That's exactly the direction we should be going. Truthkeeper (talk) 14:46, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
I also agree with Mike's approach, but am additionally concerned that we can't put this horse back in the barn: we have (thanks to WMF's premature publicity and misguided program efforts) a lot of uninvolved, less-than-knowledgeable professors who are already on board and are taking the time of experienced Wikipedians to do their student supervision for them, and AFAIK, we can't stop them from continuing that outside of established Wikipedia programs. How do we put that horse back in the barn (my answer is by treating the student edits the same as we would treat any edits-- I'm not willing to train students or professors who don't engage on talk). WMF pushed too far too fast with this program, the word is out, and we've provided an easy way for professors to grade their students (we detect the copyvio for example)-- I'd like to see WMF do something very public and high profile to advertise and to correct this trend, which is resulting in a grand waste of editor time, little article improvement, and the potential to alienate experienced editors who have to do the cleanup. Cleaning up faulty text takes a lot more time than it would to just write it correctly to begin with, but once it's in the article, something has to be done. Students who aren't even aware of WP:MEDMOS and WP:MEDRS and have only high school level knowledge of writing and the topic matter should not be adding dubious content to psych and medical articles-- that does more harm to our readers than good. Misinformation that can be spread about medical conditions on a widely read website is not something we should be condoning-- in the medical realm, my opinion is that no Wikipedia text is preferable to inaccurate article text that has potential to harm akin to BLPs, and we're getting too many articles chock full of misinformation that experienced editors don't have enough time to clean up. WMF opened that door-- what can they do to close it? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:21, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
I posted about this higher on the page but it got lost. The professors and the assignments must adhere to Wikipedia policy. Part of using Wikipedia as a teaching tool is teaching collaboration and writing for an audience - these should not be student essays and in every way should adhere to our existing policy. I found a Hemingway page yesterday that's basically a student essay and needs to be cleaned up. Truthkeeper (talk) 16:48, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
  • Many nominations appear at FAC before they are sufficiently prepared to meet Featured article standards, your students nominations are by no means the only ones in the category that require a good deal of work to bring them over the line at FAC, so this is not a criticism specific to student editing, but in such cases, it should also be clear that it's the community who brings these articles to standard. You have done something right in enlisting the community (eg Malleus and others) to help prepare articles, but we do ourselves a disservice by pretending that Jbmurray or you are typical of the educational projects. These FAs are a testament to the very community that is being trampled on via this program and some other professors. Would you have any of those FAs without Malleus ? The question/focus should be, what can other professors do to engage the project in a way that their students can also collaborate with experienced Wikipedians instead of wasting their time. As a medical editor, I think you know I was quite frustrated by some of those articles, but encouraged that other editors helped work to bring them over the line, and glad that you were able to facilitate that, but let's give credit to the collaboration from the community so we can figure out how other professors can replicate that experience. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:46, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
  • I have limited experience with FA; however, it seems that very few articles would meet that criteria without collaboration. Even the process of opposing with a list of short-comings is collaboration. Of course, none of the articles below would be Fa without the guidance of experienced editors. My concern about the tone of this dialog is the incorrect casting of collaborators as over-worked clean-up crews. What I have seen are editors eager to work with students who find the inter-action satisfying. From my perspective as a teacher (not professor) if not for the collaborative component and the peer-review, having high school students write articles for Wikipedia would be pointless. It is the interaction between talented editors and the students who await the feedback that drives student interest. When a student puts up an article for peer-review and no one responds except me; they are deeply disappointed. Yes, Malleus does serve as their teacher - a gift that I do not take lightly. I myself discovered my lack of talent under the patient tutelage of Awadewit. If they did so begrudgingly or in a desperate effort to salvage the damage then I would be personally devastated. There are several talented editors who await the new season and monitor student progress in a "collaborative" effort to meet the highest of standards. Several are former high school students who continue to be active on Wikipedia. What these editors have in common is a great deal of patience. Are they enhancing my job - absolutely. I will of course take advantage of any opportunity to provide students with educational experience beyond what I offer. I do find it troubling, that several references have implied that teachers are passing the buck by having others grade their papers and in essence do the work for them. The amount of my personal life consumed on this project far exceeds what would be required to run a student's paper through any of the multitude of anti-plagiarism tools and bust them for copy-vio. That's easy. Whether there are other schools out there leaving a trial of devastation, I can't speak to that. I am hopeful; however, that my experience can serve as an example of the positive that can arise when experienced editors collaborate with students. The result, stubs that no one was particularly interested in develop into articles worthy of note. From the dialog above, my hopes are apparently not coming to fruition. Banker Horse Bog turtleWikipedia:Today's featured article/August 30, 2010Loggerhead sea turtleOsteochondritis dissecans- Main page "Wikipedia:Today's featured article/August 18, 2010Phagocyte- Main page "Wikipedia:Today's featured article/August 6, 2009 --- are you better off without us? --JimmyButler (talk) 21:35, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
  • Obviously, if you didn't log on and interact and engage (as Jbmurray also did), little of what you wrote would be the case. The professors of the students that are hitting my watchlist don't even log on (and one specifically blamed his students, overlooking the fact that perhaps he's asking too much of them). So, we seem to be agreeing on what it takes, while disagreeing that you or Jbmurray represent what most of us see from these projects, where FAs and even GAs are far from the norm. Copyvio and unhelpful text that has to be cleaned up is the norm, and kudos to you, but bad on WMF for propogating the notion that what you and Jbmurray have accomplished represents the norm or can be accomplished on a grander scale. If/when I ever encounter a professor who engages, and doesn't try to blame his students, then there's a chance I'd dig in and help that group, but in the meantime, those professors shouldn't be using us to do their work.

