Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Swaroop Rao]

I couldn't have said it better Bala.

Swaroop Rao
(MikeLynch )






On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 16:39, Bala Jeyaraman  wrote:

> *>>That's one way of looking at it.  Another way would be that an editor
> (in this case who happened to be a student) contributed content to an
> article.  It would (almost routinely) reviewed by other editors who
> coudl/would improve it or point out issues.  One of the aspects that the
> better students have fed back to us is the value of the collaboration with
> the global editing community.*
>
> Hisham, i was an online mentor for seven students in the PPP in the
> previous sem. I have done this before. I am normally a patient newbie
> helper. I help tens of newbies every day in Ta and en wiki. But if you make
> it an obligation for me to check through the edits of forty odd guys, who
> turn in assignments and are only angling for marks in their courses,  you
> are turning me off. You heard what another OA surya had to say about this .
>
> You are looking at OAs as full time employees - "they have a job to do,
> why not do it". Remember this is a volunteer project and we volunteers have
> only X amount of time to donate to wikipedia, OAs have other interests in
> Wikipedia - being a OA isnt supposed to take up all my wikitime. I
> certainly did not sign up for following every edit of a COEP student who
> shows no sign of actually wanting to voluntarily contribute to Wikipedia or
> any sign of learning. My onwiki time is better spent elsewhere.
>
> This is the biggest difference between my PPP experience and IEP
> experience. In the former i had 7 mentees, who asked me for help, when they
> ran into trouble, listened to what i had to say, were basically competent,
> produced workable quality content. I was happy to improve their content as
> the workload was manageable.  In the IEP, i had 40, who never asked me
> anything (instead i am expected to go through their edits). But could be
> seen arguing with people who tag their content for copyright violation,
> adding the same copyvio content after being reverted multiple times.
> Getting their CAs to plead with admins if they get blocked.
>
> So for the next phase do not design a OA as someone who will track every
> edit of a student and correct all his mistakes - Such a thing might be
> possible with one on one mentoring, but even then it routinely fails in the
> regular "adopt a editor" arrangements that happen in en wiki. But with five
> or seven students (forget about forty) it is impossible for me to log in
> daily, check if they have edited, check out the diffs, cross check for
> copyvio and then give him/her a feedback.
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 10:13 AM, Hisham  wrote:
>
>>
>> On Nov 12, 2011, at 7:33 PM, Bala Jeyaraman wrote:
>>
>> >>Many of us went through college recently know its not *Some*, its
>> *Most*. Anything called assignment and graded will be copy-pasted even by
>> the brightest 5% of students in class who would have potential to do on
>> their own.
>>
>> +1.  with Srikanth This is the SINGLE MOST important thing to remember
>> for the future. Lets cut the political correctness and putting the blame
>> everywhere else than where it belongs - the students and faculty involved
>>
>>
>> My view is not driven by political correctness but I do want to avoid
>> generalising all students and all faculty.  Just take a look a the user
>> talk and article discussion pages and it's immediately apparent that quite
>> a few students and teachers wouldn't deserve blame.  Many students did make
>> mistakes - but they made the same mistakes that many newbies.
>>
>>
>> So here is what is to be done:
>>
>> 1) *Keep the number low* -
>>
>>
>> Agree and we need to work on how we select the colleges and faculty and
>> classes and students.
>>
>> 2) *Penalise those who copy paste*
>>
>>
>> This is something that can (and should) be led by the faculty.  Some
>> teachers have shown the way on how this can be done.
>>
>>
>> 3) *The CA to student ratio has to be 5 to 1. *
>>
>>
>> Clearly the student:CA ratio needs to be reduced significantly. ...but
>> did you mean students:CA 5:1 or 1:5?
>>
>> Anything more seems to non-workable. Online Ambassadors/mentors are not
>> handholders and error correctors. I signed up to be an online ambassador.
>> But stopped reading the IEP mails that were sent to me after i realised,
>> that the IEP program essentially wanted to me to do the students' work.
>>
>>
>> That's one way of looking at it.  Another way would be that an editor (in
>> this case who happened to be a student) contributed content to an article.
>>  It would (almost routinely) reviewed by other editors who coudl/would
>> improve it or point out issues.  One of the aspects that the better
>> students have fed back to us is the value of the collaboration with the
>> global editing community.
>>
>>
>>
>> hisham
>>
>>
>>
>> ___
>> Wikimediaindia-

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Bala Jeyaraman]

*>>That's one way of looking at it.  Another way would be that an editor
(in this case who happened to be a student) contributed content to an
article.  It would (almost routinely) reviewed by other editors who
coudl/would improve it or point out issues.  One of the aspects that the
better students have fed back to us is the value of the collaboration with
the global editing community.*

Hisham, i was an online mentor for seven students in the PPP in the
previous sem. I have done this before. I am normally a patient newbie
helper. I help tens of newbies every day in Ta and en wiki. But if you make
it an obligation for me to check through the edits of forty odd guys, who
turn in assignments and are only angling for marks in their courses,  you
are turning me off. You heard what another OA surya had to say about this .

You are looking at OAs as full time employees - "they have a job to do, why
not do it". Remember this is a volunteer project and we volunteers have
only X amount of time to donate to wikipedia, OAs have other interests in
Wikipedia - being a OA isnt supposed to take up all my wikitime. I
certainly did not sign up for following every edit of a COEP student who
shows no sign of actually wanting to voluntarily contribute to Wikipedia or
any sign of learning. My onwiki time is better spent elsewhere.

This is the biggest difference between my PPP experience and IEP
experience. In the former i had 7 mentees, who asked me for help, when they
ran into trouble, listened to what i had to say, were basically competent,
produced workable quality content. I was happy to improve their content as
the workload was manageable.  In the IEP, i had 40, who never asked me
anything (instead i am expected to go through their edits). But could be
seen arguing with people who tag their content for copyright violation,
adding the same copyvio content after being reverted multiple times.
Getting their CAs to plead with admins if they get blocked.

So for the next phase do not design a OA as someone who will track every
edit of a student and correct all his mistakes - Such a thing might be
possible with one on one mentoring, but even then it routinely fails in the
regular "adopt a editor" arrangements that happen in en wiki. But with five
or seven students (forget about forty) it is impossible for me to log in
daily, check if they have edited, check out the diffs, cross check for
copyvio and then give him/her a feedback.


