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.
Click here to start a new discussion

Plagiarism research project

I've still got more work to do to get all the data published, document the research process, and communicate about it more broadly (since it is relevant beyond the education program), but I wanted to post about the results of the plagiarism research project my team has been working on. See Wikipedia:Wikipedia Education Program/Research/Plagiarism.

The short version is that I think it's safe to say that education program assignments from the United States Education Program and Canada Education Program are not making the English Wikipedia's plagiarism problem worse than it already is. We found plagiarism or close paraphrasing in almost 5% of the new articles created by student editors, compared with about 13% of articles created by statistically similar newcomers who were not participating in education program classes, and 10% or more for articles created by new users who got started 2006, 2009, or 2012. We also have data for student editors who expanded existing articles (over 8%), and articles written or expanded by admins (over 3%) and high-edit-count non-admins (over 3%). Many caveats apply, so check out the details. Discussion and questions are welcome, preferably on the research page.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 18:44, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Ping to User:Colin, User:Jmh649, User:SandyGeorgia, and User:SlimVirgin, b/c I think you have all been interested in this issue at least at one point. Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 18:51, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

thanks for the ping, wish I had more time to follow, am surprised that overall plagiarism was found to be that low, both among students and among others ... I can convince myself that students plagiarize no worse than others, but have a hard time believing those low numbers, based on my experience. I'm wondering if plagiarism might be worse in medical topics? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:53, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: Check out the details of how the numbers were generated, and the caveats section. There are very few false positives (as we manually checked every hit and threw out the cases of reverse plagiarism or ones where direction of copying couldn't be definitively established), but several modes of plagiarism that would not have been picked up. We tried to construct the datasets to provide a good basis for comparison, but the absolute rates almost certainly undercount the prevalence of plagiarism. By how much, it's hard to say without guessing wildly.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 18:59, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Sage ... no time ... but it sounds like even if there are issues in the absolute rate, the conclusion that students plagiarize no more than other editors does not surprise me, and is likely sound. The issue is, their profs aren't checking, and the students are not typically long-term contributors, they don't stick around, they don't learn, so we gain little by having to check and revert their work, where hopefully other editors do learn from their mistakes and stick around to make useful contribs without overtaxing other editors. In other words, I don't think the question is whether students plagiarize more or less, rather a question of the overall benefit vs the time we spend doing profs' work. Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:07, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

The whole idea of loads of incoming student edits makes me nervous unless they've received some stellar guidance and they have a good grading rubric. We had an admin recently on this board who had a bad outcome and vowed to never run an assignment again, on behalf of the community's interest. An admin. That just shows you how easily assignments can turn into failures for Wikipedia. This stuff has to be managed properly. And quality expectations should be high, especially because maybe 98 or 99% leave after it's over. And from what I've seen, the topics that are selected are obscure (another reason it's hard to expect anyone will look over their work). Anyhow, that's why I've been emphasizing raised expectations in terms of quality output, in line with the RfC's result. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 19:26, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks SandyGeorgia. I agree that this research doesn't directly address the issue of the overall costs and benefits of education program. It is intended to give us a better basis for understanding the particular problem of plagiarism (and even then, of course, it only gives a partial view).--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:01, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Biosthmors, thanks for the ping. Sage, can you say more about how the plagiarism was found? The report says: "These datasets were sent to TaskUs to be checked for plagiarism via the Yahoo!-powered Grammarly tool," but doesn't give details.

The reason I ask is that the student essays in which I found plagiarism usually indicated that an effort had been made to avoid it being detected (or that the student genuinely believed that changing a few words was enough). New editors who plagiarize don't do that as a rule; they will often just copy-paste, so it's much easier to spot. The students usually change a few words or phrases in a sentence, so finding it is more time-consuming. Also, new editors tend to use online sources that aren't behind paywalls; the students were plagiarizing from academic papers that were sometimes behind paywalls, or books that weren't always online. My understanding of Grammarly is that it doesn't check that kind of source.

I'd therefore be interested to know how the team ironed out these differences so that they didn't affect the end result. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 19:32, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

@SlimVirgin: I'm not sure what all is in Grammarly's plagiarism checking database. As I understand it, it is powered by Yahoo!, but I believe it includes more than a simple web search. Many sources behind paywalls, as well as webpages that are not indexed for conventional web search because of robot.txt settings, were returned as hits. I've not been able to find details about which paywalled databases are included or excluded for Grammarly, but I will see if I can learn more.