    Further, since you have nominated (yourself) more than one article at FAC, it is incorrect for you to say you have little experience with FA-- particularly in relation to those professors who haven't ever engaged Wikipedia even at the GA level. The differences between Jbmurray and your editing experience-- relative to other instructors who are using this program-- cannot be ignored if this problem is to be solved. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:59, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

  • You have destroyed my dream. A legion of students lead by teachers improving Wikipedia as they enhance their understanding of research, peer review, and gain skills in collaboration and basic writing. What I have discovered from your dialog (and others) is the reality that the word "competent" seems to be lacking before the term teacher. This is very disappointing, since the benefits to the student - which only I am privileged to see - is enormous. Even those who fall short, learn hard lessons about procrastination. If in fact, a trail of destruction cleaned up by over-worked editors is the norm; then clearly there is a dilemma to which I was unaware. When discussing "generalizations" individuals do not matter, therefore in truth, if only a few exhibit a positive effect then the Project's purpose may be in question. However, those few individuals who have contributed and grown from this project by being "forced" by teachers into contributing, will be the cost if such lofty goals are abandoned. The discussion above on the need for more formal guidance has merit. I will pause a while and give it much thought. Also, my apologies for not admitting to having served a year in rehab after my first attempt at FA - it was disingenuous of me.--JimmyButler (talk) 22:47, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

I would like to add a note of caution to anyone whose experience with the program is limited to less than ten or twenty articles. There have been a lot of classes, a lot of students, and a lot of successes and failures. My own individual experiences with student interactions in the USEP have been quite varied, and I could imagine individual editors forming widely different opinions of the program depending on which classes they have run into. There are a couple of global perspectives available, one of which is this quantitative analysis. I participated in the evaluation team for that analysis, and it was reassuring to me to see that overall the PPI very substantially increased the quality of the articles the students worked on.

I'm not disagreeing with Sandy's complaints, and in fact I think her negative experiences really do represent a problem with the program. But I think it's worth remembering that the students really are helping us build an encyclopedia, and that we have numbers to prove it.

I also wanted to comment on the exchange between Jimmy and Sandy -- when students engage with collaborators (such as Malleus) to get articles to FA, to my mind that's exactly what should be happening. Yes, Sandy, an effort like that will absorb collaboration labour, but so do at least 75% of the FAs that come through FAC. Collaboration is what we're good at; if we complain when the students don't engage on the talk page, and don't collaborate, it seems harsh to me if we also complain when they do collaborate. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:02, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Spotted eagle ray. see Teacher Review. Perhaps require/request/demand this step prior to a GA or FA attempts in "education projects". It could substitute for Peer Review or perhaps precede it. Something I never thought to do until you shared the bigger picture. Such a review, requires little understanding of Wikipedia; rather, an understanding of the content of a research paper and general knowledge of constructing, hopefully within the professor's field of study. I suspect such a request would dramatically reduce the level of involvement; at least among those who have found a way to shift the burden of educating to others. In my case, future projects will require the formation of groups so that the number of projects I would formally review would be reasonable to manage. Also, shifting to a portfolio for evaluation, drastically reduced the number of GA and FA attempts from my class since the students are graded on their efforts not the final product.
Frankly, I've never been approached with any guidance on how best to orchestrate such a project at the high school level and have failed to Google the key term if such guidance exist. Are there other high schools out there? To me, Wikipedia has been the Wild West. There have been several nasty gunfights. I would have left you in peace long ago if not for the excitement the students gain from these interactions, especially with those passionate about the topic or the process. Blame it on Malleus, Ettrig, SunCreator and Montanabw (among many others) who I assume take joy in the interactions; although now I am questioning my decision to minimize my engagement. Perhaps I should be more aggressive in the process of publicly flogging my students. Of course if I do it.. they will be bitter; yet, when Malleus does it, he becomes a class hero... strange isn't it? Nothing like being told it is horse not Horse!
In America, the emphasis is on 21st Century skills, which include global communication. As this federally mandated curriculum gains momentum, expect others to see the obvious benefits of Wikipedia regarding addressing "global". Documentation that teachers, thus schools are meeting 21st Century skills will be tied to money. We are talking k-12. Not college. I've already received recognition at the state level for my involvement in Wikipedia, I thought I had found the holy grail. As a state finalist, it has been narrowed to three teachers, one being selected to represent my state in Washington PAEMST where they would meet with the President. Clearly, I would like to think I am on the right track before shouting from the roof top to leaders in the Department of Public Instruction about the success of such a project. I am open to suggestions for improvement. You are most correct: The horse has left the building!!!! --JimmyButler (talk) 01:11, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
"Frankly, I've never been approached with any guidance on how best to orchestrate such a project at the high school level". That you and others in your position haven't is something that the WimkiMedia foundation ought to be addressing. In truth, I think we all find Wikipedia to be far too much like the Old Wild West, not just you. Malleus Fatuorum 23:53, 21 November 2011 (UTC)