On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 10:13 AM, Hisham  wrote:

>
> On Nov 12, 2011, at 7:33 PM, Bala Jeyaraman wrote:
>
> >>Many of us went through college recently know its not *Some*, its
> *Most*. Anything called assignment and graded will be copy-pasted even by
> the brightest 5% of students in class who would have potential to do on
> their own.
>
> +1.  with Srikanth This is the SINGLE MOST important thing to remember for
> the future. Lets cut the political correctness and putting the blame
> everywhere else than where it belongs - the students and faculty involved
>
>
> My view is not driven by political correctness but I do want to avoid
> generalising all students and all faculty.  Just take a look a the user
> talk and article discussion pages and it's immediately apparent that quite
> a few students and teachers wouldn't deserve blame.  Many students did make
> mistakes - but they made the same mistakes that many newbies.
>
>
> So here is what is to be done:
>
> 1) *Keep the number low* -
>
>
> Agree and we need to work on how we select the colleges and faculty and
> classes and students.
>
> 2) *Penalise those who copy paste*
>
>
> This is something that can (and should) be led by the faculty.  Some
> teachers have shown the way on how this can be done.
>
>
> 3) *The CA to student ratio has to be 5 to 1. *
>
>
> Clearly the student:CA ratio needs to be reduced significantly. ...but did
> you mean students:CA 5:1 or 1:5?
>
> Anything more seems to non-workable. Online Ambassadors/mentors are not
> handholders and error correctors. I signed up to be an online ambassador.
> But stopped reading the IEP mails that were sent to me after i realised,
> that the IEP program essentially wanted to me to do the students' work.
>
>
> That's one way of looking at it.  Another way would be that an editor (in
> this case who happened to be a student) contributed content to an article.
>  It would (almost routinely) reviewed by other editors who coudl/would
> improve it or point out issues.  One of the aspects that the better
> students have fed back to us is the value of the collaboration with the
> global editing community.
>
>
>
> hisham
>
>
>
> ___
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> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
>
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Bishakha Datta]

On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 11:18 PM, Arnav Sonara wrote:

>
>
>
> hi,
>>
>> It was a pilot and hence I guess was meant to die at some point.
>>
>> First up, to the Campus Ambassadors, you guys showed a lot of courage in
>> taking up and then following through on your commitment of being Campus
>> Ambassadors through the length of this Pilot. I hope the team will also
>> speak to the  Ambassadors whilst doing the post-mortem so future programs
>> have the benefit of their "experience". The same also goes to the India
>> Programs team that initiated this project.
>>
>
> Thanks to all of you, yes this was a Pilot, but at no point I see it
> dying.  Its just that we have taken a pause right now to learn from the
> findings and ll come back all prepared and with the help of you all we ll
> try to gain new heights again.
>
> Arnav,

Good to hear back from one of the campus ambassadors. I think it would be
great if we could hear back from many more of you - as those who were on
the front lines of this program, what are your views on it? What did you
think worked? What would you change? What gave you a feeling of pride? What
made you worried?

By "you", I don't mean just you, but all the campus ambassadors who are on
this list. Hope you'll will write in and share your thoughts on these or
other aspects.

And in the midst of all the flak, congratulations, all CAs. With the huge
number of students overwhelming the program, each of you probably ended up
doing way more than you had signed up for. I hope you continue to take and
feel pride in that very sincere effort, regardless of the outcome of this.

Also - I would love to hear from Nitika, who was dealing with this program
on the ground. (What did you make of this, Nitika? Pros and cons?)

Please don't feel pressured by my request; we've already heard back from
en:wp editors - those comments are totally valid and must be taken into
account in any future iteration of the program. At the same time, I feel we
also need to hear the perspectives and voices of those who worked on the
program in any capacity.

Cheers
Bishakha





>
> --
> Thanks
> Arnav (ricku).
> (User:Rangilo_Gujarati)
>
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Hisham]

On Nov 13, 2011, at 12:07 AM, Swaroop Rao wrote:

> That's true Arjun, there is a lot of interest in this program in many 
> colleges, and this is going untapped. No, its not dead for sure. It was a 
> pilot, and it didn't come out pretty; no issues, that's how we learn. I think 
> that one thing we learnt is that the US model may not work out well for 
> India, so we need to develop an India specific model for this (That's what 
> we've been trying to do in these previous mails actually I guess).
> 
> Swaroop Rao
> (MikeLynch)

Agree with you fully, and as I mentioned earlier, we will approach the 
assessment of the pilot and the way forward objectively, comprehensively and 
dispassionately.

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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Hisham]

On Nov 12, 2011, at 11:36 PM, Arjun mangol wrote:

> Hey all,
> 
> I refuse to believe it dead as of yet. There's yet a lot of avenues that 
> haven't been explored. My personal suggestion was that let IEP establish a 
> Wikipedia Club in every college in Pune to begin with, that would inculcate 
> new, interested members who have a genuine passion for the project. Such 
> clubs could meet every second Sunday, hold guest lecs, set a quota for a 
> certain no. of articles to be created by the Pune chapter and so on by the 
> members, teach its members better editing skills, and spread the knowledge. 
> The CA training prog that I attended was a hell lotta fun and I wish many of 
> my friends get the feel of it too. 
> 
> These clubs would be managed by all the 'veteran' CAs and newer ones if 
> needed as and when. IEP would be the umbrella organisation to it all, and we 
> can focus a lot more on quality of articles rather than the sheer no. of 
> editors and rampant copyvio-ing done as a consequence by the newbies. Give it 
> thought. My friends in many colleges throughout India were literally jealous 
> that I was a part of it. Let's not let it go unnoticed that there is genuine 
> interest spread in pockets throughout the country.
> 
> - Arjun

all valid ideas, Arjun - and we will evaluate all of them (and all those shared 
on this mail thread as well.)  

we'll be reaching out to everyone and anyone who's interested to get their 
experiences, learnings, suggestions, etc. as we move forward in our evaluation. 
 this will be an open and collaborative process - and i invite everyone to 
please take part in this.  we'll send out details on this asap.

hisham

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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Hisham]

On Nov 12, 2011, at 11:18 PM, Arnav Sonara wrote:
> 
> 
> Thanks to all of you, yes this was a Pilot, but at no point I see it dying.  
> Its just that we have taken a pause right now to learn from the findings and 
> ll come back all prepared and with the help of you all we ll try to gain new 
> heights again.  

Agreed.



hisham

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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Hisham]

On Nov 12, 2011, at 10:39 PM, Pradeep Mohandas wrote:

> hi,
> 
> It was a pilot and hence I guess was meant to die at some point. 
> 
> First up, to the Campus Ambassadors, you guys showed a lot of courage in 
> taking up and then following through on your commitment of being Campus 
> Ambassadors through the length of this Pilot. I hope the team will also speak 
> to the  Ambassadors whilst doing the post-mortem so future programs have the 
> benefit of their "experience".

Absolutely.

> The same also goes to the India Programs team that initiated this project. 

Absolutely.

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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Hisham]

On Nov 12, 2011, at 8:59 PM, Surya Prakash wrote:

> From Bala's words...
> 
> //Online Ambassadors/mentors are not handholders and error correctors. I 
> signed up to be an online ambassador. But stopped reading the IEP mails that 
> were sent to me after i realised, that the IEP program essentially wanted to 
> me to do the students' work. //
> 
> Sure. We can (OAs) guide the students & can help them in editing kindaa 
> things. But, expecting OAs should keep an eye on the particular student's 
> article & keep tracking them is not a good idea. And, doing it in this way is 
> a small English Wikipedia Admin kindaa thing.
> 
> Many OAs including me, are contributing & taking initiatives to develop their 
> language projects, the OA role gives them a burden really. Because I felt it. 
> ONLINE AMBASSADORING IS NOT REALLY ENGLISH WIKIPEDIA ADMINISTRATING ROLE. 
> Because, I indirectly directed to that role only. I really DISLIKE that.

