Report to Colleagues Interested in Gender and Culture in the Wikipedia
Classroom,
It will be no surprise to you that getting used to Wikipedia contributing is a
process, and as far as I understand, this is a forum for tackling the gender
gap in particular. Our particular Ambassador program is working well, the
individuals involved are accessible, knowledgeable, and supportive.
Additionally, I've intervened on my students' behalves and generated a message
for another user when necessary, asked for tolerance, explained learning
circumstances. I always get positive responses from users who'd challenged
incompetent newbie contributors.
As the real-time classroom leader or navigator, Wikipedia is fun because it
challenges learning paradigms, and must be engaging and "student-centered" at
the same time as we all discover together; for this reason, I 'brand' the class
as a workshop. A structure such as this, however, leads to productivity and
grading ambiguity- a greater and more complex issue than I want to elaborate
here. But for instance, I am "grading" contributions and the mid-terms are
group collaboration projects- there is some academic frontier here.
The class' students are a mix, both in gender and ethnicity, and representative
of the U.S. today. Some students first language is not English. I loosely
utilize Wikipedia's Educator materials. We are reading, "Good Faith
Collaboration..." as a basis for historical and societal background about how
Wikipedia has evolved, and we augment our understanding with outside readings,
sometimes from the news (WikiLeaks and Anonymous are examples of topics that
interest students). We have assigned grammar captains (majors in relevant
fields), PhotoShop captains (experience with PS), and an HTML captain (writes
code). Student-to-student participation in the workshop is important, yet
added to that, students today come to class with mobiles, have Facebook,
Twitter, and Google + at the ready. They quickly learn that Wikipedia is
social too.
We listened to an interview of Sue G., that Sue had pasted the link in this
forum a few weeks back. I sought feedback, especially from females. Only a
few students commented, but generally I sensed a generation gap about the
significance of low female participation in Wikipedia. The most important
message I received from female students is this: Their parents have warned them
that the potential for danger lurks on the internet, and that open disclosure
of information on their identities, or even becoming a viewable entity, such as
a user, could put them at risk. I cannot emphasize enough, how my students
heed the cautionary advice of their elders. Students mention concern that
their true identities could become known, they express anxiety about the
potential for becoming targets of any kind of ire, including slights that more
mature adults have long since learned to live with. Cyber-predation and
identity theft come to mind. This gender forum too, is published to the
internet and names names... moreover, ones ideas here may be batched with
topics that one is disinclined to comment on in public fora.
My students hesitate to voice their views in this forum; though I had wished
they would share them, I cannot ask students to do something they worry is not
in their best and safest interests. Some students complain that 'gendergap'
contains non-pertinent sends, some females agree a female-only forum would feel
safer; females are divided on this latter. One Latino male said he quickly got
bored with this forum, that people don't realize the world of single mothers is
devastated by exigencies far removed from Wikipedia, especially for females of
color.
Males (Caucasian) in this class are more likely to make early contributions-
then get them dinged or deleted. This seems to be based on preliminary
self-confident behavior, but once chastised by Wikipedians for low competence,
they quickly become more hesitant to contribute. In contributions by females,
grammarian females show high confidence and competence for ongoing
contributions. Some females demonstrate surprisingly high levels of
self-uncertainty. For some, self-perceived as not certain, passion for topic
and zest for engagement may slightly mitigate low contribution probabilities.
To generalize for the purposes of this forum, ethnically African American,
Latino, and African males "behave" more like females in terms of uncertainty
and contribution engagement.
Low social credibility, an outcome produced by new engagers' problematic
contributions, seems to be a cocktail of: contributor culture of origin,
natural inclination (for scholarly pursuits), social self-measure- predicaments
and constraints, gender-based sensitivity, and ability to roll with the punches
as a newcomer to knowledge-driven social fora. It should not be surprising
that many newcomers to Wikipedia, already in a sea of social media, will opt
for that Tweet about someone's idea, rather than dig in, and do the dry and
rigorous research required to construct a survivable statement with references
and links in Wikipedia. Young knowledge pursuers want to own something and
have safe places to do it.
Overall, females want non-gendered usernames, they worry true identity data
"escapes" and IP data could make them vulnerable to mishaps. While all
students want to learn and make meaningful contributions, students see there
are problems with the importance of their contributions. Experience with
deletions and comments can help students rise to a higher level of
contribution, raise the bar on themselves, learn to navigate Wikipedia culture,
and grow into a sense of importance in the Wikipedia super- and infrastructural
(for lack of better terms) communities.
I encourage all students to see themselves becoming those overseers and
caretakers of Wikipedia and its future. Empowerment starts at home (females
remind us), then is supported in the classroom (such as by a caring mentor).
Just
as I had professors and others whose ideas have an enduring impact on my
intellectual and societal present, one tries, through the scholarly
mission, to inspire this new generation of eager, good-hearted,
well-intentioned, capable of excellence, set of newcomers. I don't have
revolutionary ideas (yet). But please, hang in there good people!
KSR
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