And turning bytes added into a competition was especially controversial, though it was one of Frank Schulenberg's favourite devices: he had a "leaderboard" and all. There is some discussion here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Canada_Education_Program/Leaderboard.
In line with the WMF and the education program's tendency to take things off wiki whenever they came upon disagreement, they then moved it to outreach (see http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia%3aWikipedia%3aCanada_Education_Program/Leaderboard), before eliminating the traces from en.wiki, replacing it with a meaningless redirect elsewhere: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Canada_Education_Program/Leaderboard&diff=555110256&oldid=487269755. Take care Jon On Jan 28, 2014, at 10:10 AM, Jami Mathewson <[email protected]> wrote: > Tighe makes a really great point that it seems like normal student behavior > to meet the bare minimum when possible. In the US and Canada, we measure > bytes as a program to evaluate how we're doing from semester to semester (has > our impact increased while our resources have stayed the same?). On a class > level, though, professors rarely mention bytes in their syllabus or grading > rubric. When there is a minimum length, it usually takes the form of "500 > words" or "2 sections". I don't think the minimum length is inherently bad if > the students are otherwise set up to do great work (research, writing, > understanding Wikipedia policies and norms, etc.). If you can assume most of > them are doing good work, then more content is likely better. > > Most of our professors probably don't grade in this way simply because they > don't know how to measure bytes contributed (it's not one of the training > topics we cover). Similarly, I haven't seen students trying to inflate their > content contribution with templates mostly because they don't know about them > or how to use them (they're new editors). > > I really like the idea of making it more competitive, which we also did > during the pilot of the program in the US. Of course, then the professor > ideally is savvy enough not to count copy & paste from a sandbox into the > article namespace when most of that content existed before they worked on it > (this was a problem we saw with our tool). Hopefully the education extension > will eventually tie WikiMetrics into it, which should make the content > quantity easier for students/professors to monitor and measure. > > > > > > > > On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 8:28 AM, Tighe Flanagan <[email protected]> > wrote: > This is definitely an interesting discussion that has been ongoing in the > Arab world education programs as well. > > In Egypt, the program adopted a byte threshold/goal in most classes. Bytes do > allow for quick, surface level evaluation to see how much students are > contributing. Our ambassadors seem to appreciate having a benchmark for > student contributions, but we have also gotten pushback from the Arabic > Wikipedian community fearing that the primary focus is quantity, and not > quality contributions (like Craig mentions). Most of our students in Egypt do > translation assignments, so it is often more important to select high quality > content in the other language, and ensure that students are not copying and > pasting machine translations and wikifying their contributions. I've noticed > students in Egypt like having a numeric goal more than their teachers do. > > Here's an example course page from an English translation class at Ain Shams > University. You'll notice they set a 50kb threshold, and also have a section > for additional contributions of 5kb each. (To compare these numbers to > English/latin scripts, you should halve the bytes because of the Arabic > script which "inflates" the number): > > Like all assignment guidelines, having a byte benchmark might be a necessary > evil, just like traditional writing assignments tend to have minimum word > count or pages. Depends on your context and goals. It would depend on the > rest of the assignment and the rubric you would use to evaluate the > assignment. Giving more weight to proper writing style and citations would > probably be a good place to start. > > Juliana, it does sound like you want your students to contribute more since > they're stopping when they reach the minimum. That sounds like normal student > behavior. Would there be a different way to motivate students to keep editing > with extra points for going beyond the minimum thresholds, for example? Or a > competition for number of bytes, articles created, citations added (they > could all have different weights and be evaluated in conjunction with quality > checks). > > I'd love to hear more thoughts on the topic since it's something I struggle > with as well! > > Tighe > > > On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 9:06 AM, Laura Hale <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 2:12 AM, Juliana Bastos Marques > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Has anyone used this approach? Pros/cons? What would you consider a > reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article? > > Juliana. > > > I have seen this done for classes, but the problem sometimes becomes students > look at it as a exercise in adding content but ignore Wikipedia guidelines. > They end up adding essay like material, add information that makes existing > tags worse in order to add material related to the course, etc. > > Speculating, I would think a potential better criteria might be adding > references to uncited materials related to the topic as there is a lot of > unsourced material. They would be adding pure bytes by adding sources. It > would also assist in making them more familiar with other sources that you > may think valuable for them to be aware of. > > -- > twitter: purplepopple > > _______________________________________________ > Education mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education > > > > > -- > Tighe Flanagan > Arab World Education Program Manger > Wikimedia Foundation > > _______________________________________________ > Education mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education > > > > > -- > Jami Mathewson > Program Manager > Wiki Education Foundation > [email protected] > User:Jami (Wiki Ed) > @WikiEducation > > Our organization supports the Wikipedia Education Program in the United > States and Canada. > _______________________________________________ > Education mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education _______________________________________________ Education mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