@ Mike, 03:02, 20 November: the students really are helping us build an encyclopedia. Perhaps our different perspective has to do with the content area. I can't think of many ways that faulty or poorly sourced content in 18th century literature for example has the potential to harm our readers the way articles in the neuropsych realm do (akin to BLPs), and in the medical realm, IMO no content is better than faulty content. I don't think we should have undergrad students whose professor has hundreds of students working on legions of articles with no active online mentorship chunking text in to these articles. I'm not aware of other content areas, other than the ongoing copyvio, plagiarism, copyedit issues seen throughout. WRT collaboration, I think we're saying the same thing. It's collaboration that produces most FAs, I know how much collaboration it took for Jbmurray's students to produce FAs, and my challenge to Jimmy Butler is to recognize that level of collaboration doesn't scale, and to identify what things Jbmurray and he did right that might extend to other areas.

@ Jimmy Butler: You have destroyed my dream. That's a most strange comment. "Wikipedia is not Disney Land"; in "my country", realizing a dream takes a lot of hard work, mixed with a serious amount of reality, and the person who delivers the harsh reality is not the one who "destroys your dream". Was your "dream" based in reality? What have you done to document and extend your experiences in ways that might help this program or other professors? How many students and articles do you have in an average term, how many have you had altogether, how many are still on Wikipedia, what have been some of your ratios, and do you see any way that a professor who is not engaged on Wikipedia, with a disengaged Online Ambassador, more than half a dozen classes, more than several hundred students, more than 50 articles, etc can supervise the work of those students adequately? We're not here about dreams-- we're here about how to solve a problem.