I hear you Surya, and we will keep this in mind.  

hisham

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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Hisham]

On Nov 12, 2011, at 8:04 PM, Swaroop Rao wrote:

> Also, it seems that CoEP has most of the problems; I think that CoEP being an 
> engineering college, is more rigid in its working than other 
> science/commerce/liberal arts colleges. What we could do is branch out into 
> other streams (other than engineering I mean); Law for example: Why not have 
> law students editing about Intellectual Property Rights (I know the irony 
> we'll have in case we have copyvios out of that). And the course structuring 
> in other colleges are a bit different, so they could accommodate programs 
> like the Wikimedia education programs much easier.

Actually, my view is that many colleges (regardless of stream) have the 
structural flexibility to accommodate a program like this.  To illustrate, 
there is (in most cases) an option for class assignments (marked or otherwise) 
to be determined by the faculty (sometimes independently and sometimes after 
getting the approval of the Director and / or an academic council of some 
kind.)  Event those affiliated to Pune University, for instance, had this kind 
of flexibility.

We do need to look at what kind of streams we should look at it.  Another 
learning for instance is that a first year engineering student ends up (in many 
cases) being taught basic fundamentals - which are either well covered on 
Wikipedia or on which it is difficult to put in a meaningful entry.  A 3rd year 
arts/humanities student does not have this particular problem - but sometimes 
are more concerned by placements / admissions than academic endeavors.  My 
point being that we need to look at the results of the pilot and then establish 
patterns which can help evaluate the pilot and inform the way forward.

hisham

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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Hisham]

On Nov 12, 2011, at 7:37 PM,  
 wrote:

> Iv used turnitin during my MBA and can say that Iv seen people upload their 
> projects there, note where the software catches them, change the language in 
> that part and re-submit. People will go to any lengths ..
> 
We do need to work on something going forward for sure, whatever the actual 
package is.  ...but we'll certainly look at turnitin for sure.  Thanks, Pranav

hisham

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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Hisham]

On Nov 12, 2011, at 7:33 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan wrote:
> 
> On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 18:56, Hisham  wrote:
> That's not accurate.  The dates are as follows:  It was concluded in all but 
> 1 class of Symbiosis School of Economics a few weeks ago (because the 
> assignements were concluded.)  It continues in 1 class at this college and at 
> 1 class at the SNDT Women's University.  We asked College of Engineering Pune 
> to stop the program in their classrooms last week.  It is still being 
> continued at this college by 1 professor nevertheless.
> 
> Probably the same could have been highlighted enough at Signpost. The 
> signpost heading conveys its closed down. 

We had requested Signpost to amend it's heading.
> 
> At none of the colleges did we push this through the top management.  
> 
> Well I cant help point CoEP where the director was much excited about the 
> program and without his push directly / indirectly, I wonder if 800+ students 
> would have voluntarily signed up. I will never agree if anyone says 800+ 
> students voluntarily asked/agreed for Wikipedia assignments without staff / 
> whoever else asking them to do so.

True. However, even at CoEP, faculty were at liberty  not to join the program 
(and indeed, most of them chose not to.)  However, the point made on the 
learnings ought to be taken in conjunction with that of faculty involvement.  
Director buy-in is important but can only compliment and not substitute for 
faculty involvement and capability.In the classes where we have got better 
results than in others, this played a critical role.

> 
> I didn't get the comment on even and odd semesters
> 
> Well it was my suggestion/opinion if you are planning next roll out in Jan. 
> Odd semesters in Indian colleges are longer ones July- Dec typically and give 
> time for students / staff to do extra things. Even semesters are shorter 
> Jan-May (April in many cases) so the duration for anything in colleges are 
> limited in even sem. This is the reason why you will find most 
> extra-curriculars happening in odd-sem. I am not sure if we did a time audit 
> of the pilot, but it took very late to have students start editing and they 
> were stopped almost in 2-3 weeks. We may not have that much time to engage 
> with students / faculty on even semesters. 

Ah, understood.  That's an interesting and great point.

>
>> It is good to have CAs who have reasonable experience in editing wikipedia.
> Fully agree.  Having said that, given the relatively small community size in 
> India, and the amount of face-to-face class time that Campus Ambassadors need 
> to put in, there will be a number of CAs who will be newbies.  We must 
> however amend our selection and training criteria for them going forward.
> 
> I would say make CAs as wikipedians with atleast 500+ edits on en.wiki to 
> give them a flavor of complexities in enwiki before they help out others. In 
> other words, start early on CA's get more commitment early on, that before 
> they go ahead and preach("teach") they practice("edit") enough.  

I don't think anyone would suggest that CAs shouldn't edit more or understand 
Wikipedia policies better.  Having said that, the experience in the US 
suggested that newbie CAs were as good as (and sometimes even better) than 
existing Wikipedians in the role of CAs.  (They hypothesis on this is that they 
were helping teach Wikipedia to newbies - so they were able to calibrate and 
structure their messaging accordingly.)  As I said a sentence earlier, we do 
need to modify our selection, training and ongoing development regime for CAs - 
but edit count alone might not be the only measure (though an important one.)


hisham

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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Hisham]

On Nov 12, 2011, at 7:33 PM, Bala Jeyaraman wrote:

> >>Many of us went through college recently know its not *Some*, its *Most*. 
> >>Anything called assignment and graded will be copy-pasted even by the 
> >>brightest 5% of students in class who would have potential to do on their 
> >>own.
> 
> +1.  with Srikanth This is the SINGLE MOST important thing to remember for 
> the future. Lets cut the political correctness and putting the blame 
> everywhere else than where it belongs - the students and faculty involved

My view is not driven by political correctness but I do want to avoid 
generalising all students and all faculty.  Just take a look a the user talk 
and article discussion pages and it's immediately apparent that quite a few 
students and teachers wouldn't deserve blame.  Many students did make mistakes 
- but they made the same mistakes that many newbies.

> 
> So here is what is to be done:
> 
> 1) Keep the number low -

Agree and we need to work on how we select the colleges and faculty and classes 
and students.

> 2) Penalise those who copy paste

This is something that can (and should) be led by the faculty.  Some teachers 
have shown the way on how this can be done.

> 
> 3) The CA to student ratio has to be 5 to 1.

Clearly the student:CA ratio needs to be reduced significantly. ...but did you 
mean students:CA 5:1 or 1:5?

> Anything more seems to non-workable. Online Ambassadors/mentors are not 
> handholders and error correctors. I signed up to be an online ambassador. But 
> stopped reading the IEP mails that were sent to me after i realised, that the 
> IEP program essentially wanted to me to do the students' work. 

That's one way of looking at it.  Another way would be that an editor (in this 
case who happened to be a student) contributed content to an article.  It would 
(almost routinely) reviewed by other editors who coudl/would improve it or 
point out issues.  One of the aspects that the better students have fed back to 
us is the value of the collaboration with the global editing community.



hisham


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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Swaroop Rao]

That's true Arjun, there is a lot of interest in this program in many
colleges, and this is going untapped. No, its not dead for sure. It was a
pilot, and it didn't come out pretty; no issues, that's how we learn. I
think that one thing we learnt is that the US model may not work out well
for India, so we need to develop an India specific model for this (That's
what we've been trying to do in these previous mails actually I guess).

