Wikipedia:Education noticeboard

Welcome to the education noticeboard
Purpose of this page Using this page This page is for discussion related to student assignments and the Wikipedia Education Program. Please feel free to post, whether you're from a class, a potential class, or if you're a Wikipedia editor. Topics for this board might include: Content issues created by real or potential student assignments Improving student assignment output quality per the RfC Questions about the trainings or any question from instructors or students Discussion of the Wiki Education Foundation or the Wikipedia Education Program. Students who have done great work and need {{The Excellent New Editor's Barnstar}} Of course, we should remain civil towards all participants and assume good faith. There are other pages more appropriate for dealing with certain specific issues: An issue requiring immediate administrator attention → Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents Vandalism by non-participating students from schools → administrator intervention against vandalism. Cut-and-paste moves/history merge → the cut-and-paste move repair holding pen. Students revealing sensitive personal information → requests for oversight. Please DO NOT make such requests here; reports here are visible to everyone. Course announcements from dashboard.wikiedu.org / outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org → /Wiki Ed course submissions Issues related to dashboard.wikedu.org / outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org → meta:Talk:Programs & Events Dashboard For a list of topics that students should avoid editing → Wikipedia:General sanctions#Active sanctions "Start a new discussion thread". Use an informative title: ==Informative title==. If a thread is related to an ongoing discussion, consider placing it under a level-3 heading within that existing discussion. You should generally notify any user who is the subject of a discussion. You may use {{ping}} to do so, or simply link their username when you post your comment. It is not required to contact students when their edits are only being discussed in the context of a class-wide problem. If no comments have been made within 30 days, your post and any responses will be automatically archived. Please sign all contributions, using four tilde characters "~~~~". If discussion is already ongoing elsewhere or if there is a more natural location for a discussion, please continue the discussion there, and put a short note with a link to the relevant location on this page. If you cannot edit this page because it is protected, please place your comments on this page and they will be addressed. Managing threads If you'd like to make sure a thread does not get archived automatically after 30 days, use {{Do not archive until}} at the top of the section. Use {{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveNow}} within a section to have it archived (more or less) immediately. A brief Archives page lists them with the years in which those now inactive discussions took place.
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Classroom not working within education program

I've been recommended to post about this here, so just have a look at this ANI thread to see what I'm referring to. The editors here will have a better handling of the situation and what to do in this case than I. --Jethro B 05:54, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

I see you posted on the professor's talk page; there's not much we can do unless the professor responds. I've watchlisted the talk page and will join the conversation if I see a response there. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:33, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Courses extension is up and running

The Education Program extension for structured course pages for classes is now live. (It's actually been deployed for a few weeks, but unrelated platform updates introduced a critical bug that it took us a little while to fix.) Per the RfC on using the extension, it's now available for use by US and Canada Education Program, as well as whatever other courses the community chooses to use it for. See Special:SpecialPages#Education for the various features and lists of courses.

Admins now have the ability to create (and delete) institutions and courses, and to assign the user rights for "course coordinators" (non-admins who will be able to create and remove courses, mark people as instructors or volunteers, and use the rest of the extension features), "online volunteers" or "campus volunteers" (people helping out with courses, such as Online and Campus Ambassadors), and "course instructors".

I'll be beta testing it with one of the current classes, Education Program:University of Guelph-Humber/Currents in Twentieth Century World History (2012 Q4), as well as building up the documentation for course pages. Now's also the time to figure out how we want to use this for independent classes; it should make it easier to keep tabs on classes and catch problems early, so trying it out by offering it to a few classes that we discover editing on their own might be a good first step.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 17:52, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

See the extension at mw:Extension:Education Program Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:06, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

What to do?

It appears that when I found Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, a topic on my course page (User:Biosthmors/Intro Neuro), I seem to notice a funny pattern. Biosthmors (talk) 21:10, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

What is the problem here? The student wants to write about something that was previously AfD'd for lack of sourcing? The student can certainly write the article but ought to consider the previous arguments for deletion. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:34, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

I see a lot of keep votes coming from editors with few to no other edits. Biosthmors (talk) 21:43, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response was a year ago. I think that if the article were proposed again it would get fresh review. Does that fully respond to your concern? What is your concern and what kind of assistance might you like? Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:55, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Good point. I didn't notice that. Silly me. Well that complicates things in a good way then. I'm not sure. Biosthmors (talk) 22:02, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Let me know if I can help with anything relating to your course. Blue Rasberry (talk) 00:08, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! I consider this issue closed for now, as I've been in contact with the student. Biosthmors (talk) 00:20, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Are outlines bad?

I'm under the impression that telling students to generate an outline before editing a Wikipedia article might be a bad thing (if it is used as the basis to create sections and subsections). I think it serves as an incentive to create articles with excessive amounts of subsections that create a troubling experience for readers. See here for example. Biosthmors (talk) 16:44, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

I agree; this isn't the first example I've seen, nor is it the worst. Outlines are fine in user space to guide the students' research, but they should not go into an article without substantial content being added at the same time. Experienced editors go back and forth between adding content and structuring sections. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:47, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, that's not great, but it's the sort of thing that could quickly be polished out at any kind of content review process. The talk page might not be a bad place for "bare" outlines. Choess (talk) 14:52, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Pedagogically, outlines are a useful approach for teaching students to organize their thoughts and research. In the context of involving Wikipedia in an educational class, we must take care not to impose Wikipedia norms on the pedagogy preferred by the educator to teach their students. Our job as ambassadors is to understand what the educator’s learning objectives are, how they intend to achieve them and then craft Wikipedia schemes that either support or enable them. In my experience, this usually requires some transitional activity from the educator’s teaching process to the inclusion of content in Wikipedia. I think saying Outlines are bad or discouraging them in anyway when they are something an educators uses to teach with would be counterproductive to the goals of the Education Program.--Mike Cline (talk) 15:58, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

They are certainly useful, and I wouldn't want to discourage them as a teaching aid. They shouldn't be added to articles before any content exists for them, though; that just makes a mess of the article for someone else to clean up. The students should be expected to leave the article without needing cleanup. I agree that the talk page is a good place to work on outlines. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:18, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

I would prefer if you use the term "draft" rather than "outline". I get what you're saying. But "outline" in Wikipedia has a different meaning (and usually negative impression for that matter since a few disruptive editors persistently create articles with the word "outline" and fork contents that all other editors frowned upon) OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 20:21, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

A more neutral description of the outlines project and its contributors, would have been nice.
Eg. Outline of cell biology was mostly created by User:Earthdirt (has a Masters degrees in Education and is a grad student in Biology and works as a highschool teacher) that it is of high-quality.
Eg. Outline of forestry was mostly made by User:Minnecologies (BS in Forestry), and was recently further improved by User:DASonnenfeld (Professor of Sociology and Environmental Policy at SUNY-ESF).
These are not "disruptive editors".
Not all outlines are in perfect shape, but then most of Wikipedia's articles are not in perfect shape. Work Is Required. And a non-dismissive attitude is helpful. —Quiddity (talk) 22:42, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

GA reviewers needed for biology articles

It looks like a whole bunch of articles from the Behavioral Ecology class were just nominated for GA (see all the recent nominations in Biology and medicine). From what I've seen, the articles from this class are quite strong and the students are very active, so it'd be worthwhile to give them timely reviews. Anyone up for reviewing a few biology articles?--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 03:00, 28 November 2012 (UTC)