As to the specifics of a teacher review before approaching FA or GA, well, that needn't be required for FA because so few of them will ever make it-- it's not an issue. Besides, it should be standard fare for the professors anyway-- why on earth would they even pretend their students articles could reach GA level without review from the professor? They should be doing that anyway. I'd think the bigger problem is probably at the DYK level, since review there has historically been lacking (albeit recently improving). At any rate, the idea of teacher review for GA/FA level misses the point-- the students I have encountered are damaging articles that will never be more than stubs, but nonetheless will affect our readers. If you think you are on the right track, great-- now, if you want this "dream" to be a reality, please invest in the hard work of analyzing what parts of your experience can extend to the broader project, at what scale, and don't let yourself be part of a PR push for something that doesn't scale beyond a small class of 20 or so students supervised by a committed and knowledgeable Wikipedian. That is the beef here-- the WMF, in its search for a remedy for declining editorship-- has brought something on the heads of regular editors that they weren't prepared to supervise. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:58, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Concern: 1)Many nominations appear at FAC before they are sufficiently prepared... 2)The professors of the students that are hitting my watchlist don't even log on
My Suggestion: 1) Perhaps require/request/demand this step {Teacher Review} prior to a GA or FA attempts in "education projects. 2) I suspect such a request would dramatically reduce the level of involvement{referring to the number of professors who depend on others to do their work]
Response: 1) As to the specifics of a teacher review before approaching FA or GA, well, that needn't be required for FA because so few of them will ever make it-- it's not an issue. 2) Besides, it should be standard fare for the professors anyway.
Summation of my effort:What have you done to document and extend your experiences in ways that might help this program
True, I was unaware of this level of organization, nor the problems associated with such involvement. The above was my first attempt at framing a solution to one concern as you presented it; clearly it was not well received.--JimmyButler (talk) 20:22, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
I appreciate that, but points 1) and 2) are not related, so a solution that combines them isn't one. Most of these articles will never come close to FAC. I'd find it more helpful to see some stats from you and Jbmurray that might be applied to those classes that aren't seeing the kind of success you do. I also don't find defensive posturing helps advance the discussion. You said it was your dream: if it is, get going on making it happen. Rewind to figure out why/how we started talking past each other. In response to a discussion of all the problems with recruiting students to edit, you listed the FAs your students have participated in, I said "FAs are collaborations" and asked for some hard data to help other professors understand how to develop such collaborations and to help understand if they've overstretched, you responded with "teacher should review before FAC/GAN", I respond it's not an FA issue-- these articles are never coming close to FAC level unless there is more engagement and collaboration all around (such as Jbmurray had and you had). I still want some hard data. How many students have you had, how many courses, how many of those editors are still editing, how did you develop collaborations, what are the ratios and numbers, how do they compare to these professors with hundreds of students in multiple classes working on scores of articles, etc? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:49, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
Noted. The holidays are approaching, an excellent time to both look at the extent of problems at present and the specific request from above. One question I would like to address in my data quest relates to this observation: There seems to be two types of collaborators. Those that follow the AP Biology Project, that might under normal circumstances, be editing elsewhere and those that edit because of the Project. I was thinking, perhaps asking a few key questions; one being "Does the involvement in the Project distract from your normal editing role" or "Does it serve as a catalyst leading to an increase in your involvement as an editor on Wikipedia". There is a possibility, at least, that rather than sucking resources from the community, we could be a stimulus. I'll not include those involved in an FA since it has been ruled out as a matter of concern, plus, the involvement of numerous editors in the FA process is not unique just to articles created as education assignments. It would also be of interest, of a typical class; how many actually make edits, good or bad. I may have 25 in a class; however, many accept a bad grade and make no contributions. Just as with any assignment, a significant number do not follow through. Class size may not be the best indicator for the number of students in need of mentoring. I suspect JBMurray can attest to this. I will work something up on my Project page; this thread has exceeded all but the most dedicated reader's stamina! A post-game analysis on the effects of my students on Wikipedia; a very different thought process than the one I have been contemplating, The effects of Wikipedia on my students. Thank you for providing a different perspective. There is a book in there somewhere; I suspect some professor has already written it. --JimmyButler (talk) 04:00, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
Thanks JimmyButler. Another factor occurs to me-- there are rather a lot of biology editors on Wikipedia, at least in relation to psychology, which IMO is the worst represented area on Wikipedia. My watchlist is being hit by bad edits from beginning psych courses (psych and neurobehavioral articles, which I follow from my work on the few decent articles we have, Tourette syndrome, autism and Asperger syndrome). This content area 1) attracts bad editing to begin with (everyone has an opinion and thinks they know something and the science is "less hard" than biology); 2) there aren't enough editors to clean up because there are so few knowledgeable editors in that content area; and 3) writing these articles correctly requires more than a 101-level knowledge. Add to that, bad info can be harmful to read people. Add to that, professors who aren't aware of correct medical sourcing and who encouraged students to go through stubs to find articles to work on, and students tend to pick catchy stubs like klazomania-- about which almost nothing is written, and on a topic no one will read. The expansion of that article (based on primary sources) will not add significantly to "the sum of all human knowledge", while almost every important article in the neuropsych realm on Wikipedia is trash. Articles in the psych realm are among Wikipedia's worst, they need improvement-- not for obscure, never-to-be-read stubs to be expanded. Exercise addiction is another one-- multiple copyvios, faulty sourcing, poor writing-- and it's not even a diagnosable condition. So, it's possible that the content area is another factor in the unhelpful editing, and the conditions may be different in the biology realm-- there may be more editors able to help out. Something to consider ... but the bottom line for me is that we shouldn't have hundreds of psych 101 students working with no supervision chunking in bad content based on iffy sourcing. Someone just added a bunch of webmd citations to a bipolar article, when there are boatloads of medical journal secondary reviews available-- seems no guidance is given students as to where/how to find good sources. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:18, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Curious way to deal. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:38, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Pune Pilot Analysis Plan

(Cross-posting to several pages; posted here as IEP has been discussed on this talk page as well, but please focus any further discussion on the talk page linked below) I've just created the page Wikipedia:India_Education_Program/Analysis to document our planned analysis of the Pune pilot. We've been collecting ideas in many different places, but we wanted to have one central page where we'll be analyzing the learnings from the Pune pilot over the next few months. We will using the results of this analysis to plan our next pilot in India, which will be kicking off in mid-2012. We will not be running the India Education Program in the first term of 2012. We are committed to using the next few months to get all the learnings we can out of the analysis, so we can launch a new pilot in six months or so that addresses all of the concerns raised from the Pune pilot.