Swaroop Rao
(MikeLynch )

Steering Committee member, United States Education Program





On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 23:36, Arjun mangol  wrote:

> Hey all,
>
> I refuse to believe it dead as of yet. There's yet a lot of avenues that
> haven't been explored. My personal suggestion was that let IEP establish a
> Wikipedia Club in every college in Pune to begin with, that would inculcate
> new, interested members who have a genuine passion for the project. Such
> clubs could meet every second Sunday, hold guest lecs, set a quota for a
> certain no. of articles to be created by the Pune chapter and so on by the
> members, teach its members better editing skills, and spread the knowledge.
> The CA training prog that I attended was a hell lotta fun and I wish many
> of my friends get the feel of it too.
>
> These clubs would be managed by all the 'veteran' CAs and newer ones if
> needed as and when. IEP would be the umbrella organisation to it all, and
> we can focus a lot more on quality of articles rather than the sheer no. of
> editors and rampant copyvio-ing done as a consequence by the newbies. Give
> it thought. My friends in many colleges throughout India were literally
> jealous that I was a part of it. Let's not let it go unnoticed that there
> is genuine interest spread in pockets throughout the country.
>
> - Arjun
>
> On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 11:18 PM, Arnav Sonara wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>> hi,
>>>
>>> It was a pilot and hence I guess was meant to die at some point.
>>>
>>> First up, to the Campus Ambassadors, you guys showed a lot of courage in
>>> taking up and then following through on your commitment of being Campus
>>> Ambassadors through the length of this Pilot. I hope the team will also
>>> speak to the  Ambassadors whilst doing the post-mortem so future programs
>>> have the benefit of their "experience". The same also goes to the India
>>> Programs team that initiated this project.
>>>
>>
>> Thanks to all of you, yes this was a Pilot, but at no point I see it
>> dying.  Its just that we have taken a pause right now to learn from the
>> findings and ll come back all prepared and with the help of you all we ll
>> try to gain new heights again.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Thanks
>> Arnav (ricku).
>> (User:Rangilo_Gujarati)
>>
>>
>> ___
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>> Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> - Arjun
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Arjun mangol]

Hey all,

I refuse to believe it dead as of yet. There's yet a lot of avenues that
haven't been explored. My personal suggestion was that let IEP establish a
Wikipedia Club in every college in Pune to begin with, that would inculcate
new, interested members who have a genuine passion for the project. Such
clubs could meet every second Sunday, hold guest lecs, set a quota for a
certain no. of articles to be created by the Pune chapter and so on by the
members, teach its members better editing skills, and spread the knowledge.
The CA training prog that I attended was a hell lotta fun and I wish many
of my friends get the feel of it too.

These clubs would be managed by all the 'veteran' CAs and newer ones if
needed as and when. IEP would be the umbrella organisation to it all, and
we can focus a lot more on quality of articles rather than the sheer no. of
editors and rampant copyvio-ing done as a consequence by the newbies. Give
it thought. My friends in many colleges throughout India were literally
jealous that I was a part of it. Let's not let it go unnoticed that there
is genuine interest spread in pockets throughout the country.

- Arjun

On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 11:18 PM, Arnav Sonara wrote:

>
>
>
> hi,
>>
>> It was a pilot and hence I guess was meant to die at some point.
>>
>> First up, to the Campus Ambassadors, you guys showed a lot of courage in
>> taking up and then following through on your commitment of being Campus
>> Ambassadors through the length of this Pilot. I hope the team will also
>> speak to the  Ambassadors whilst doing the post-mortem so future programs
>> have the benefit of their "experience". The same also goes to the India
>> Programs team that initiated this project.
>>
>
> Thanks to all of you, yes this was a Pilot, but at no point I see it
> dying.  Its just that we have taken a pause right now to learn from the
> findings and ll come back all prepared and with the help of you all we ll
> try to gain new heights again.
>
>
> --
> Thanks
> Arnav (ricku).
> (User:Rangilo_Gujarati)
>
>
> ___
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> Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
>
>


-- 
- Arjun
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Arnav Sonara]

hi,
>
> It was a pilot and hence I guess was meant to die at some point.
>
> First up, to the Campus Ambassadors, you guys showed a lot of courage in
> taking up and then following through on your commitment of being Campus
> Ambassadors through the length of this Pilot. I hope the team will also
> speak to the  Ambassadors whilst doing the post-mortem so future programs
> have the benefit of their "experience". The same also goes to the India
> Programs team that initiated this project.
>

Thanks to all of you, yes this was a Pilot, but at no point I see it dying.
 Its just that we have taken a pause right now to learn from the findings
and ll come back all prepared and with the help of you all we ll try to
gain new heights again.


-- 
Thanks
Arnav (ricku).
(User:Rangilo_Gujarati) 
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Pradeep Mohandas]

hi,

It was a pilot and hence I guess was meant to die at some point.

First up, to the Campus Ambassadors, you guys showed a lot of courage in
taking up and then following through on your commitment of being Campus
Ambassadors through the length of this Pilot. I hope the team will also
speak to the  Ambassadors whilst doing the post-mortem so future programs
have the benefit of their "experience". The same also goes to the India
Programs team that initiated this project.

I think others have raised a few valid points regarding experience of the
CA, the number of people that a CA can manage and what a CA was supposed to
do and ended up doing.

warm regards,
Pradeep Mohandas
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Surya Prakash]

>From Bala's words...

//Online Ambassadors/mentors are not handholders and error correctors. I
signed up to be an online ambassador. But stopped reading the IEP mails
that were sent to me after i realised, that the IEP program essentially
wanted to me to do the students' work. //

Sure. We can (OAs) guide the students & can help them in editing kindaa
things. But, expecting OAs should keep an eye on the particular student's
article & keep tracking them is not a good idea. And, doing it in this way
is a small English Wikipedia Admin kindaa thing.

Many OAs including me, are contributing & taking initiatives to develop
their language projects, the OA role gives them a burden really. Because I
felt it. ONLINE AMBASSADORING IS NOT REALLY ENGLISH WIKIPEDIA
ADMINISTRATING ROLE. Because, I indirectly directed to that role only. I
really DISLIKE that.

+ I am agree with the number of students. (50)

Thank you.
*$U®¥∩*
http://goo.gl/RoMyo.com 
http://about.me/suryaceg



On 12 November 2011 19:39, Swaroop Rao  wrote:

>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 19:33, Bala Jeyaraman wrote:
>
>> >>Many of us went through college recently know its not *Some*, its
>> *Most*. Anything called assignment and graded will be copy-pasted even by
>> the brightest 5% of students in class who would have potential to do on
>> their own.
>>
>> +1.  with Srikanth This is the SINGLE MOST important thing to remember
>> for the future. Lets cut the political correctness and putting the blame
>> everywhere else than where it belongs - the students and faculty involved
>>
>> In my four years of college, i copy pasted almost every single assignment
>> given to me. I did not know it was wrong and wouldnt have cared if someone
>> from outside pointed it to me. The attitude i saw from the IEP students is
>> exactly the same. Unless the students are penalised for plagiarism by being
>> failed in the course, they are not going to change the behaviour. And how
>> many of your professors in indian education were concerned that you were
>> copy pasting your assignment. (None of mine cared - i can say with
>> confidence that is the same case in 99% of the cases in India now)
>>
>> So no amount of increasing the number of campus ambassadors, their
>> training, etc would help unless there is a stick involved - How many times
>> did the campus ambassadors tried to tell students not to copy paste?. How
>> many of the students heeded the warning. This issue was raised in Late
>> August. There were two whole months to hammer in the message and it didnt
>> work out. Why? there were no serious implications for the students
>> involved. There is a conversation in Srikanth's en wiki talk page, where a
>> student tries to weasel out of copyvio by giving every excuse in the book -
>> he did not correct his behaviour, but instead tried everything to get the
>> copyvio he added approved.
>>
>> Those who got blocked weaseled, whined and pleaded for an unblock but in
>> many of the cases reverted to the previous behaviour, when they thought
>> they could get away with it. They are socking and trying to remove cleanup
>> comments from the IEP page . Without a no-nonsense approach, you will
>> only gets repeats of such behaviour.
>>
>> So here is what is to be done:
>>
>> 1) *Keep the number low* - The next round should have less than 50
>> students. No classwide / collegewide  blanket programs. Make this a
>> "interested students only" program.  We have clearly demonstrated there is
>> no manpower to handle anything more.  We have about exhausted the goodwill
>> of the en wiki community. If this repeats, you are looking at a wholesale
>> blocks for the students and IP addresses.
>>
> That's true. The enwiki community is losing its patience really.
>
>
>>
>> 2) *Penalise those who copy paste*  -  either they should be failed by
>> their professors. If the professors dont care, drop the program and stop
>> going back to that institution. Wikipedia is a work in progress, we dont
>> need plagiarism by Indian students to shore it up. We are not that
>> desperate.
>>
> A bit harder to enforce, since academic plagiarism is practised en masse
> by many professors themselves (not generalizing, just saying that the
> problem goes way deeper than the students).
>
>
>>
>> 3) *The CA to student ratio has to be 5 to 1. *Anything more seems to
>> non-workable. Online Ambassadors/mentors are not handholders and error
>> correctors. I signed up to be an online ambassador. But stopped reading the
>> IEP mails that were sent to me after i realised, that the IEP program
>> essentially wanted to me to do the students' work.
>>
>> Go back to the drawing board. Dont start with 1000. not even a 100, start
>> with a 50.
>>
>>
>> ___
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Swaroop Rao]

Also, it seems that CoEP has most of the problems; I think that CoEP being
an engineering college, is more rigid in its working than other
science/commerce/liberal arts colleges. What we could do is branch out into
other streams (other than engineering I mean); Law for example: Why not
have law students editing about Intellectual Property Rights (I know the
irony we'll have in case we have copyvios out of that). And the course
structuring in other colleges are a bit different, so they could
accommodate programs like the Wikimedia education programs much easier.

Swaroop Rao
(MikeLynch )

Steering Committee member, United States Education Program




On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 19:39, Swaroop Rao  wrote:

>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 19:33, Bala Jeyaraman wrote:
>
>> >>Many of us went through college recently know its not *Some*, its
>> *Most*. Anything called assignment and graded will be copy-pasted even by
>> the brightest 5% of students in class who would have potential to do on
>> their own.
>>
>> +1.  with Srikanth This is the SINGLE MOST important thing to remember
>> for the future. Lets cut the political correctness and putting the blame
>> everywhere else than where it belongs - the students and faculty involved
>>
>> In my four years of college, i copy pasted almost every single assignment
>> given to me. I did not know it was wrong and wouldnt have cared if someone
>> from outside pointed it to me. The attitude i saw from the IEP students is
>> exactly the same. Unless the students are penalised for plagiarism by being
>> failed in the course, they are not going to change the behaviour. And how
>> many of your professors in indian education were concerned that you were
>> copy pasting your assignment. (None of mine cared - i can say with
>> confidence that is the same case in 99% of the cases in India now)
>>
>> So no amount of increasing the number of campus ambassadors, their
>> training, etc would help unless there is a stick involved - How many times
>> did the campus ambassadors tried to tell students not to copy paste?. How
>> many of the students heeded the warning. This issue was raised in Late
>> August. There were two whole months to hammer in the message and it didnt
>> work out. Why? there were no serious implications for the students
>> involved. There is a conversation in Srikanth's en wiki talk page, where a
>> student tries to weasel out of copyvio by giving every excuse in the book -
>> he did not correct his behaviour, but instead tried everything to get the
>> copyvio he added approved.
>>
>> Those who got blocked weaseled, whined and pleaded for an unblock but in
>> many of the cases reverted to the previous behaviour, when they thought
>> they could get away with it. They are socking and trying to remove cleanup
>> comments from the IEP page . Without a no-nonsense approach, you will
>> only gets repeats of such behaviour.
>>
>> So here is what is to be done:
>>
>> 1) *Keep the number low* - The next round should have less than 50
>> students. No classwide / collegewide  blanket programs. Make this a
>> "interested students only" program.  We have clearly demonstrated there is
>> no manpower to handle anything more.  We have about exhausted the goodwill
>> of the en wiki community. If this repeats, you are looking at a wholesale
>> blocks for the students and IP addresses.
>>
> That's true. The enwiki community is losing its patience really.
>
>
>>
>> 2) *Penalise those who copy paste*  -  either they should be failed by
>> their professors. If the professors dont care, drop the program and stop
>> going back to that institution. Wikipedia is a work in progress, we dont
>> need plagiarism by Indian students to shore it up. We are not that
>> desperate.
>>
> A bit harder to enforce, since academic plagiarism is practised en masse
> by many professors themselves (not generalizing, just saying that the
> problem goes way deeper than the students).
>
>
>>
>> 3) *The CA to student ratio has to be 5 to 1. *Anything more seems to
>> non-workable. Online Ambassadors/mentors are not handholders and error
>> correctors. I signed up to be an online ambassador. But stopped reading the
>> IEP mails that were sent to me after i realised, that the IEP program
>> essentially wanted to me to do the students' work.
>>
>> Go back to the drawing board. Dont start with 1000. not even a 100, start
>> with a 50.
>>
>>
>> ___
>> Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
>> Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
>>
>> Swaroop Rao
>
>
>
> Steering Committee member, United States Education Program
>
>
>
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Swaroop Rao]

On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 19:33, Bala Jeyaraman  wrote:

> >>Many of us went through college recently know its not *Some*, its
> *Most*. Anything called assignment and graded will be copy-pasted even by
> the brightest 5% of students in class who would have potential to do on
> their own.
>
> +1.  with Srikanth This is the SINGLE MOST important thing to remember for
> the future. Lets cut the political correctness and putting the blame
> everywhere else than where it belongs - the students and faculty involved
>
> In my four years of college, i copy pasted almost every single assignment
> given to me. I did not know it was wrong and wouldnt have cared if someone
> from outside pointed it to me. The attitude i saw from the IEP students is
> exactly the same. Unless the students are penalised for plagiarism by being
> failed in the course, they are not going to change the behaviour. And how
> many of your professors in indian education were concerned that you were
> copy pasting your assignment. (None of mine cared - i can say with
> confidence that is the same case in 99% of the cases in India now)
>
> So no amount of increasing the number of campus ambassadors, their
> training, etc would help unless there is a stick involved - How many times
> did the campus ambassadors tried to tell students not to copy paste?. How
> many of the students heeded the warning. This issue was raised in Late
> August. There were two whole months to hammer in the message and it didnt
> work out. Why? there were no serious implications for the students
> involved. There is a conversation in Srikanth's en wiki talk page, where a
> student tries to weasel out of copyvio by giving every excuse in the book -
> he did not correct his behaviour, but instead tried everything to get the
> copyvio he added approved.
>
> Those who got blocked weaseled, whined and pleaded for an unblock but in
> many of the cases reverted to the previous behaviour, when they thought
> they could get away with it. They are socking and trying to remove cleanup
> comments from the IEP page . Without a no-nonsense approach, you will
> only gets repeats of such behaviour.
>
> So here is what is to be done:
>
> 1) *Keep the number low* - The next round should have less than 50
> students. No classwide / collegewide  blanket programs. Make this a
> "interested students only" program.  We have clearly demonstrated there is
> no manpower to handle anything more.  We have about exhausted the goodwill
> of the en wiki community. If this repeats, you are looking at a wholesale
> blocks for the students and IP addresses.
>
That's true. The enwiki community is losing its patience really.


