Wikipedia talk:Education noticeboard

Great to see this page coming into existence

Will help us manage the classes who are editing. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:02, April 20, 2012 (UTC)

Notifications

Kevin, on this, not sure what we should say about notifying the professor and the course talk page? My concern is that we have so many MIA profs, that they may not see the issues. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:55, April 27, 2012 (UTC)

I'm honestly not sure either. I think it would generally be better to not notify them immediately, and let their ambassadors deal with talking to them about it, unless the professor is either an established Wikipedian or their ambassador is MIA or the problem involves their ambassador. I'm not sure how to sum that up succinctly though. Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:05, April 27, 2012 (UTC)

I guess the question is if enough ambassadors are MIA that we should just assume that notifying profs is a good policy by default. Those in the program give their full name so e-mail contact info is usually easy to find. I'll make a small note about contacting profs by e-mail. Dcoetzee 23:56, April 27, 2012 (UTC)

It depends on who's at the center of the problem, really. If it's a student, notify the student, the professor, and any campus/online ambassadors for the course. If it's a class in general, same as above, except students. If it's a campus ambassador, notify the CA and their regional ambassador. Regional ambassador problems are rare, but you would notify them and Jami. For online ambassadors, I'd contact the OA and leave a note as well at Wikipedia talk:Online Ambassadors. For structural problems with the program, there's no need to notify anyone in particular; just post those here and optionally notify Wikipedia talk:Ambassadors and/or the related program's talk page. Rob SchnautZ (WMF) ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:22, April 30, 2012 (UTC)

Sorry about that. I bit newcomers again.

Can you delete my section? I'm vanishing from this noticeboard until this version is archived. (I mean, not edit the noticeboard) Hill Crest's WikiLaser (Boom). (talk) 20:27, April 28, 2012 (UTC)

Do not worry about it. It is important that people feel comfortable bringing up concerns. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:20, April 28, 2012 (UTC)

Don't feel bad, you should feel free to raise concerns, that's what the noticeboard is for. My only feedback would be in the future to stick to either real ongoing issues or likely future issues rather than unlikely hypothetical outcomes - this will help ensure your concerns are treated seriously. Dcoetzee 21:00, April 29, 2012 (UTC)

Centralizing policy and analysis discussions

Before this noticeboard existed, a number of policy and analysis discussions happened at Wikipedia talk:Ambassadors. Now they're happening here at what is called a noticeboard not a policy and analysis discussion page. Would anyone mind if I created Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Education Program for these sorts of discussions and moved some of the policy and analysis discussions there? Pine ^(talk) 08:35, May 2, 2012 (UTC)

While I support, I think it's only fair to point out the same discussion was just held a few days ago with no consensus, so I would expect opinions expressed there still apply. Rob SchnautZ (WMF) ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:43, May 2, 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. However I think what was proposed there was separating an "incidents" board from the Education Noticeboard. I propose leaving "incidents" here and moving the policy and analysis discussions elsewhere. Pine ^(talk) 19:27, May 2, 2012 (UTC)

I'm going to continue to support keeping all education program discussion in one place, simply because the interested community isn't large enough to support critical mass for multiple forums. In fact, I'd consider merging redirecting future discussion at Wikipedia talk:Ambassadors to here. Regardless of whether a split eventually occurs, I think moving discussions would be inflammatory. Dcoetzee 23:58, May 2, 2012 (UTC)

About Ambassador Talk, I'd go along with a suggestion to mark it as inactive for the moment and post a notice that redirects people here. I think that Ambassador Talk might have some usefulness in the future but I'm not sure that we need it right now. Pine ^(talk) 08:08, May 3, 2012 (UTC)

Possible technical glitch

Hi,
I've noticed that if I try to use bullet points (*) in the free text box at Special:OnlineAmbassadorProfile, any text after the first bullet is not shown in Special:OnlineAmbassadors. <br> seems to work fine, however. Is this a known issue? bobrayner (talk) 00:14, January 25, 2013 (UTC)

It wasn't a known issue. I'll do some testing and file a bug. Thanks for reporting this.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 01:34, January 25, 2013 (UTC)

With 28 threads I think I'm going to reduce the time it takes for things to archive

Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 08:30, September 21, 2013 (UTC)

• The page is getting unwieldy again. It says that archiving is set at 48 hours, but the actual settings seem to be either 10 days, or 240 of unspecified units. I think we should change the settings to 72 hours, and if no one objects, I'll do that fairly soon. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:39, November 26, 2013 (UTC)

I've done it, but I made it 5 days instead, because of the existence of EN/I. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:49, November 27, 2013 (UTC)

Motor system, test case

Since my whole, documented test case has now been desconstructed, separated, moved to another board, and totally refactored, I am saving a link here for archives. Meaning, if this new board doesn't work and I ever have to go to ANI, that was an example of one of everything. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:48, November 27, 2013 (UTC)

Sorry! Was trying to be helpful. Can undo if you'd prefer. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 01:37, November 28, 2013 (UTC)

Not at all! Not complaining, just saying! And I fixed 'em so they wouldn't look so stupid five years from now in archives :) Thanks for everything, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:43, November 28, 2013 (UTC)

Seeking OA for Courses at Louisiana State University

Hello! I am the campus ambassador at LSU and have three classes that need the assistance of an OA. The classes are HNRS 1035 Natural Disturbances & Society(the course I teach), Prokaryotic Diversity, and Development of the Terrestrial Planets. Would anyone be interested in volunteering for these courses? Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thank you! B.J.Carmichael (talk) 20:46, January 17, 2014 (UTC)

Proposal for possible collaboration with other foundations

I have stated a discussion about the possibility of perhaps working with some other foundations for the purposes of paying for translations of works not yet at all or easily available in a given language to add translations to WMF entities, with perhaps a translation guide of the work to make it easier to make additional translations by WMF volunteers and/or education projects to other languages, at User talk:Jimmy Wales#Potential WMF collaborations?. Any input of the feasibility or possible benefits of such efforts is more than welcome. John Carter (talk) 16:12, March 17, 2015 (UTC)

Take an educator under your wing?

Hey, I was wondering if anyone would be willing to help out Henrylewismann. It looks like he's running a course but it doesn't have a course page yet. I ran into some issues (common ones, nothing huge major since it was an AfC draft) with one of the articles so they can definitely use some mentoring. I've left a tl;dnr message on his page that gave a pretty lengthy overview of stuff, but I think that it'd definitely be beneficial to have someone that's held their own course on Wikipedia go offer some help, as I've never actually set up a course on Wikipedia. I've helped out on one and I've helped some students out on occasion, but it's not the same thing as approaching this from an educator's standpoint. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 07:37, July 4, 2015 (UTC)

Applications not being seen to

Hi there :) in August of this year I placed this Online Ambassador application on the Education Noticeboard. Since then, my own and none of the other applications by users have been seen to - does anyone know what's going on? I've contacted a couple of current ambassadors. Thanks samtar ^{t} 16:35, October 31, 2015 (UTC)

@Samtar: Wiki Ed announced in December 2014 that they "will no longer accredit individual volunteers as Wikipedia Ambassadors". It would appear though that the on-wiki pages have not been updated to reflect this change, and a number of individual admins have actioned requests since then. Pinging LiAnna and Ryan in the hope that they can clarify this. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:06, October 31, 2015 (UTC)

Ahah! That would explain it :) thanks samtar ^{t} 18:11, October 31, 2015 (UTC)

@Samtar and Nikkimaria: Thanks for the ping. I'll answer in an unofficial capacity summarizing the situation, but I would defer to LiAnna (Wiki Ed) for anything regarding official policies/positions of Wiki Ed and/or its relationships with the Education Program or Ambassadors program.

First, I do want to clarify that the ambassador program does still exist. Since Wiki Ed, an independent non-profit, has grown to the point where we were able to hire paid staff to work with classes, we decided it didn't make sense for us to be involved with the process of vetting/managing volunteers. Staff can be expected to stay up to date with the current tools, communicate with instructors on a schedule, be available for meetings, and other activities it is not reasonable to require of volunteers like we can with staff.