We do have one major outstanding question in terms of how to analyze the pilot, which is how do we measure the impact of the pilot on the community? I really encourage anyone who has good ideas of how to do data collection around this to contribute to the discussion on talk page. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 22:49, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

It's an estimation case. I think just listing the major work centers or major tasks (maybe with a bucket for general community), then estimating how many man hours were burned. Figure out what percentage of some areas ended up dedicated to IEP. I think it is the sort of thing to get an estimate on, top down. Not gather data and compile. We want to know 100 hours, 1000 hours, 10,000 hours lost. Not 800 versus 900. Probably getting it within 50% accuracy is good enough. Maybe you could also try for a per student estimate (like the average IEP student wasted 10 hours of rework time, so total drain was 8,000 hourse lost. I'm making up numbers, but that is a thought process).
I suppose we could try to estimate the impact on readers as well (how many articles were degraded for how many hours). Thinking of high view FAs like Welding (I think). Suspect the lost time was more the painpoint, but would just want to capture the thought that there was a reader impact as well (since that is our end product).TCO (talk) 06:11, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
Let's not forget the overtime hours burned by the regular clean-up community either. The answers do not lie in added bureaucracy: proposed solutions and metrics are all available already in the many and various comments by community members on the increasing maze of talk pages connected with the IEP and USEP projects. The impact on the community is blatantly obvious - why keep creating yet more pages to add to the confusion, and carry out further costly analysis when the answers are already staring us in the face complete with charts and graphs already provided, and have been discussed in depth on the mailing lists and other obscure lines of discussion?
The main answer lies in rectifying the continuing lack of communication, transparency, and admission of errors. The main concern raised from the Pune pilot from the community angle is not being addressed, and LDavis and/or AnnieLin have made it clear elsewhere that they do not consider it part of their remit to take the community resources - the major impact - into consideration when planning their education projects; ignoring the known problems and trying to find solutions to new new ones that apparently still need to be identified is a redundant exercise. Ultimately, this will simply foster more ire and drive yet more volunteers and OAs away from wanting to be helpful, rather than solicit their aid which in any case can only be to repeat what they have already said time and time again.
Solutions and suggestions have been tossed around by some extremely competent and knowledgeable members of the volunteer force only to land repeatedly in some kind of no man's land between the WMF and the community. It is imperative to understand that all education programmes will generate more articles - which is of course the goal of the initiatives, and which is recognised and supported in principle by everyone - that will still need to be policed by experienced regular editors, and that these programmes cannot be implemented before the online volunteer community is forewarned, and forearmed with the required tools and personnel. Perhaps Tory's independent analysis will come up with some answers (and I'm confident it will), and it may be best to wait for her report. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:54, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Please post any further discussion at Wikipedia_talk:India_Education_Program/Analysis so the discussion all happens on one page. Thanks. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 16:26, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

December Wikipedia Education Program Metrics and Activities Meeting

If you're interested in learning more about the Wikipedia Education Program in action around the globe, join us for the next Metrics and Activities Meeting on Tuesday, December 20 at 16:00 UTC. Please visit outreachwiki:Wikipedia Education Program Metrics and Activities Meeting for instructions on joining and time zone conversions. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 22:27, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

New MediaWiki extension

I spy with my little eye something beginning with E... It's a MediaWiki extension for the tracking of students developed under contract for the Foundation. It comes complete with a whole pile of new user groups and special pages. More information is available at mw:File:Engineering support for the Wikipedia Education Program.pdf and mw:Wikipedia Education Program. The extension aims to obsolete some Toolserver hacks and move the management of student tables from public wiki pages to possibly private special pages.

The design specifications in the PDF and MediaWiki pages contradict some of the feedback from the community:

  • "Professors neither have the time nor the incentive to learn the nitty gritty details of how MediaWiki works. Their focus is on using Wikipedia as a teaching tool, not teaching or learning Wikipedia."
  • "With the number of students enrolled in the program growing at a fast rate we need an automated process in place."
  • There is heavy emphasis on how this extension makes things easier for the Foundation and the organizers and consequently very little on the benefits for the community.
  • "We don’t want to share the data about the students with the public"
  • "All data accessible via the API (to those who have sufficient privileges)" (emphasis added)
  • Yet again, I am notifying the community about this when it should be the Foundation who is doing so.

