Someone mentioned the social aspect of face-to-face edit training vs professionally produced training videos. Face-to-face can be an important aspect, but will always be limited in scope and relatively expensive (as Craig has pointed out, especially for a country like Australia).
There are two limitations in scope for face-to-face training, I think: the sheer volume of skills, dimensions to WP editing, that we'd like to get across – when there's only so much you can fit into a single session, or even multiple sessions; and (2) the fact that WMF sites need numbers ... lots of new editors, more than we can pump out in occasional room-based events. And looking at Australian-related articles, we need lots of new Australian editors. And it would be nice to reach out to people in Australian regions, and the Asia-Pacific (in English), whom we just couldn't possibly involve in face-to-face training. The trainer in me is also aware that conveying skills and knowledge in more than one mode is often very reinforcing for recipients – face-to-face and online vid and even online/skype mentoring? BTW, WMAU face-to-face sessions in a number of cities are going to be funded by the Australian Research Council as part of the Linkage project on disability in sport (John Vandenberg is organising, I believe). As for specifically Australian content/angles, they're not essential: just showing the way generically for the rest of the WM movement would be a good thing to do. T On 21/07/2013, at 3:03 PM, Kerry Raymond wrote: > Leigh, feel free to point me at these instructional videos (there’s stuff I > would love to learn personally as well as making those links more available > to others). I did go looking once and found some on a Wikipedia site > (probably on outreach, can’t remember) but they seemed to be all broken links. > > Certainly we would not be proposing to reinvent the wheel if there was > perfectly good material already there. There might be some minor “Australian” > content we could add but it would be very minor (mainly about referencing key > Austrlian resources) > > Kerry > > From: Leigh Blackall [mailto:leighblack...@gmail.com] > Sent: Sunday, 21 July 2013 8:57 AM > To: kerry.raym...@gmail.com > Cc: wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org; WMAu members > Subject: Re: [Wikimediaau-l] Annual Plan 2014: instructional videos and the > larger question of SMART-vs-BHAG > > Is this suggestion because we are dissatisfied with the dozens if not > hundreds and thousands of instructional videos already available? Maybe the > suggestion is for Australian accent and language versions? A series in an > Indigenous language would be remarkable! Or perhaps the suggestion is to > create videos about Australia related projects and interest groups? In which > case its a good suggestion. I for one would benefit from a video overview of > the things going on. I have a few videos on my channel outlining Wikiversity > work. And know of others looking at Wikinews. > > On 21/07/2013 8:44 AM, "Kerry Raymond" <kerry.raym...@gmail.com> wrote: > In > > http://www.wikimedia.org.au//wiki/Proposal_talk:2014_Annual_Plan#Proposal > > Tony1 also suggests instructional videos to reinforce edit training and/or to > replace it. He asks is “is it too ambitious”? Because of the WMF’s enthusiasm > for metrics, it does drive our thinking towards “low-hanging fruit” projects. > > Edit training workshops are a good example of this “low hanging” fruit > problem. We know we can run a certain number of edit training sessions, we > know that with the help of our GLAM partners, we can probably get a certain > attendance, we know that attendees seem to enjoy their day of edit training > (based on feedback forms) – so that’s a nice measurable success for a nice > project that we should keep doing. Could we put the effort instead into > instructional videos? Obviously instructional videos could potentially reach > a massive international audience, far greater than maybe the 100-200 people > we can train each year through workshops, but maybe they would be absolutely > zero downloads/views. So the risk/return profile of videos is much higher (we > can both succeed and fail more spectacularly) than for edit training. > > Also we struggle to find volunteers among WMAU members and the Australian WP > community for our edit training workshops as our library partners like to run > these events on weekdays (incompatible with people’s work lives). Would we > find it more-or-less easy to get people to prepare instructional videos which > they could at 3am in their pyjamas if they wanted? I don’t know. What are the > relative costs? Well, edit training generally has travel costs, but we’d > probably need to spend some money on professional tools for making > instructional videos (screen-capture and video-editing software) and perhaps > some training on how to use them effectively. > > So what do we do? Low-risk/return edit training workshop or > higher-risk/return edit training videos? Of course in the ideal world of > infinite resources we can do both, but we don’t live in that world > (“everything costs something” as my former Vice-Chancellor used to say). > > Aside. In regard to edit training in any form, we have a practical problem in > relation to the progressive rollout of increasing functionality of the visual > editor. This impacts on our existing edit training workshop materials (slides > and manuals) and would impact on the preparation of videos. But my question > here is more philosophical about the risk/return model of what we do. > > Kerry > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimediaau-l mailing list > Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimediaau-l mailing list > Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l ___________________ Tony Souter *Fixed-line phone: +612 42633401 *Mobile: 0450 717627 (+61450 717627), but usually not switched on *Skype: tonysouter *Street address: 1/29 Tarrant Ave, Kiama Downs 2533, Australia
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