Many of the hits returned as potential plagiarism were of short phrases, which in many cases turned out to be close paraphrasing of the type you describe, where bits and pieces are changed but the basic form of the source text remains. As noted in the caveats section, if there are no significant phrase matches at all because of thorough changing of individual words, then that sort of plagiarism would slip through. My qualitative impression after looking through many hundreds of matches for both student editors and non-student editors is that this sort of plagiarism is not significantly more common in the student datasets, but we have not specifically tried to investigate that.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:01, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, Sage. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 16:47, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm sceptical about the low figures for all groups. And I second SlimVirgin's point about student sources being particularly hard to check. In my experience this problem was near universal rather than rare, and greatly under detected due to source choice. The analysis doesn't seem to compare article and source differences between the groups. I suspect if that was done, then the analysis comparing the groups might be questioned. Further, there is the cost of the plagiarism to the community. How many willing eyes does a pop culture topic get for it to be either fixed up or problem eliminated through churn, vs academic subject so obscure we didn't even have an article on it. We have a huge systemic bias problem in the demographics of our editor base. The editors we have more than enough of are unaffected by student edits because they don't touch those subjects. The editors we have barely any of are completely swamped at times by student edits to the point where they leave. The students aren't replacing those editors. So the demographics will get worse. Ultimately, this obsession with proving that students are no worse than newbies is imo deeply unhelpful and completely misguided. Colin°^Talk 21:29, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

I, too, would like to know more about possible false negatives. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:19, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

@Colin and Tryptofish: With the match cohort, we attempted to control for the type of sources indirectly, by matching based on the categories of articles. That is, we took the set of articles contributed by student editors, and tried to find non-student editors with similar time since registration and edit count, who contributed articles in related categories. (You can see the technical details of how the match dataset was constructed in Evan Rosen's github scripts; I only have a qualitative understanding of what we were trying to accomplish with the matching.) This approach will not have eliminated the potential for systematic differences in source choice, but it's an issue we had in mind during the design of the match cohort.

For me at least, the central aim of this project was not to prove that student editors are no worse than newbies. (I am now convinced that, with respect to plagiarism, this is true. But I was not at all sure at the outset of the project.) Plagiarism is a significant problem, for the education program in particular and Wikipedia in general, and it is one that we have very little systematic data about. These is not the be-all, end-all of the issue, nor is it intended to shut down discussion of plagiarism problems related to the education program. It's an attempt to understand the problem better.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:01, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Peeking in briefly, Sage, per Colin, SV, Trypto and myself, I suggest it is premature to be "convinced that, with respect to plagiarism, this is true" ... I don't believe you have the study controls to be so sure of that, per the caveats, shortcomings and explanations given. Like Colin, in my experience, the student copyvio rate is near 100%, and it is extremely time-consuming to investigate and remove, and it is almost always on obscure topics that aren't worth the effort. The same can be said for other new editors I encounter, but they learn and stick around, so the effort is worth it to convert a new plagiarizer to a good, long-standing editor. In my experience, that has never ever been the case with a student, and they are a net drain on my time ... and my motivation. This has been one of the factors that discouraged me from contributing as much here as I used to (the others being the ongoing disgusting issues at DYK, the debacles at FAC leading to an extreme decline in quality there, and the socking endorsed by the arbs, which contributed to the decline of FA). I think a useful analysis would be a by-hand (without the problems of articles behind paywall, etc) examination focused on medical topics (perhaps students working in other areas are better grounded in plagiarism through their other coursework ... in medical topics, the students I encounter seem to have zero understanding of plagiarism ... perhaps this is covered better in the liberal arts). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:31, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you mean that figuratively, but I find the idea that the 'copyvio rate is near 100%' for student editors to be completely implausible. Having pored over the data and seen the kinds of plagiarism that was detected in these datasets for both students and non-students—and having seen and checked a wide variety contributions from student editors in many subject areas—I'm personally convinced that plagiarism rates are not higher for education program participants than for other newcomers. Your mileage may vary. What this research shows is that plagiarism rates for new articles as detected by this methodology are less than half the rates for either the match cohort or random newcomers from the beginnings of the years 2006, 2009 and 2012. The detected plagiarism rate for articles expanded by student editors is higher than for new articles by student editors, but lower than the rates for new articles by other newcomers; we didn't make a corresponding set of articles expanded by other newcomers, but I expect that any set of expanded articles will have a higher rate of plagiarism than that for surviving new articles by similar editors (because the most obvious cases for new articles will have been deleted, or never moved into main space). I've not seen evidence that source choice and the Grammarly database are disproportionately undercounting plagiarism by student editors—although I don't rule it out. Based on the data, I would guess that the full plagiarism rate among student editors is about half that other newcomers. But I intentionally don't go that far when I say I'm convinced that student editors are no worse than other newbies when it comes to plagiarism.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 15:59, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