>
> 2) *Penalise those who copy paste*  -  either they should be failed by
> their professors. If the professors dont care, drop the program and stop
> going back to that institution. Wikipedia is a work in progress, we dont
> need plagiarism by Indian students to shore it up. We are not that
> desperate.
>
A bit harder to enforce, since academic plagiarism is practised en masse by
many professors themselves (not generalizing, just saying that the problem
goes way deeper than the students).


>
> 3) *The CA to student ratio has to be 5 to 1. *Anything more seems to
> non-workable. Online Ambassadors/mentors are not handholders and error
> correctors. I signed up to be an online ambassador. But stopped reading the
> IEP mails that were sent to me after i realised, that the IEP program
> essentially wanted to me to do the students' work.
>
> Go back to the drawing board. Dont start with 1000. not even a 100, start
> with a 50.
>
>
> ___
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> To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
>
> Swaroop Rao


Steering Committee member, United States Education Program
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[wheredevelsdare]

Iv used turnitin during my MBA and can say that Iv seen people upload their 
projects there, note where the software catches them, change the language in 
that part and re-submit. People will go to any lengths ..

Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2011 19:33:12 +0530
From: sodabot...@gmail.com
To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education 
Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

>>Many of us went through college recently know its not *Some*, its 
*Most*. Anything called assignment and graded will be copy-pasted even 
by the brightest 5% of students in class who would have potential to do 
on their own.

+1.  with Srikanth This is the SINGLE MOST important thing to remember for the 
future. Lets cut the political correctness and putting the blame everywhere 
else than where it belongs - the students and faculty involved



In my four years of college, i copy pasted almost every single assignment given 
to me. I did not know it was wrong and wouldnt have cared if someone from 
outside pointed it to me. The attitude i saw from the IEP students is exactly 
the same. Unless the students are penalised for plagiarism by being failed in 
the course, they are not going to change the behaviour. And how many of your 
professors in indian education were concerned that you were copy pasting your 
assignment. (None of mine cared - i can say with confidence that is the same 
case in 99% of the cases in India now)



So no amount of increasing the number of campus ambassadors, their training, 
etc would help unless there is a stick involved - How many times did the campus 
ambassadors tried to tell students not to copy paste?. How many of the students 
heeded the warning. This issue was raised in Late August. There were two whole 
months to hammer in the message and it didnt work out. Why? there were no 
serious implications for the students involved. There is a conversation in 
Srikanth's en wiki talk page, where a student tries to weasel out of copyvio by 
giving every excuse in the book - he did not correct his behaviour, but instead 
tried everything to get the copyvio he added approved.


Those who got blocked weaseled, whined and pleaded for an unblock but in many 
of the cases reverted to the previous behaviour, when they thought they could 
get away with it. They are socking and trying to remove cleanup comments from 
the IEP page . Without a no-nonsense approach, you will only gets repeats 
of such behaviour.



So here is what is to be done:

1) Keep the number low - The next round should have less than 50 students. No 
classwide / collegewide  blanket programs. Make this a "interested students 
only" program.  We have clearly demonstrated there is no manpower to handle 
anything more.  We have about exhausted the goodwill of the en wiki community. 
If this repeats, you are looking at a wholesale blocks for the students and IP 
addresses. 



2) Penalise those who copy paste  -  either they should be failed by their 
professors. If the professors dont care, drop the program and stop going back 
to that institution. Wikipedia is a work in progress, we dont need plagiarism 
by Indian students to shore it up. We are not that desperate. 


3) The CA to student ratio has to be 5 to 1. Anything more seems to 
non-workable. Online Ambassadors/mentors are not handholders and error 
correctors. I signed up to be an online ambassador. But stopped reading the IEP 
mails that were sent to me after i realised, that the IEP program essentially 
wanted to me to do the students' work. 


Go back to the drawing board. Dont start with 1000. not even a 100, start with 
a 50. 



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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Srikanth Lakshmanan]

On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 18:56, Hisham  wrote:
>
> That's not accurate.  The dates are as follows:  It was concluded in all
> but 1 class of Symbiosis School of Economics a few weeks ago (because the
> assignements were concluded.)  It continues in 1 class at this college and
> at 1 class at the SNDT Women's University.  We asked College of Engineering
> Pune to stop the program in their classrooms last week.  It is still being
> continued at this college by 1 professor nevertheless.
>

Probably the same could have been highlighted enough at Signpost. The
signpost heading conveys its closed down.

There is going to be a through analysis of this pilot. The links you are
> referring are not plans for a rollout; they are just an invite to see if
> any existing community members in other cities could invest the kind of
> time (during work hours and in classrooms) that Campus Ambassadors need to
> do.
>

Thanks for clarifying, helps much.


> At none of the colleges did we push this through the top management.
>

Well I cant help point CoEP where the director was much excited about the
program and without his push directly / indirectly, I wonder if 800+
students would have voluntarily signed up. I will never agree if anyone
says 800+ students voluntarily asked/agreed for Wikipedia assignments
without staff / whoever else asking them to do so.


> Having said that we should have looked at much lower student numbers.
>
Agree

I didn't get the comment on even and odd semesters
>

Well it was my suggestion/opinion if you are planning next roll out in Jan.
Odd semesters in Indian colleges are longer ones July- Dec typically and
give time for students / staff to do extra things. Even semesters are
shorter Jan-May (April in many cases) so the duration for anything in
colleges are limited in even sem. This is the reason why you will find most
extra-curriculars happening in odd-sem. I am not sure if we did a time
audit of the pilot, but it took very late to have students start editing
and they were stopped almost in 2-3 weeks. We may not have that much time
to engage with students / faculty on even semesters.


>  It is good to have CAs who have reasonable experience in editing
>> wikipedia.
>
> Fully agree.  Having said that, given the relatively small community size
> in India, and the amount of face-to-face class time that Campus Ambassadors
> need to put in, there will be a number of CAs who will be newbies.  We must
> however amend our selection and training criteria for them going forward.
>

I would say make CAs as wikipedians with atleast 500+ edits on en.wiki to
give them a flavor of complexities in enwiki before they help out others.
In other words, start early on CA's get more commitment early on, that
before they go ahead and preach("teach") they practice("edit") enough.


