Wikipedia talk:United States Education Program

Pune Pilot Analysis Plan

(Cross-posting to several pages; posted here as IEP has been discussed on this talk page as well, but please focus any further discussion on the talk page linked below) I've just created the page Wikipedia:India_Education_Program/Analysis to document our planned analysis of the Pune pilot. We've been collecting ideas in many different places, but we wanted to have one central page where we'll be analyzing the learnings from the Pune pilot over the next few months. We will using the results of this analysis to plan our next pilot in India, which will be kicking off in mid-2012. We will not be running the India Education Program in the first term of 2012. We are committed to using the next few months to get all the learnings we can out of the analysis, so we can launch a new pilot in six months or so that addresses all of the concerns raised from the Pune pilot.

We do have one major outstanding question in terms of how to analyze the pilot, which is how do we measure the impact of the pilot on the community? I really encourage anyone who has good ideas of how to do data collection around this to contribute to the discussion on talk page. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 22:49, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

It's an estimation case. I think just listing the major work centers or major tasks (maybe with a bucket for general community), then estimating how many man hours were burned. Figure out what percentage of some areas ended up dedicated to IEP. I think it is the sort of thing to get an estimate on, top down. Not gather data and compile. We want to know 100 hours, 1000 hours, 10,000 hours lost. Not 800 versus 900. Probably getting it within 50% accuracy is good enough. Maybe you could also try for a per student estimate (like the average IEP student wasted 10 hours of rework time, so total drain was 8,000 hourse lost. I'm making up numbers, but that is a thought process).

I suppose we could try to estimate the impact on readers as well (how many articles were degraded for how many hours). Thinking of high view FAs like Welding (I think). Suspect the lost time was more the painpoint, but would just want to capture the thought that there was a reader impact as well (since that is our end product).TCO (talk) 06:11, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Let's not forget the overtime hours burned by the regular clean-up community either. The answers do not lie in added bureaucracy: proposed solutions and metrics are all available already in the many and various comments by community members on the increasing maze of talk pages connected with the IEP and USEP projects. The impact on the community is blatantly obvious - why keep creating yet more pages to add to the confusion, and carry out further costly analysis when the answers are already staring us in the face complete with charts and graphs already provided, and have been discussed in depth on the mailing lists and other obscure lines of discussion?

The main answer lies in rectifying the continuing lack of communication, transparency, and admission of errors. The main concern raised from the Pune pilot from the community angle is not being addressed, and LDavis and/or AnnieLin have made it clear elsewhere that they do not consider it part of their remit to take the community resources - the major impact - into consideration when planning their education projects; ignoring the known problems and trying to find solutions to new new ones that apparently still need to be identified is a redundant exercise. Ultimately, this will simply foster more ire and drive yet more volunteers and OAs away from wanting to be helpful, rather than solicit their aid which in any case can only be to repeat what they have already said time and time again.

Solutions and suggestions have been tossed around by some extremely competent and knowledgeable members of the volunteer force only to land repeatedly in some kind of no man's land between the WMF and the community. It is imperative to understand that all education programmes will generate more articles - which is of course the goal of the initiatives, and which is recognised and supported in principle by everyone - that will still need to be policed by experienced regular editors, and that these programmes cannot be implemented before the online volunteer community is forewarned, and forearmed with the required tools and personnel. Perhaps Tory's independent analysis will come up with some answers (and I'm confident it will), and it may be best to wait for her report. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:54, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Please post any further discussion at Wikipedia_talk:India_Education_Program/Analysis so the discussion all happens on one page. Thanks. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 16:26, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

New MediaWiki extension

I spy with my little eye something beginning with E... It's a MediaWiki extension for the tracking of students developed under contract for the Foundation. It comes complete with a whole pile of new user groups and special pages. More information is available at mw:File:Engineering support for the Wikipedia Education Program.pdf and mw:Wikipedia Education Program. The extension aims to obsolete some Toolserver hacks and move the management of student tables from public wiki pages to possibly private special pages.

The design specifications in the PDF and MediaWiki pages contradict some of the feedback from the community:

• "Professors neither have the time nor the incentive to learn the nitty gritty details of how MediaWiki works. Their focus is on using Wikipedia as a teaching tool, not teaching or learning Wikipedia."
• "With the number of students enrolled in the program growing at a fast rate we need an automated process in place."
• There is heavy emphasis on how this extension makes things easier for the Foundation and the organizers and consequently very little on the benefits for the community.
• "We don’t want to share the data about the students with the public"
• "All data accessible via the API (to those who have sufficient privileges)" (emphasis added)
• Yet again, I am notifying the community about this when it should be the Foundation who is doing so.