I see this as really bad news. MER-C 04:15, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

The documents are a little ambiguous and don't make it entirely clear whether the aim is to hide all student lists and means of tracking the students from public view, but if that is the aim then yes this would be an extremely bad idea. Hut 8.5 11:26, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Blog post from developer and another design document. Sigh. MER-C 01:40, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

It could turn out to be a very nice tool --Guerillero | My Talk 02:26, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
I hope so, e.g. obtaining a list of all students through a painless API query. I just don't have enough confidence in the WMF to believe that. MER-C 08:15, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Roadmap - deployment = mid/late February. MER-C 08:15, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Anyone have a stable copy of it? I'm trying to install it on my local wiki, and I'm getting loads of syntax errors (because its still under development). But, their testing wiki seems to have a working copy. Anyone know how to get hold of that (If you know how to download all files in this directory tree, that would work, too) ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 11:54, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
Recursive wget can download directory trees (I'm guessing you've already tried checking out the SVN repository). MER-C 02:45, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
Yep, you guessed right, I already tried the mw SVN, as well as ExtensionDistributor (I think they should give the same files anyways). I don't have unix, but I did find a windows version, and it works! I'll mess around with the extension a bit and see what it does... Thanks! ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 07:21, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Ah, well. I didn't realize that all the .php pages look like this when viewed through the directory tree, so I got a bunch of useless stuff. Looks like I'll have to wait till they fix the bugs ( I tried fixing them myself, but for every bug I fix, a new one crops up; and I have no idea what I'm doing anyways since I'm unfamiliar with the code) ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 07:31, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

New Participation Requirements

Just a note to alert those interested that we've created new Wikipedia Education Program Participation Requirements for all courses in all countries participating in the Wikipedia Education Program this term, based on feedback we've seen from pilot programs in multiple countries. These new requirements take effect immediately, so courses participating in spring 2012 have been crafted around these requirements. More information is available on the Outreach wiki, linked above. Please direct any comments about the requirements to that talk page.

Please note that these are global requirements for participation in the Wikipedia Education Program in spring 2012. Individual country programs such as this one may develop additional requirements as-needed (for example, the Cairo Pilot will have an even lower Ambassador:student ratio).

On behalf of the entire Wikipedia Education Program team, -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 19:28, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Beta testers needed for new MediaWiki extension

Some of you may have heard about a new Wikipedia Education Program MediaWiki extension that's been in development for a few months. This new tool will completely replace the existing course page and Ambassador listing system beginning in Fall 2012.

Some key features of the new extension:

  • Ambassadors will create a profile in the system and associate themselves with classes, meaning there's no updating information on what class you're helping with three different pages each term.
  • Professors will create standardized course pages through this system once they've been given the "instructor" user right, meaning we will ensure that all professors have gone through an orientation on best practices for using Wikipedia in the classroom before creating a course page.
  • Students will use an enrollment token to add themselves to the course page, meaning we will have an up-do-date, database-driven list of student usernames (anyone involved in the Pune Pilot will know how important this is).

We'll be talking a lot more about this extension in the coming weeks and months as it's rolled out and we begin using it. Currently, we are ready to have the first beta testers use the tool, and we are looking for 3-5 Ambassadors and professors who are willing to spend a few hours over the next week doing a thorough test of the new extension. We specifically want people who are experienced in creating course pages and adding themselves to the Ambassador lists. We have two goals for this version of the beta test:

  1. Determine if the new extension is lacking a major functionality that Ambassadors and professors rely upon in the current system.
  2. Find bugs in the new extension.

In later rounds, we'll be looking at user experience and more bug testing, but this preliminary round is focused exclusively on back-end issues while we still have developer time to fix them.

If you are interested in helping out with beta-testing, we will have a kickoff meeting on Google Hangout on Monday, February 27, with Jeroen De Dauw (the developer) and Frank Schulenburg (who has served as the project manager for this extension) where they'll explain a bit more about the tool and what they need for this round of beta testing. Please sign up on this Doodle if you're interested in helping out, or if you're interested in a larger beta testing later, please indicate that on the Ambassadors talk page. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 20:21, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Program Structure Working Group

Please take note of an in-person meeting that, pending approval, will be taking place in the San Francisco WMF office on the weekend of March 22-25, 2012. This event will serve to bring together active community members who taken leadership opportunities in the Education Program with WMF staff to rebuild a volunteer structure that defines roles and delegates responsibilities related to the Education Programs in the US and Canada. The goal of the weekend is to create a community-driven foundation of the US/Canada Education Programs that will address specific concerns, such as expansion techniques, ambassador recruitment, community relationships, etc.

I will select the final list of 10 participants. The group of attendees will be selected based on a number of criteria, including:

  • demonstrated leadership within the Education Program in the past
  • Steering Committee members
  • Regional Ambassadors
  • Other Campus/Online Ambassadors who have gone above and beyond the expectations of the Ambassador Program
  • cost of travel and lodging, based on an approved budget
  • preliminary ideas for how a volunteer structure could work

If you are interested in contributing to a productive meeting that will greatly impact the US and Canada Education Programs, please fill out the following form explaining why you think you could help in this endeavor. Please do not fill out the form if you are not available to travel to San Francisco March 22-25 (and potentially traveling a day before or after that). If this event is approved, travel and hotel costs, as well as some meals, will be covered or reimbursed by the Wikimedia Foundation. If you have any pertinent questions unanswered here, please either post below, on my talk page or email me at jmathewson@wikimedia.org.