In the Toronto fiasco the plagiarism rate approached 100%, and in the India fiasco it was also very high, but in most of the class projects that I've watched the rate has clearly been much lower. Looie496 (talk) 16:24, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Looie, that's a really important point. Thanks for thinking of it. It goes to the very real fact that students behave in the context of the course structure in which they find themselves. If they believe that the instructor is paying attention, they will believe: (1) that they won't get away with it, and (2) that the rest of the class wouldn't get away with it either, and therefore are not doing it. On the other hand, if they can see that the instructor just does not care, they will believe: (1) that everyone else is doing it, so they need to do it so as not to be at a disadvantage, and (2) they will get away with it. That's a fundamental difference between student editors and other editors. Other editors never have to worry about being graded in comparison with their fellow editors. In a way, an analysis that treats all student projects as a single group will miss this information. It's very important to understand and act on the differences between class projects that work, and those that become fiascos. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:32, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I thank Sage for the thoughtful reply, and I want to point out that I, personally, don't specifically care about whether student editors plagiarize more or less than others. What I care about is the fact that we have a lot of student editors, and we need to do everything practical to make them a net positive for Wikipedia, and consequently, to whatever extent they do plagiarize, we need to understand it accurately, and I want to make sure that we don't unintentionally underestimate the problems that we need to work together to fix.

Based on my own experiences teaching at the college level for a very long time, I know that students can show a great deal of resourcefulness in plagiarism and cheating generally when they think that everyone else is doing it and when they think they can get away with it. Because of the way that students become student editors, they have motivations to cut corners that other editors, who come here entirely by choice, simply do not. At Wikipedia, I keep seeing instructors who are obviously not doing the hard work that it takes to discourage their students from plagiarizing. And Sandy et al. are quite correct about the ways that students might use sources that we would miss in the usual ways of detecting text matches.

Here's an example. Please take a look at the bottom half of Talk:Flynn-Aird syndrome, where I helped out with a class project a few years ago. The page covers a rather specialized subject. I, and other editors who know the source material, are pretty sure that most if not all of the primary source material is the original work by Flynn and Aird themselves. The student edits added a significant amount of very specific material that, very simply, cannot be found in any of the sources that they cited. They must have gotten it somewhere, after all. It reads like the kind of material one would find in medical school textbooks or similar tertiary sources, although these are not cited. At the time, I looked every way I could think of for matching source material, and came up empty. It would, for sure, come up "clean" in any text-matching software that I know of. And yet, there is the content, and the students could not have gotten it from the sources that they cited, and they must have gotten it somewhere, where they deliberately chose not to cite the source. I'm guessing an old textbook, and they probably copied it directly, and therefore chose not to cite it. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:16, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

