I managed to get funding from my university for grants to students, for our outreach project. This was when the staff went on strike, from May to December [sic!]. The student was very excited to work and help me, but we couldn't have access to the computer labs...
Juliana On Sun, Feb 10, 2019 at 9:36 PM Kerry Raymond <[email protected]> wrote: > I do it as a volunteer. There are no salaried staff at Wikimedia > Australia. > > Kerry > > -----Original Message----- > From: Wiki-research-l [mailto:[email protected]] > On Behalf Of Piotr Konieczny > Sent: Monday, 11 February 2019 1:20 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] What instructors think about teaching with > Wikipedia AFTER having tried it? > > Thank you for the very detailed story! > > I don't know about US/Canada(?) where Wiki Edu operates, but recently I > heard the explanation for why there is almost no outreach to universities > in Poland despite (occasional) interest from the universities themselves: > no funds / will to hire a dedicated person for this, and the current > salaried staff of the Polish chapter does not have sufficient time to > answer all requests. > > -- > > Piotr Konieczny, PhD > http://hanyang.academia.edu/PiotrKonieczny > http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gdV8_AEAAAAJ > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Piotrus > > On 2/10/2019 3:16 AM, Kerry Raymond wrote: > > I supported a 2nd year Gender Studies course late last year. The > lecturer had heard about the Gender Gap in terms of content on Wikipedia > and decided that there would be a student assignment in which student could > singly or in a group write or expand a Wikipedia article. The lecturer had > broken the assignment down into a number of tasks to be completed by > various dates, which were roughly. 1. Pick a topic and explain why you > chose it. 2. Write an essay about the topic with citations 3. Write/expand > the Wikipedia article. > > > > The lecturer had no personal experience at contributing to Wikipedia, > but assumed it would not be hard to do as it's the "encyclopedia anyone can > edit" but was wondering if there needed to be a session to teach the > students how to contribute to Wikipedia. By sheer chance the lecturer > happened to be chatting with one of the university librarians and mentioned > this Wikipedia assignment and that librarian happened to have done > Wikipedia training at UQ for groups of librarians and suggested that I > might be contacted to do the Wikipedia training. > > > > So I did a Wikipedia training session with the students (because of the > timetabling it was not possible to do hands-on training but I figured, > rightly, undergraduates would pick on the "how to" with the Visual Editors > just with a presentation) but also addressed the policy side of Wikipedia > (of which the lecturer was completely unaware). This occurred before they > had to submit their essays so I got to talk about writing a good lede in > advance of them doing it (for those planning a new article). I also attend > the "edit-a-thon" afternoon where the student actually created or expanded > the Wikipedia articles (mostly copying and pasting their essay text but of > course had to re-do their citations in Wikipedia format) where I dealit > with all the usual event problems (people who did not create their account > sufficiently in advance, 6 user limit, shifting new articles that were > created as Draft into mainspace etc). The outcome was that the lecturer > and students were all happy at the end of the afternoon, feeling that there > had been some "real" achievement from the assignment. The articles were > not too bad (I kept them on my watchlist and all have survived and in some > cases have been expanded further by others). I did a bit of MoS tidying > afterwards of course and, as photos had not been part of the assignment, I > also found and added some photos where I could. About the worst thing that > happened was a "essay" tag on one of them. > > > > Like a number of edit-a-thons where I have been parachuted in > mid-process, there is no doubt in my mind that having an experienced > Wikipedian in the loop helps a lot as the known risks can be managed. I > find undergraduate students (who are mostly young and digitally-savvy) take > to the Visual Editor very easily (I gave them a one-page cheat sheet and > most were fine with that, generally seeking "how to " help only to do some > complex things they could see in other articles, "how do I make a table of > contents" being the most common). When we hit the 6 new account limit on > one IP address, they quickly grasped my explanation of what the problem was > and that they should create their accounts from their phones via their > mobile data not the Wifi (older people don't grasp this as easily in my > experience). One student choosing to use her USB mobile dongle as an > alternative. There were some middle-aged and older people in the group who > tended to ask more "how to " questions but, on the flip side, had generally > followed my early advice about creating their account in advance and > practicing on their user page (so all were autoconfirmed users and didn't > have those problems). > > > > However, I can see that without an experienced Wikipedian in the loop > that things could have gone very badly. And this is the problem