In order to make travel arrangements that are cost-effective, please fill out the interest form by 9AM Pacific on Monday, February 27, 2012. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 20:01, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Ambassadors/volunteers, I want to update those of you who were interested in the outcome of this event but have not indicated interest (in which case, you should receive an email from me). We have discussed and finally decided that these meetings are going to so drastically impact the US and Canadian Education Programs that we would like to make sure it's as well-planned-out as possible. We will postpone such an event to an undecided time in the near future. Thank you so much to all of you who have taken time to show interest and think about how to restructure the program. I have heard you and appreciate all you continue to do for the program. I hope each of you will still be interested in participating in the future conversation and will keep everyone updated on any further discussion. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 01:42, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Education Program/Teahouse Partnership

Quick update: the US/Canada Education Programs are planning to partner with a new pilot program from the Wikimedia Foundation this semester. You can read about the Teahouse project's goals and see how they align with those of the Wikipedia Education Program. Perhaps most noticeably, both programs serve to help new editors contribute quality content to Wikipedia while fostering an environment that will encourage them to stick around in the future.

The Education Program will be partnering with their project by using the Teahouse hosts in place of Online Ambassadors for five courses in the US/Canada. As many of you know, the ambassador requirement has increased this semester, and many classes will not meet these requirements to join the program officially. However, we would like to choose five of these courses to receive the support of the Teahouse hosts, which will still give students online support but in a different setting than we have traditionally utilized.

We are partnering with five courses because this will give the Teahouse program a solid support of new editors to work with over the next few months but will not drastically impact the Education Program. We are still working with those professors who do not have the traditional Online Ambassador yet, as we want to make sure these professors are interested in receiving this alternative support for their students.

The Teahouse fellows will be in the San Francisco office next week, so we will select the five courses at that point. We will be focusing on courses that are only lacking a Wikipedian in the pod (aka: they must still have a Campus Ambassador) and will select the five courses based on interest/enthusiasm from the professor. We will also be taking into consideration the number of female students, as one of the Teahouse's main goals is to reach more female editors.

Please comment with any suggestions for selecting the courses (from this list of classes that still need Online Ambassador support) or any feedback about working with the Teahouse in general. I will post the courses as soon as they agree to join the Teahouse pilot. Looking forward to your input. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 23:46, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

A class at New Jersey Institute of Technology is on board to work with the Teahouse as well as USEP. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 19:46, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
A professor at Alverno College has two classes participating in the pilot.
A Political Research class at Winona State is also participating.
A gender and economic develop class at University of Utah will be participating in the Teahouse Pilot.
A class at University of Toronto will also join the pilot. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 22:58, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Followed users

Hi all,

Following a village pump proposal discussion I implemented a new tool Followed users which lets you view the most recent edit by a selected list of users that you follow. One important application of this is to allow ambassadors and professors to follow their students and review their work in a timely manner. I'd like to get more people to try it out and let me know at my talk page if you find it useful or have suggestions/problems. Thanks! Dcoetzee 02:58, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Are you aware that the online ambassadors may be incompetent? Please see Talk:Douglas W. Owsley/GA1, the evaluation of an article submitted by an editor who says on her user page: "I am an Online Ambassador, member of the Ambassador Selection Team, and member of the Ambassador Steering Committee. I have worked with university professors and students through the Public Policy Initiative over the past year and attended the Wikipedia in Higher Education Summit in July 2011, to assist with expanding the project to the global community. I am now part of the Wikipedia Education Program, with an emphasis on the United States and Canada." This is an editor who doesn't understand that there is a problem with close paraphrasing and plagiarism. What possible "help" could she be giving professors and students? MathewTownsend (talk) 03:15, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
Although I understand your frustration, the problem of selecting qualified OAs is quite entirely unrelated to this topic. Dcoetzee 03:21, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
well, what is it related to? Everyplace I've asked has turned out to be a blind alley, including the WMF people who say they don't know much about it. Who does? MathewTownsend (talk) 03:23, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
You're going to want to contact the Online Ambassador selection team. They can also be reached by e-mail at online-ambassadors-en (at) lists.wikimedia.org. Another possible fairly active venue is Wikipedia talk:Online Ambassadors. Dcoetzee 04:03, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
Tracking student edits is like herding cats! Your tool would have been a great help when I was doing just that. [Biology Project]. A bit late for me... but still much appreciated.--JimmyButler (talk) 15:36, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Welcome Rob Schnautz, new Education Program community liaison

I'm really pleased to announce that Rob Schnautz has joined the Wikipedia Education Program team as an online communications contractor. Rob has been editing Wikipedia as User:Bob the Wikipedian since 2006, and he self-identifies as a WikiDragon, working mostly with the Tree of Life WikiProject. He also helped develop the automatic taxobox system. In 2011, he became the Regional Ambassador for part of the Midwest, and he joins the team now to serve as a liaison between the existing English Wikipedia editing community and the Education Program team.