-- 
Regards
Srikanth.L
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Bala Jeyaraman]

>>Many of us went through college recently know its not *Some*, its *Most*.
Anything called assignment and graded will be copy-pasted even by the
brightest 5% of students in class who would have potential to do on their
own.

+1.  with Srikanth This is the SINGLE MOST important thing to remember for
the future. Lets cut the political correctness and putting the blame
everywhere else than where it belongs - the students and faculty involved

In my four years of college, i copy pasted almost every single assignment
given to me. I did not know it was wrong and wouldnt have cared if someone
from outside pointed it to me. The attitude i saw from the IEP students is
exactly the same. Unless the students are penalised for plagiarism by being
failed in the course, they are not going to change the behaviour. And how
many of your professors in indian education were concerned that you were
copy pasting your assignment. (None of mine cared - i can say with
confidence that is the same case in 99% of the cases in India now)

So no amount of increasing the number of campus ambassadors, their
training, etc would help unless there is a stick involved - How many times
did the campus ambassadors tried to tell students not to copy paste?. How
many of the students heeded the warning. This issue was raised in Late
August. There were two whole months to hammer in the message and it didnt
work out. Why? there were no serious implications for the students
involved. There is a conversation in Srikanth's en wiki talk page, where a
student tries to weasel out of copyvio by giving every excuse in the book -
he did not correct his behaviour, but instead tried everything to get the
copyvio he added approved.

Those who got blocked weaseled, whined and pleaded for an unblock but in
many of the cases reverted to the previous behaviour, when they thought
they could get away with it. They are socking and trying to remove cleanup
comments from the IEP page . Without a no-nonsense approach, you will
only gets repeats of such behaviour.

So here is what is to be done:

1) *Keep the number low* - The next round should have less than 50
students. No classwide / collegewide  blanket programs. Make this a
"interested students only" program.  We have clearly demonstrated there is
no manpower to handle anything more.  We have about exhausted the goodwill
of the en wiki community. If this repeats, you are looking at a wholesale
blocks for the students and IP addresses.

2) *Penalise those who copy paste*  -  either they should be failed by
their professors. If the professors dont care, drop the program and stop
going back to that institution. Wikipedia is a work in progress, we dont
need plagiarism by Indian students to shore it up. We are not that
desperate.

3) *The CA to student ratio has to be 5 to 1. *Anything more seems to
non-workable. Online Ambassadors/mentors are not handholders and error
correctors. I signed up to be an online ambassador. But stopped reading the
IEP mails that were sent to me after i realised, that the IEP program
essentially wanted to me to do the students' work.

Go back to the drawing board. Dont start with 1000. not even a 100, start
with a 50.
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Hisham]

On Nov 12, 2011, at 7:02 PM, Gautam John wrote:
>> 
> 
> Fair enough. Just that at the scale the India program will run at, a
> technology solution might very well be a easier first step than human
> interventions.

If we can't manage the scale (as we couldn't in this pilot), then we will 
reduce the scale.

hisham

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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Hisham]

On Nov 12, 2011, at 6:55 PM, Swaroop Rao wrote:
> 
> We used to have this mainspace-sandbox debate in the US Public Policy program 
> last semester, and we decided that the aim of the program was students 
> getting hands on community experience, and editing first in sandbox will not 
> give that kind of experience to students. However, considering the massive 
> problems we have had to face with India Education Program this year, I think 
> sandbox editing before going to mainspace would work out well here.

Maybe if we had limited the numbers to much lower than we had in Pune, and with 
a larger number of Campus Ambassadors from the very beginning, and with the 
full compliment of Online Ambassadors from the very beginning, and with select 
faculty, (and with a whole host of other learnings), the sandbox route could 
also have been made to work in Pune.  ...but I'm going ahead of myself because 
we are still analysing the results.

> But a sandbox in a Chapter hosted wiki doesn't seem right to me, because it 
> is almost totally disconnected from the ground realities at English 
> Wikipedia. Also, editing on an enwiki sandbox will enable better feedback 
> from various sources (perhaps from more experienced editors on enwiki), as 
> opposed to a local sandbox, where feedback is only from the selected pool of 
> Online Ambassadors.
> 

My (personal) opinion is I agree with you on this.

hisham___
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Hisham]

On Nov 12, 2011, at 6:28 PM, Gautam John wrote:
> 
> Srikantha, thanks for posting this. I did not know about it till you
> posted it and I am sure there are many like me. It is worrying but at
> the same time offers us a chance to make things better for the future.

Apologies, Gautam, Srikanth and others, I ought to have posted the updates on 
the India mailing list too.

> 
> As I see it, the majority of the challenges have been around
> plagiarism and copyright violations. (I wish we wouldn't conflate
> these things - they aren't the same.)

Agree

> There are multiple ways to solve
> this - one is technology and the other one is the age old methods of
> 'capacity building' and 'sensitisation'. Question is, are the latter
> two areas of work for the India Programs office because they aren't
> short term or easy. A via-media is to run all submission through some
> http://turnitin.com/ type system to check. Or maybe a hybrid - where
> they don't edit on the mainspace but say on a sandbox run in India by,
> perhaps, the Chapter and then they graduate? It's easy to overwhelm
> the system when so many students sign up - a ladder of evolution in to
> a Wikipedia editor might help. As might the idea of pairing/twining
> either the students together (they check each other) or student with
> current editor (which may have already failed).

All valid suggestions and we will consider them all in our analysis of what 
went wrong and how/if we can do things better going forward.

> 
>  that's needed but some honesty and vulnerability to learn,
> accept and act on the feedback.

Absolutely, Gautam, and that's exactly how we will approach this.

hisham___
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Gautam John]

On 12 November 2011 18:55, Swaroop Rao  wrote:

> It used to be easier to spot copyvios on English Wikipedia earlier, but due
> to some issues with Google, the bot which detected the copyvios (CorenBot)
> is no longer running, though I have come to understand that Jimmy and Coren
> are having talks with Google on this.

Fair enough. Just that at the scale the India program will run at, a
technology solution might very well be a easier first step than human
interventions.

> I think sandbox editing before going to mainspace would work out well here.
> But a sandbox in a Chapter hosted wiki doesn't seem right to me, because it
> is almost totally disconnected from the ground realities at English
> Wikipedia. Also, editing on an enwiki sandbox will enable better feedback

Quite possibly correct. Just wondering about it in terms of DMCA
liability for the WMF and more.

Thank you.

Best,

Gautam

http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html

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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Hisham]

Our mails coincided, Srikanth, but my comments inline.

hisham

On Nov 12, 2011, at 6:10 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> If you are not aware of it yet, India Education Program Pilot died around a 
> week back[1] and a post mortem was done on Signpost[2]. I wonder if we 
> Indians like to only rejoice success's and keep silence when we fail. One 
> could have acknowledged the death on this list. It didnt happen. Bad.

That's not accurate.  The dates are as follows:  It was concluded in all but 1 
class of Symbiosis School of Economics a few weeks ago (because the 
assignements were concluded.)  It continues in 1 class at this college and at 1 
class at the SNDT Women's University.  We asked College of Engineering Pune to 
stop the program in their classrooms last week.  It is still being continued at 
this college by 1 professor nevertheless.