I see this as really bad news. MER-C 04:15, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

The documents are a little ambiguous and don't make it entirely clear whether the aim is to hide all student lists and means of tracking the students from public view, but if that is the aim then yes this would be an extremely bad idea. Hut 8.5 11:26, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Blog post from developer and another design document. Sigh. MER-C 01:40, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

It could turn out to be a very nice tool --Guerillero | My Talk 02:26, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

I hope so, e.g. obtaining a list of all students through a painless API query. I just don't have enough confidence in the WMF to believe that. MER-C 08:15, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Roadmap - deployment = mid/late February. MER-C 08:15, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Anyone have a stable copy of it? I'm trying to install it on my local wiki, and I'm getting loads of syntax errors (because its still under development). But, their testing wiki seems to have a working copy. Anyone know how to get hold of that (If you know how to download all files in this directory tree, that would work, too) ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 11:54, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Recursive wget can download directory trees (I'm guessing you've already tried checking out the SVN repository). MER-C 02:45, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Yep, you guessed right, I already tried the mw SVN, as well as ExtensionDistributor (I think they should give the same files anyways). I don't have unix, but I did find a windows version, and it works! I'll mess around with the extension a bit and see what it does... Thanks! ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 07:21, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Ah, well. I didn't realize that all the .php pages look like this when viewed through the directory tree, so I got a bunch of useless stuff. Looks like I'll have to wait till they fix the bugs ( I tried fixing them myself, but for every bug I fix, a new one crops up; and I have no idea what I'm doing anyways since I'm unfamiliar with the code) ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 07:31, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

December Wikipedia Education Program Metrics and Activities Meeting

If you're interested in learning more about the Wikipedia Education Program in action around the globe, join us for the next Metrics and Activities Meeting on Tuesday, December 20 at 16:00 UTC. Please visit outreachwiki:Wikipedia Education Program Metrics and Activities Meeting for instructions on joining and time zone conversions. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 22:27, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

New Participation Requirements

Just a note to alert those interested that we've created new Wikipedia Education Program Participation Requirements for all courses in all countries participating in the Wikipedia Education Program this term, based on feedback we've seen from pilot programs in multiple countries. These new requirements take effect immediately, so courses participating in spring 2012 have been crafted around these requirements. More information is available on the Outreach wiki, linked above. Please direct any comments about the requirements to that talk page.

Please note that these are global requirements for participation in the Wikipedia Education Program in spring 2012. Individual country programs such as this one may develop additional requirements as-needed (for example, the Cairo Pilot will have an even lower Ambassador:student ratio).

On behalf of the entire Wikipedia Education Program team, -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 19:28, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Education Program/Teahouse Partnership

Quick update: the US/Canada Education Programs are planning to partner with a new pilot program from the Wikimedia Foundation this semester. You can read about the Teahouse project's goals and see how they align with those of the Wikipedia Education Program. Perhaps most noticeably, both programs serve to help new editors contribute quality content to Wikipedia while fostering an environment that will encourage them to stick around in the future.

The Education Program will be partnering with their project by using the Teahouse hosts in place of Online Ambassadors for five courses in the US/Canada. As many of you know, the ambassador requirement has increased this semester, and many classes will not meet these requirements to join the program officially. However, we would like to choose five of these courses to receive the support of the Teahouse hosts, which will still give students online support but in a different setting than we have traditionally utilized.

We are partnering with five courses because this will give the Teahouse program a solid support of new editors to work with over the next few months but will not drastically impact the Education Program. We are still working with those professors who do not have the traditional Online Ambassador yet, as we want to make sure these professors are interested in receiving this alternative support for their students.

The Teahouse fellows will be in the San Francisco office next week, so we will select the five courses at that point. We will be focusing on courses that are only lacking a Wikipedian in the pod (aka: they must still have a Campus Ambassador) and will select the five courses based on interest/enthusiasm from the professor. We will also be taking into consideration the number of female students, as one of the Teahouse's main goals is to reach more female editors.

Please comment with any suggestions for selecting the courses (from this list of classes that still need Online Ambassador support) or any feedback about working with the Teahouse in general. I will post the courses as soon as they agree to join the Teahouse pilot. Looking forward to your input. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 23:46, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

A class at New Jersey Institute of Technology is on board to work with the Teahouse as well as USEP. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 19:46, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Program Structure Working Group

Please take note of an in-person meeting that, pending approval, will be taking place in the San Francisco WMF office on the weekend of March 22-25, 2012. This event will serve to bring together active community members who taken leadership opportunities in the Education Program with WMF staff to rebuild a volunteer structure that defines roles and delegates responsibilities related to the Education Programs in the US and Canada. The goal of the weekend is to create a community-driven foundation of the US/Canada Education Programs that will address specific concerns, such as expansion techniques, ambassador recruitment, community relationships, etc.