This is interesting example, and if it's the kind of plagiarism you suspect, it would indeed be hard to detect. Across all work by student editors, though, I think this is an edge case. My impression is that most editors (including students) cite the sources they are using if they cite any at all, and that plagiarism or close paraphrasing of the sources cited are far more common than malicious attempts to cover up plagiarism by citing one source and copying another. A useful follow up study might be to go source-by-source to manually compare added material with what the source says—both to check for plagiarism, and see if the source verifies the text. That's much easier to imagine than to do, however.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 15:59, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I guess it's one kind, but not the only kind of plagiarism I would expect. For me, the tl;dr boils down to the fact that we have to realize that students have different incentives than other editors, and that it's very possible for them to confound the most obvious ways of detecting plagiarism. Again, I'm not really interested in proving or disproving how student editors compare with other editors, but in finding ways to make student editing as much of a positive as possible. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:10, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it's an "edge case" at all, Sage, because it's what I also see, and often. Several students edit a neurobiomedical topic extensively, in one or two days (and never return), and everything they add is either copyvio (not easily detected, a few words changed), or simply not in the sources cited at all, in any way shape or form, although the text appears well written, even professional. In other words, they likely got the text from somewhere else, and don't want to point to those sources lest the copyvio be detected. I agree with Trypto that we shouldn't unintentionally underestimate this problem lest that impede our ability to "fix it"; it has dominated most of my editing experience of late (or more specifically, whatever editing I do towards the end of a university semester or trimester ... ). Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:31, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I wonder if there's something specific about medical topics, perhaps even psychology and medicine, that increases the frequency of copyvio and plagiarism. Sandy's experience has been reported by others in those topic areas, but it seems to be much less frequent (though it still occurs) in other areas. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:31, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Speaking as a math undergrad, I suspect that some areas of university study do not cover copyvio/plagiarism to the same extent others do ... a division between the sciences and arts, sorta. I didn't really understand copyvio until the Dispatch was written: Let's get serious about plagiarism. Before that, I definitely thought it was OK to copy-paste public domain text to Wikipedia, and there were dozens of instances of Featured article reviews of geology articles that contained direct cut-and-paste of almost entire articles from public domain that passed FAR and retained FA status ... there was a time on Wikipedia when public domain cut-and-paste was routine and accepted, so it is not surprising to me that students of the sciences are not well grounded on copyvio. I do strongly believe we do a disservice to our medical editors if you don't acknowledge that there is a real problem out there, that is affecting our editing ... not just plagiarism, but of students editing topics they are not qualified or prepared to edit, with professors who are not adequately supervising them. But then, I'm also of the opinion that no information on medical topics is better than spreading BAD information, and that like BLPs, we should be able to shoot uncited or poorly cited text on sight. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:17, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps. Search the noticeboard archives for "Myoclonic epilepsy". This wasn't a class of thousands unsupervised (though the class were editing topics beyond the expert knowledge of the prof, which isn't at all uncommon). A huge chunk of essentially copy/paste text and the students just thought a citation was sufficient to avoid it being plagiarism. I'm interested to know if Grammarly can see paywalled text or has access to student undergraduate textbooks -- because those are the sources these students are using, neither of which are widely available/used by the general editor base -- hence I very much doubt you can collect enough samples of the "newbie" cohort to compare with the students. The sort of article work I'm seeing students do just isn't being done by newbies at all -- and where it is being done by wikipedians it is by those who actually know the subject. I continue to believe that students doing an "Introduction to ...." topic should not be part of the education program. They don't understand the topic well enough to put it into their own words without completely screwing up, or not bothering -- neither of which is satisfactory. I also believe profs should be strongly advised to ensure students edit within the prof's own subject speciality. Far too many psychology classes editing neurology for example. Colin°^Talk 12:03, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

I'll bring up the suggestion I've made before: it might be useful create some specific guidance for student editors working in trickier topic areas (medicine and psychology being the obvious places to start). This could be integrated into the existing training so that at some point, the training makes you select whether you're working on one of these areas or some other, and if it's one of those where a topic-specific training module exists, the training forks off to present that module before returning to the common endpoint. I'm happy to work on integrating it into the training infrastructure if others write the content. We've also seen that the videos in the training are well-received, so making a video about plagiarism to replace the current text content might make it more effective; videos are a chance to go into a little more depth without having people tune out like they do with long blocks of text. (I can't make any commitments, but I might take that on if I can fit it into my schedule at some point.)--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 16:30, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

WP:ASSIGN already has a section of advice specific to med/psych/health-related topic editing. That said, I feel quite strongly that our policies on copyvio etc. apply to all topic areas equally, so it's not like it's more OK to copy in some topic areas than in others. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:39, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

My hypothesis is that students are more likely to plagarise from a limited availability documents (theses submitted to their institution, their course notes, articles in locked-down journals, etc). This also seems to be supported by the data. Maybe I'm just a cynic. Stuartyeates (talk) 09:24, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

I think that you are very likely correct about that. As I've thought about the issue some more, however, I find that I increasingly think that it has less to do with either the kinds of sources or the field of study, and more to do with the students' perception of instructor attention to plagiarism. If students think that the instructor (not editors here, because we don't give the grades) is paying close attention and likely to detect any plagiarism, they will generally not attempt it. But if they think that it's easy to get away with, and that everyone else is doing it and getting away with it (thus putting honest students at a competitive disadvantage), they are likely to attempt it. That, I think, is the real reason why there seem to be some class projects where it's rampant (often large, poorly supervised classes), and other classes where it's rarely a problem. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:06, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks for the report and the conversation. Now I am wondering what kind of plagiarism numbers ought to be expected for different demographics and what various plagiarism strategies different populations have. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:16, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