> 
> I am sad, guilty, angry all at the same time. I could not give more time for 
> being an "Online Ambassador". I thought role of an OA would be to help out 
> people who are reaching out for help, only to understand later OA needs to 
> look what people are doing edit by edit, reach out to them and help them. 
> That is a lesson learnt for me. The program has taught us many different 
> lessons for each of us but are we too fast in race to pause for a moment and 
> analyze? Plans for next rollout is already ON[3], without doing enough 
> justice to large post-mortem. Am disappointed.

There is going to be a through analysis of this pilot. The links you are 
referring are not plans for a rollout; they are just an invite to see if any 
existing community members in other cities could invest the kind of time 
(during work hours and in classrooms) that Campus Ambassadors need to do.
> 
> While large section of post mortem completely ignored one basic premise. 
> "Quality of Indian Students & Faculty". If you dont select only the 
> interested / qualified ones, we will fail again miserably, no matter how many 
> ambassadors are there. Probably the students in the program must be selected 
> how ambassadors were selected in Pune and then try the pilot with 20-30 
> *interested* students/faculty instead of heading to a college, pushing 
> through top management of College and making a failure out of IEP. Another 
> thing with colleges are "If you can't do in odd semester, you can't do it in 
> even semester". So I would suggest some detailed analysis before launching 
> any further programs.  

At none of the colleges did we push this through the top management.  

Having said that we should have looked at much lower student numbers.

I didn't get the comment on even and odd semesters

> I find a lot more can be done to this "Findings and Learnings"[4].

Please do share your additional points.  As I mentioned, it's very much work in 
progress.
>   
> 
> It is good to have CAs who have reasonable experience in editing wikipedia.

Fully agree.  Having said that, given the relatively small community size in 
India, and the amount of face-to-face class time that Campus Ambassadors need 
to put in, there will be a number of CAs who will be newbies.  We must however 
amend our selection and training criteria for them going forward.

> Its MUST, not good to have. Infact this factor made some OA, CA's from PPI 
> feel bad on why they are ambassadors.

> 
>  I personally don't believe that Indian culture had much bearing on this 
> pilot. Some students in India – as elsewhere – are either lazy and plagiarize 
> or they genuinely believe that close paraphrasing means something is no 
> longer plagiarized.
> 
> Please get to close to reality Hisham,

As i mentioned in my mail, we are going to do am objective review of this and 
this will inform the way forward.

> Many of us went through college recently know its not *Some*, its *Most*. 
> Anything called assignment and graded will be copy-pasted even by the 
> brightest 5% of students in class who would have potential to do on their 
> own. If IEP continues to do "Marks for Wikipedia editing" campaign, we will 
> fail again, only consolation next time might be it would be easy to clean up 
> since we would be cautious with numbers. Also certain level of competence is 
> required for article creation (or even basic editing for that matter), I 
> think we need to acknowledge it and shouldnt just be going around with the 
> notion "Everyone can edit" simply without adding a pinch of Salt. 
> WP:COMPETENCE[5] is not about subject matter expertise, its about Competence 
> required for Wikipedia editing, many of which cannot be practically expected 
> from all Indian students / Faculty. 
> 
There are many learnings and we will take all of them on board.

> 
> [1] 
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Education_Program#Meeting_with_the_Director_of_College_of_Engineering.2C_Pune
> [2] 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-11-07/Special_report
> [3] 
> http:

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Swaroop Rao]

It used to be easier to spot copyvios on English Wikipedia earlier, but due
to some issues with Google, the bot which detected the copyvios (CorenBot)
is no longer running, though I have come to understand that Jimmy and Coren
are having talks with Google on this.

We used to have this mainspace-sandbox debate in the US Public Policy
program last semester, and we decided that the aim of the program was
students getting hands on community experience, and editing first in
sandbox will not give that kind of experience to students. However,
considering the massive problems we have had to face with India Education
Program this year, I think sandbox editing before going to mainspace would
work out well here. But a sandbox in a Chapter hosted wiki doesn't seem
right to me, because it is almost totally disconnected from the ground
realities at English Wikipedia. Also, editing on an enwiki sandbox will
enable better feedback from various sources (perhaps from more experienced
editors on enwiki), as opposed to a local sandbox, where feedback is only
from the selected pool of Online Ambassadors.


Swaroop Rao
(MikeLynch )

Steering committee member, United States Education Program




On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 18:28, Gautam John  wrote:

> On 12 November 2011 18:10, Srikanth Lakshmanan  wrote:
>
> > If you are not aware of it yet, India Education Program Pilot died
> around a
> > week back[1] and a post mortem was done on Signpost[2]. I wonder if we
> > Indians like to only rejoice success's and keep silence when we fail.
>
> Srikantha, thanks for posting this. I did not know about it till you
> posted it and I am sure there are many like me. It is worrying but at
> the same time offers us a chance to make things better for the future.
>
> As I see it, the majority of the challenges have been around
> plagiarism and copyright violations. (I wish we wouldn't conflate
> these things - they aren't the same.) There are multiple ways to solve
> this - one is technology and the other one is the age old methods of
> 'capacity building' and 'sensitisation'. Question is, are the latter
> two areas of work for the India Programs office because they aren't
> short term or easy. A via-media is to run all submission through some
> http://turnitin.com/ type system to check. Or maybe a hybrid - where
> they don't edit on the mainspace but say on a sandbox run in India by,
> perhaps, the Chapter and then they graduate? It's easy to overwhelm
> the system when so many students sign up - a ladder of evolution in to
> a Wikipedia editor might help. As might the idea of pairing/twining
> either the students together (they check each other) or student with
> current editor (which may have already failed).
>
> Either way, I agree - it isn't a post-mortem (it's such a gruesome
> word!) that's needed but some honesty and vulnerability to learn,
> accept and act on the feedback.
>
> Thank you.
>
> Best,
>
> Gautam
> 
> http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Gautam John]

On 12 November 2011 18:10, Srikanth Lakshmanan  wrote:

> If you are not aware of it yet, India Education Program Pilot died around a
> week back[1] and a post mortem was done on Signpost[2]. I wonder if we
> Indians like to only rejoice success's and keep silence when we fail.

Srikantha, thanks for posting this. I did not know about it till you
posted it and I am sure there are many like me. It is worrying but at
the same time offers us a chance to make things better for the future.

As I see it, the majority of the challenges have been around
plagiarism and copyright violations. (I wish we wouldn't conflate
these things - they aren't the same.) There are multiple ways to solve
this - one is technology and the other one is the age old methods of
'capacity building' and 'sensitisation'. Question is, are the latter
two areas of work for the India Programs office because they aren't
short term or easy. A via-media is to run all submission through some
http://turnitin.com/ type system to check. Or maybe a hybrid - where
they don't edit on the mainspace but say on a sandbox run in India by,
perhaps, the Chapter and then they graduate? It's easy to overwhelm
the system when so many students sign up - a ladder of evolution in to
a Wikipedia editor might help. As might the idea of pairing/twining
either the students together (they check each other) or student with
current editor (which may have already failed).

Either way, I agree - it isn't a post-mortem (it's such a gruesome
word!) that's needed but some honesty and vulnerability to learn,
accept and act on the feedback.

Thank you.

Best,

Gautam

http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html

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