I will select the final list of 10 participants. The group of attendees will be selected based on a number of criteria, including:

• demonstrated leadership within the Education Program in the past

• Steering Committee members
• Regional Ambassadors
• Other Campus/Online Ambassadors who have gone above and beyond the expectations of the Ambassador Program

• cost of travel and lodging, based on an approved budget
• preliminary ideas for how a volunteer structure could work

If you are interested in contributing to a productive meeting that will greatly impact the US and Canada Education Programs, please fill out the following form explaining why you think you could help in this endeavor. Please do not fill out the form if you are not available to travel to San Francisco March 22-25 (and potentially traveling a day before or after that). If this event is approved, travel and hotel costs, as well as some meals, will be covered or reimbursed by the Wikimedia Foundation. If you have any pertinent questions unanswered here, please either post below, on my talk page or email me at jmathewsonwikimedia.org.

In order to make travel arrangements that are cost-effective, please fill out the interest form by 9AM Pacific on Monday, February 27, 2012. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 20:01, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Ambassadors/volunteers, I want to update those of you who were interested in the outcome of this event but have not indicated interest (in which case, you should receive an email from me). We have discussed and finally decided that these meetings are going to so drastically impact the US and Canadian Education Programs that we would like to make sure it's as well-planned-out as possible. We will postpone such an event to an undecided time in the near future. Thank you so much to all of you who have taken time to show interest and think about how to restructure the program. I have heard you and appreciate all you continue to do for the program. I hope each of you will still be interested in participating in the future conversation and will keep everyone updated on any further discussion. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 01:42, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Beta testers needed for new MediaWiki extension

Some of you may have heard about a new Wikipedia Education Program MediaWiki extension that's been in development for a few months. This new tool will completely replace the existing course page and Ambassador listing system beginning in Fall 2012.

Some key features of the new extension:

• Ambassadors will create a profile in the system and associate themselves with classes, meaning there's no updating information on what class you're helping with three different pages each term.
• Professors will create standardized course pages through this system once they've been given the "instructor" user right, meaning we will ensure that all professors have gone through an orientation on best practices for using Wikipedia in the classroom before creating a course page.
• Students will use an enrollment token to add themselves to the course page, meaning we will have an up-do-date, database-driven list of student usernames (anyone involved in the Pune Pilot will know how important this is).

We'll be talking a lot more about this extension in the coming weeks and months as it's rolled out and we begin using it. Currently, we are ready to have the first beta testers use the tool, and we are looking for 3-5 Ambassadors and professors who are willing to spend a few hours over the next week doing a thorough test of the new extension. We specifically want people who are experienced in creating course pages and adding themselves to the Ambassador lists. We have two goals for this version of the beta test:

1. Determine if the new extension is lacking a major functionality that Ambassadors and professors rely upon in the current system.
2. Find bugs in the new extension.

In later rounds, we'll be looking at user experience and more bug testing, but this preliminary round is focused exclusively on back-end issues while we still have developer time to fix them.

If you are interested in helping out with beta-testing, we will have a kickoff meeting on Google Hangout on Monday, February 27, with Jeroen De Dauw (the developer) and Frank Schulenburg (who has served as the project manager for this extension) where they'll explain a bit more about the tool and what they need for this round of beta testing. Please sign up on this Doodle if you're interested in helping out, or if you're interested in a larger beta testing later, please indicate that on the Ambassadors talk page. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 20:21, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Followed users

Hi all,

Following a village pump proposal discussion I implemented a new tool Followed users which lets you view the most recent edit by a selected list of users that you follow. One important application of this is to allow ambassadors and professors to follow their students and review their work in a timely manner. I'd like to get more people to try it out and let me know at my talk page if you find it useful or have suggestions/problems. Thanks! Dcoetzee 02:58, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Are you aware that the online ambassadors may be incompetent? Please see Talk:Douglas W. Owsley/GA1, the evaluation of an article submitted by an editor who says on her user page: "I am an Online Ambassador, member of the Ambassador Selection Team, and member of the Ambassador Steering Committee. I have worked with university professors and students through the Public Policy Initiative over the past year and attended the Wikipedia in Higher Education Summit in July 2011, to assist with expanding the project to the global community. I am now part of the Wikipedia Education Program, with an emphasis on the United States and Canada." This is an editor who doesn't understand that there is a problem with close paraphrasing and plagiarism. What possible "help" could she be giving professors and students? MathewTownsend (talk) 03:15, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Although I understand your frustration, the problem of selecting qualified OAs is quite entirely unrelated to this topic. Dcoetzee 03:21, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

well, what is it related to? Everyplace I've asked has turned out to be a blind alley, including the WMF people who say they don't know much about it. Who does? MathewTownsend (talk) 03:23, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

You're going to want to contact the Online Ambassador selection team. They can also be reached by e-mail at online-ambassadors-en (at) lists.wikimedia.org. Another possible fairly active venue is Wikipedia talk:Online Ambassadors. Dcoetzee 04:03, 27 February 2012 (UTC)