That said, ambassadors are great. While an online ambassador is very similar to Wiki Ed's Content Experts, it seems to me that Campus Ambassadors in particular are in a position to provide a kind of service to classes we typically can't (since we can't visit every campus). We work with classes associated with ambassadors all the time, and I think the experience of those classes is better for it. We're just not involved in e.g. reviewing applications, assigning them to classes, managing ambassadors, and/or other aspects of running the ambassador program.

The potential scope of the ambassadors program is also broader than Wiki Ed's. Wiki Ed runs the Wikipedia:Education Program in the United States and Canada, but there are institutions from other countries active on the English Wikipedia that would benefit from guidance that we're just not able to provide at this point. The WMF's Education Program is international, but it's more active on other language Wikipedias.

I think what's needed is more community discussion and more interest in managing, developing, or otherwise maintaining the ambassador program and its processes.

Also notifying Bluerasberry of this discussion, who I think has some ideas for potential next steps in the discussion. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:01, November 1, 2015 (UTC)

@Samtar: Things became complicated recently and I think without some community conversation and some reforms there will continue to be blocks and confusion. I started a discussion at Wikipedia:Education_noticeboard/Archive_10#Future_of_this_noticeboard.2C_user_rights.2C_and_classroom_outreach and prior to that another at Wikipedia:Education_noticeboard/Archive_8#Future_of_education_extension_userrights. To get progress I think we need consensus of about five community members and ought to have a chat with someone from Wiki Ed and the WMF education program. Problems are solvable with only community agreement, and I think the only reason agreement does not exist is because software is not documented so few people can learn what is happening unless they have a voice conversation with someone with experience using these tools. If you are interested in giving comment, then I would offer to meet you by phone or Skype to have a chat about some of the options that I see then get your opinion too. Email me if you would talk, or otherwise ask on wiki if I can help in that way. Blue Rasberry (talk) 10:36, November 2, 2015 (UTC)

Education Program interface changes wishlist

Please see, comment and add to meta:2015_Community_Wishlist_Survey#Education_Program_interface_changes. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:50, November 12, 2015 (UTC)

Reinstatement of Online Ambassadors

Hi everyone, I'd like to propose an open discussion on Online Ambassadors - recently we've seen a couple of applications on the noticeboard gain endorsements and the editors go on to assist new students who find their way to Wikipedia through assignments. Most recently this had been Tokyogirl79, a well rounded editor, administrator and someone who has taken it upon themselves to be available and patiently help new student editors and educators.

I'd like to see, in partnership with WikiEd but not something they need to directly "micromanage", more involvement from the community in relation to not only helping these new editors get to grips with things here but then encouraging them to stick around and become long-term constructive contributors. I think the online ambassador program was the way to do it.

I'd love to hear your thoughts and questions on this -- samtar ^whisper 16:58, December 30, 2015 (UTC)

Pinging @Doc James, Bluerasberry, Ryan (Wiki Ed), and Nikkimaria: -- samtar ^whisper 17:00, December 30, 2015 (UTC)

I am happy with the idea. I am not clear why the prior ones were remove. I know their was a discussion about it somewhere. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:11, December 31, 2015 (UTC)

Great to hear Doc James, hope you're well and happy new years -- samtar ^whisper 22:38, December 31, 2015 (UTC)

Hi Samtar! Wiki Ed doesn’t support Ambassadors in an official capacity, but we highly encourage community members to continue the Ambassador program in any form you wish. Since Wiki Ed only supports higher education courses in the United States and Canada, there are certainly other courses not under Wiki Ed's support structure that might be interested in help from volunteer Ambassadors, and we encourage you to continue the program! Eryk (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:06, December 31, 2015 (UTC)

That's precisely what I wanted to hear Eryk (Wiki Ed)! Would it be possible to get the course coordinator perms assigned to help run the Online Ambassador program? I believe these allow the setting of the Online Ambassador bit? -- samtar ^whisper 22:38, December 31, 2015 (UTC)

The course coordinator right has to be granted by an admin. You may want to discuss how to connect with courses in need of ambassadors with AKoval (WMF). Eryk (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:00, December 31, 2015 (UTC)