for me. I > can generally help out IF I know about the plan in the first place. > > > > As you might have seen in Signpost recently, there was some upset over a > proposed experiment over giving out random barnstars. As I commented there, > instead of all the wailing and gnashing of teeth that goes on in the > Wikipedia community about such things, we would be much better served if we > tried to find a way to communicate with universities about both > edit-a-thons and research projects and provide them with some entrypoints > into our community so we could help them with such things to everyone's > mutual benefit. Relying on serendipity and personal contacts (which is how > things currently work) isn't an ideal solution. > > > > Kerry > > > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Wiki-research-l > > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of > > Jonathan Morgan > > Sent: Saturday, 9 February 2019 4:07 AM > > To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities > > <[email protected]> > > Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] What instructors think about teaching > with Wikipedia AFTER having tried it? > > > > Piotr, > > > > I think this is an excellent topic, FWIW. > > > > And I bet the Wikipedia Education Program would be interested in the > outcomes of this research. And they might be willing to point you to > potential interview candidates (tho, obviously, they have a strong > US/EnWiki bias, so it wouldn't be the complete picture). > > > > Best, > > J > > > > On Fri, Feb 8, 2019 at 8:43 AM Juliana Bastos Marques > > <[email protected]> > > wrote: > > > >> I can add something to this, from my own experiences and from what > >> colleagues have told me. Here are some negative feedbacks to the > >> experience of teaching with Wikipedia. Not in any particular order: > >> > >> 1. Lack of support from the Wikipedia community (reversions, scaring > >> newbies - depends on the specifics of each language community) 2. > >> Lack of teacher's experience in editing and dealing with the > >> community (leads to poor management fo issues in 1) 3. Problems with > >> infrastructure in the university 4. Students lacking interest in > >> editing, doing everything in the last minute and not caring about the > >> outcome after the end of classes. > >> > >> Piotr, I'm very interested in following your research. I'd love to > >> hear about studies examining these issues, and how they were/can be > overcome. > >> > >> Greetings, > >> Juliana > >> > >> On Fri, Feb 8, 2019 at 4:04 PM Piotr Konieczny <[email protected]> wrote: > >> > >>> I am mulling over a new research topic: what researchers think about > >>> teaching with Wikipedia type of assignment AFTER having tried it? > >>> AFAIK we have a lot of papers on how to teach with Wikipedia, some > >>> on effects on students and some about what instructors think about > >>> Wikipedia in general, but correct me if I am wrong, nobody has > >>> actually asked instructors about their experience with it? And from > >>> my personal experience with seeing such projects on Wikipedia, I > >>> think there's a lot of people who try it once and don't come back > >>> and well, do we know why outside educated guesses? > >>> > >>> Right now I am just brainstorming this idea, so any thoughts, up to > >>> and including suggestions for what questions to ask, etc. are > appreciated. > >>> > >>> Also, I am generally conducting solo research, and all my prior > >>> papers on 'teaching with Wikipedia' have been solo authored (and my > >>> goal is as always to turn this research into publishable paper), but > >>> if someone really, really, really would want to join this project > >>> because they love the idea, and would want to be a co-author of the > >>> future paper, and/or present the results at a WikiSym or such that I > >>> sadly go to every five years or so, feel free to send me a private > >>> message. No promises, but I don't bite :) > >>> > >>> -- > >>> Piotr Konieczny, PhD > >>> http://hanyang.academia.edu/PiotrKonieczny > >>> http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gdV8_AEAAAAJ > >>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Piotrus > >>> > >>> > >>> _______________________________________________ > >>> Wiki-research-l mailing list > >>> [email protected] > >>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l > >>> > >> > >> -- > >> www.domusaurea.org > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Wiki-research-l mailing list > >> [email protected] > >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l > >> > > > > -- > > Jonathan T. Morgan > > Senior Design Researcher > > Wikimedia Foundation > > User:Jmorgan (WMF) > > <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jmorgan_(WMF)> > > _______________________________________________ > > Wiki-research-l mailing list > > [email protected] > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Wiki-research-l mailing list > > [email protected] > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l > > > _______________________________________________ > Wiki-research-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l > > > _______________________________________________ > Wiki-research-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l > -- www.domusaurea.org _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