This means I'll be less active on talk pages and IRC and return to a traditional communications role (writing blog posts, outreach to news media, etc.). Rob will now be the program's primary point of contact on-wiki; if you have questions, feel free to reach out to him either on program talk pages like this one or on his talk page. Welcome, Rob! -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 22:29, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, LiAnna. I'm excited to take on this role. Rob SchnautZ (WMF) (talk • contribs) 17:37, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

The future of our program

Please note an important notice about our program here. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 22:48, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Education Updates and Noticeboard

This is an announcement that the WP:United States Education Program/Updates page is now available on the English Wikipedia and will from here out be separate from the WP:Canada Education Program/Updates.

Also, I'd like to present the Education Noticeboard, where current problems in the Wikipedia Education Program should be brought forth. Rob SchnautZ (WMF) (talk • contribs) 16:29, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Participation logs

Given that ambassadors are meant to be "active Wikipedians", it would be helpful if the default "course participation log" at the top of each course page were set up to include only students - as it is, the OA's edits tend to overshadow everybody else. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:43, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Request for comment

Project members: I am working on a draft for an "English Wikipedia Board of Education". Your comments would be appreciated. The working draft is at User:Pine/drafts/ENWP Board of Education. Please comment on the talk page. Thank you! Pine(talk) 08:06, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

New research project

We're kicking off a research project to collect data we think may or may not have some impact on what makes classes successful. We have a list of questions available at Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Research, and I encourage anyone interested in research to take a look at the questions. We're trying to identify common markers across successful courses, so that we can be more selective about which courses to work with in the future, targeting courses that have markers that we have seen have led to success in the past. Please take a look at the questions and add anything you think we've missed that might contribute to the success or failure of a class. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 23:20, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Replacing the course pages

We're replacing the course page system currently in use for the U.S. and Canada Education programs. Please see WT:Ambassadors#Replacing the course pages and place followup comments there. Rob SchnautZ (WMF) (talk • contribs) 18:11, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Wikimania Education Meet-Up

Are you going to Wikimania? I'd like to arrange an Education Meet-Up while we are all in D.C. this year. Anyone from any country in the world is welcome to join -- Ambassadors, professors, students, program organizers, people interested in starting a program in any country worldwide, etc. We'll even provide T-shirts and some food! Here's where we need some input: when would be a good time for the meet-up, and what kinds of activities would you like to do at the meet-up?

Please fill out this Google Form if you're interested in connecting with other volunteers interested in education around the world at Wikimania! Hope to see you there! -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 21:54, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Working Group announced

Yesterday evening the Working Group members and kick-off meeting date were announced. Rob SchnautZ (WMF) (talk • contribs) 18:17, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Need help disambiguating the various education program sites

I'm new to this, and trying to help a professor set up a Wikipedia project for her online class. At latest count, here are the sites that I've found that have reference material relevant to me:

It is frustrating, because I don't know where to go for the information I need. I think these need to be consolidated, and redirects put in place as appropriate. Are there efforts underway to do this?

In particular, I'm confused about why there is a set of US-Canada program, US program, and Canada program pages, and none of them seem to cross-reference the others. Then, I'd suggest, if the info for a specific region's program doesn't differ from the that of the "master program" (for example, for campus ambassadors), then the info shouldn't be copied in full, but should either be transcluded or cross-referenced. Otherwise, a newcomer has to read all the copies of everything to make sure he is not missing something important.

Note that I don't know if this is the right place to post this topic or not. That's just one example of the problem. Klortho (talk) 18:39, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi Klortho, sorry for the confusion. We are actually in the middle of reorganizing, which is why there are so many problems at the moment. The U.S. and Canada programs used to be separate, but are now the same program. And the Campus Ambassador role descriptions actually vary widely in different countries, which is why the role descriptions are on each country's page. If you have other questions, I hope you'll ask Jami Mathewson, who responded to your earlier question, as she runs the U.S. and Canada programs. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 19:16, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
Okay, I'll be patient and try to absorb the material more slowly. Thanks for the feedback. Klortho (talk) 19:40, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Help request

Moved from WP:ANI
 – Nobody Ent 20:11, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Help, I need somebody to help me set up my University course through WP:USEP. I've done this for the past year with no problem but this year the program process has changed and I'm not getting any responses. Crtew (talk) 19:48, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

(Note, it looks like Crtew got his course page sorted out shortly after posting.)--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 10:40, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
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