Understood Eryk (Wiki Ed), I'll touch base with AKoval once we've progressed the below -- samtar ^whisper 10:33, January 1, 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, Eryk (Wiki Ed). And thanks for reaching out to the global education team, Samtar. There are a number of international education programs that still use "ambassadors" (See also: Outreach:Education/Ambassadors.) The list likely needs updating, but several are noted here: Outreach:Education/Ambassadors#Models currently in use. On projects where the Education Program Extension is enabled, the on-wiki user right "online volunteer" also fills this role. This data table totals the number of "online volunteers" per project with the extension. Happy to be a part of this conversation. Please ping me with specific questions as this conversation progresses. Anna Koval (WMF) (talk) 18:27, January 5, 2016 (UTC)

Noting here that I've added additional comments and clarifications [[here. Anna Koval (WMF) (talk) 22:46, January 8, 2016 (UTC)

• The process would need to be revamped. I'm willing to help out with this but I'd need some sort of guidance on how to proceed. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 04:24, January 1, 2016 (UTC)

Likewise, keen to assist, and, likewise, in need of guidance. - Ryk72 ^'c.s.n.s.' 04:51, January 1, 2016 (UTC)

And I am an admin who would be willing to help hand these out based on some sort of criteria / consensus process. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:29, January 1, 2016 (UTC)

@Doc James, Tokyogirl79, and Ryk72: Well as I see it (and feel free to wade in here!) the current criteria needs a little tweaking, but the "two endorsements" consensus on the noticeboard seems to work in appointing online ambassadors. I personally think the criteria shouldn't be restrictive - something similar to the articles for creation criteria, which from the top of my head is 500 non-automated mainspace edits? Seeing as it seems the future of the online ambassador program is going to be separate from WikiEd (though I'm sure we'll still be working closely ) would transferring some of this to a WikiProject help? -- samtar ^whisper 10:33, January 1, 2016 (UTC)

• It likely would - which one do you think would be the best for this? Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 10:35, January 1, 2016 (UTC)

• I believe this is significantly different enough to warrant a new WikiProject, Wikipedia:Wikiproject Online Education Ambassadors? -- samtar ^whisper 10:38, January 1, 2016 (UTC)
• Or perhaps even just Wikipedia:Online Education Ambassadors? Or a subpage here Wikipedia:Education Noticeboard/Online Ambassadors? -- samtar ^whisper 10:50, January 1, 2016 (UTC)

• Would it be best to have an overall page for ambassadors or just one for online ambassadors? Are the campus ambassadors still part of Wiki Ed? Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 11:47, January 1, 2016 (UTC)

• I believe the campus ambassadors are still being retained by WikiEd, though pinging Eryk (Wiki Ed) to confirm -- samtar ^whisper 11:49, January 1, 2016 (UTC)

We don't have anything to do with campus ambassadors. Thanks for asking! Eryk (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:18, January 4, 2016 (UTC)

My opinions and proposal

Others could comment as they like. @Tokyogirl79 and Samtar: would either or both of you be willing to meet me by voice or video chat?

Here are my perspectives:

• The Wikipedia volunteer community is capable of managing a classroom outreach support project, and there is interest in doing so
• Tokyogirl79 and Samtar - what you are proposing is feasible, reasonable, backed by precedent, and what I want to happen
• Here are some insights which are not obvious to many people
  • Wiki Ed is not available to support a community volunteer education outreach effort. They can be consulted but everything being discussed here is out of their scope
  • The Wikimedia Foundation has never had any significant staff involvement in off-wiki educational outreach programs on English Wikipedia. They provided some software and a little documentation but that's it.
  • There is a history of impact when volunteers manage education programs on English Wikipedia.
• There needs to be some housekeeping first
  • I proposed some ideas at Wikipedia:Education_noticeboard/Archive_10#Future_of_this_noticeboard.2C_user_rights.2C_and_classroom_outreach
  • The process for being an "ambassador" needs to be confirmed. In my opinion this could be done with just a few Wikipedians having a voice chat and reaching consensus. I do not anticipate any trouble because the process from 2011 is still the same
  • An authority needs to be named who confirms ambassadors. There is already a review process. Confirmation used to come either from the Wikimedia Foundation, then from Wiki Ed, but in both cases, the review was done by volunteers and not from those organizations. In my opinion, the authority could be something like "The English Wikipedia Education Program Noticeboard". Typical review since 2011 has always meant endorsement from 2-3 people, but it is extremely confusing to not have a named authority who approves the right.
  • This noticeboard is wrecked. It is flooded with useless course announcements and then gets misguided ambassador applications. There are reasons for both of those things. Course announcements would be more useful if archived elsewhere, and ambassador applications similarly just need to go somewhere else to be queued for review and to not be mixed with general discussion about the education program.
  • English Wikipedia has a confusing course application flow. This needs to be fixed with input from Wiki Ed and the WMF, but in short, all class applications on English Wikipedia right now are shunted to Wiki Ed's application process. This means that English language classes outside the US and Canada are not encouraged, and also it means that there is no volunteer input into class applications. Wiki Ed's policy is also to not support anything academic except classes, so academic conferences, student groups, university events, and other things that most people would intuitively expect to be part of an education program are not encouraged by them.
  • The design of the education program presumes that "education" is a special kind of outreach. In fact, Wikipedia volunteers who do off-wiki outreach always have interests in classrooms and beyond, including editathons, meetups of all kinds, and non-traditional education like adult study groups. Perhaps the concept of "ambassador" should mean any Wikipedian who supports any off-wiki meetup, and is available to set up tools to support those kinds of things.

There is room for everyone and a little consensus from leadership would go a long way to making an easy impact. This is a big deal, I care a lot, I want success, but I can only support someone else's ideas. If anyone here would like to develop a Wikimedia community process for participation in educational outreach then I would like to support it. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:30, January 1, 2016 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) It's great to see you still have the passion for the program Bluerasberry - it's something we're going to need for this to gain traction. Yes I'm happy to meet over video or voice, I'm UK (GMT) for scheduling purposes. All your points above are valid and I agree wholeheartedly with them, however to echo what I've said above - I don't think this talk page will be suited for further detailed discussion of ideas. I'm not trying to make this secluded, and I welcome input from anyone but having a dedicated 'Wikipedia talk:' for this should be one of our next steps. I support English Wikipedia Education Program/Noticeboard or something to that effect, and would propose detailed discussion of Blue Rasberry's points take place there -- samtar ^whisper 14:53, January 1, 2016 (UTC)

• That'd be a good idea. I'm good for about any time period, although I will say that I live in Virginia (Eastern Time Zone). I tend to work nights, so I'm up at various hours of the day. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 15:38, January 1, 2016 (UTC)

• I'm game for a voice chat. I'm pulling a double at work right now so I can't really do it at present, but I have this weekend off. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 14:47, January 1, 2016 (UTC)
• Let me know if everyone's open for a voice or Skype chat. I'll look into seeing what I can do about setting up a good place to build this. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 20:27, January 2, 2016 (UTC)
• I've started putting together the bare bones for a WP for this. I've started it at User:Tokyogirl79/Wikipedia:WikiProject Online Ambassadors, if anyone wants to pitch in. I figure that one of the first things we need to do is figure out the scope of the project and put that into words. Heh. I actually studied something along these lines last semester, so this will be good practice! Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 20:35, January 2, 2016 (UTC)

• If this does well, I'd like to see this encompass GLAM as well, since that area somewhat falls under the banner of WikiEd, even if slightly. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 20:37, January 2, 2016 (UTC)
• We could also cannibalize content from Wikipedia:Online Ambassadors as well. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 20:38, January 2, 2016 (UTC)

I commented on the WikiProject Talk page. I am also in EST, so and days work for me, so that could mean our afternoon is a match with Samtar's evening. I am out this weekend. Perhaps we could meet during the week? I am emailing you both and we should coordinate by email. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:42, January 2, 2016 (UTC)

• Sounds good. I've replied there, but I do think that you raise some great points on the talk page. I figure that it can be used as a slush page for ideas if all else fails. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 20:49, January 2, 2016 (UTC)

Newsletter

Whoever is in charge of the Education Newsletter, which clocked in at 31,000 bytes, should be reassigned. I couldn't unsubscribe fast enough. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:16, 1 March 2016 (UTC)