New plagiarism video in the trainings

On the topic of making the trainings for student editors more effective at heading off plagiarism, I made a new video for the training and replaced the (a little bit cheesy) dialogue that was there before. Have a look: Wikipedia:Training/For_students/Copyright_and_plagiarism. Based on the feedback from users who complete the training, the videos appear to be a high-impact part of the trainings, so this should at least command a little more attention than the previous treatment of plagiarism and copyvio.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:03, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi Sage, that's a really good video, very well explained. Thanks for making it! SlimVirgin ^(talk) 18:40, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I like everything about the video but I found the audio recording to be a bit distracting. Something about it seemed processed or unnatural. If it would be possible to record these things under any more favorable conditions then I would support making a consideration about whether the extra effort would give enough benefits.

Also, I would support that future such videos only introduce a single work. In this video both Hamlet and Silent Spring were introduced, and as a matter of style I would like to see only a single example carried through the explanation.

The video is great as it is and is very useful without modification. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:38, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks SlimVirgin and Bluerasberry. The audio sounds very clear to me; I used the best mic I have access to and also did a noise removal on the audio track. I'm not an expert with that kind of thing, though. Can you pin down a bit more what seems unnatural? Good point about the Hamlet image. I took that from Wikipedia:Plagiarism, but it could easily be switched out for a different visual representation of plagiarism; if I do make a revised version at some point, I'll change that.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

On that topic

Sage Ross, per the post above, could anyone here help with this? Cut-and-paste copyvio from a Master's level course and student. Because the new system of course pages is such a mess, I no longer have any idea how to find or where to look for this course and instructor. I am not concerned about the copyvio (which I reverted); I am concerned about how I can find out what the course is so I can make sure we aren't going to again go down the usual path I go down with these courses ... and the new system of course pages is indecipherable to me. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:09, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

The professor is apparently User:Sanetti. I don't see a course page for this class or any for the school. About 20 students have made user pages, findable with a search on "Darwinian Medicine". Most of them have not done anything else yet; a couple have edited in their sandboxes or made simple copyedits. This is the only other significant contribution by a student from the same class that I can find thus far. Hope someone will get in touch with the prof. Maralia (talk) 15:37, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Yep, it looks like this course isn't using a course page. SandyGeorgia, if you're wondering about a particular user, the fastest way to check for a course they are enrolled in is to look at their logs, such as Special:Log/Sarmocid. If they ever joined a course page it will show up there. Sanetti's course is at Case Western in Ohio, so Chanitra Bishop is the regional ambassador for the area; also, Biosthmors is a regional ambassador with an interest in medicine-related courses.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 17:32, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Templates

Could someone with admin rights please edit {{educational assignment}} to point the link to Wikipedia:Student assignments to match {{course assignment}}. Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 10:28, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Ping to Doc James please. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 22:47, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

This is now done. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 14:29, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Medicine course

I'm on vacation but posting this as a heads up - anyone know anything about this? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:26, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/UCSF Elective 2013. =) Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 01:10, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

UCSF press release here. Doc James (User:Jmh649) and User:Ocaasi went out there to SF a while back. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 01:13, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Please help out as well

There is some discussion on the talk page, for example about the point of curiosity on how to evaluate students' perceptions after the course. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 18:29, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Call for feedback on Welcome to Wikipedia brochure

(Please excuse cross-posting) Over the next few months, I will be overhauling the Welcome to Wikipedia brochure to better reflect what new editors need to know when learning how to contribute to Wikipedia. I'm hoping to get a wide variety of feedback on what people like and do not like about the current brochure so I can create a new version that reflects the best knowledge we collectively have about outreach to newbies. Please see more details and add your feedback here. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 17:53, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

LiAnna Davis (WMF), thanks for posting here. Is there a time you would like to have this feedback in by? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 14:31, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

@Biosthmors:, see outreachwiki:Welcome_to_Wikipedia_(Bookshelf)/2013_edition#Timeline_for_project for the timeline. :) -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 16:25, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. =) Here it is, for anyone feeling too lazy to click:

• September 30–October 14: Community feedback on current version
• October 15–21: Sage and LiAnna draft new version based on community feedback
• October 21–November 15: Iterative text revisions with community

Thanks again. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 16:30, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

LiAnna Davis (WMF), could we trade? Could you give feedback on WT:ASSIGN and I'll reciprocate? =) Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 20:53, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

@Biosthmors: (I swear I'm not trying to pick on you today!) I'll be honest — I've been watching WP:ASSIGN and I think it's good for Wikipedians, who are used to policies that are giant walls of text and know how to read them. I think, however, a giant wall of text is not a good way to reach most professors or students. I'll note that we do physically mail both File:Instructor Basics How to Use Wikipedia as a Teaching Tool.pdf and File:The Essentials - Wikipedia Education Program US Canada.pdf (as well as other brochures) to professors who participate in the US and Canada program. Clearly I'm biased, since I did these brochures, but I think they do a good job of offering pretty much the same advice that WP:ASSIGN does but in a more reader-friendly format. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 21:25, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. No worries. I've raised a lot of issues. You're still focusing on non-US and Canada programs, though, aren't you? Exclusively? I've developed a quiz to supplement WP:STUDENTS (just that section) for professors to give to students. Isn't that text digestible, if I tell students to read just it, though? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 21:30, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Will the education program give me money to make videos? ;-) Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 21:31, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I focus almost exclusively on non-US and Canada programs, yes — but since the US/Can program is the largest, it often gives me ideas about what kinds of support materials (like the brochures) I need to develop (and then help facilitate translation and localization of). And (of course, as you've seen today), I am involved in large discussions of overall program strategy. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 23:16, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: mjharper (talk)

Name

Matthew Harper

Institution

Otto-von-Guericke Universität Magdeburg

Course title and description

Main course title: Critical Thinking and Media Competence. The main aims of the course are to foster the skills mentioned in the title, and I'd like to do that by using a Wikipedia activity, based on the 12-week syllabus. A further aim is to improve writing ability. As this course takes place in the Sprachenzentrum (language centre), most of the students are non-native speakers, at UniCERT III and IV level, or C1 / C2 of the Common European Framework.

Assignment plan

As a first attempt, I plan to follow the sample syllabus pretty closely.

Number of students

There may be around 50 students in the main course. It used to be a (small) lecture, but I'm trying to change it into something a bit more interactive and 'blended'. In addition, there are a couple of smaller groups I would like to do the same course with, partly to see the difference between smaller groups, partly to test the idea thoroughly, and partly because the students still need to develop the skills identified as goals.

Start and end dates

October 14 2013 - Start of February 2014. I appreciate this is short notice. Sorry.

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --mjharper (talk) 12:38, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

Hey there mjharper, have you taken the WP:Training for instructors? Have you read over WP:ASSIGN? Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 10:49, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, Biosthmors. I to answer your question, I've worked through the training for instructors up to the point where it directed me here in order to set up a course page. I've also been through many of the resources on the Education Portal. mjharper (talk) 19:41, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

I left a message at User talk:Mjharper. Has anyone emailed Matt? Whose region does this fit into? Or is it an international thing? Shouldn't we welcome international classrooms with ambassador support as well? I don't know why volunteers would care whether or not a classroom was in the U.S. or Canada. I'm currently helping a classroom in Switzerland. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 12:45, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

I emailed Matt. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 09:51, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation update September update

The last update on the Wiki Education Foundation (WEF) was in August. Just a couple of notes this time, with more to come in a couple of weeks, I hope. We have opened a bank account and expect to have the grant from the Grant Advisory Committee (GAC) deposited soon. We will soon, I hope, be hiring a program manager, and are also looking for an executive director who can assist with fundraising.

Biosthmors suggested that it might be a good idea to run an RfC to get feedback on what the community would like to see the WEF do. I don't think an RfC is required for there to be feedback, though if others like that approach we should do it, but we definitely want input on what the WEF's goals and priorities should be. Any comments would be welcome, though after the current set of administrative tasks are completed I intend to come back here and ask again for input. I am selling my house and am very busy at work, so please excuse any delay in replying.

I'm going to skip posting a note about this update at the village pump because there's little content here; I hope to have more substantial news to report later this month and will post again then. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:44, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Mike, can I suggest that you do post at the Village Pump, and not merely because it's part of the terms of your grant, but also to remind people that the WEF exists, even if it has little to report. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 17:10, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 10:46, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, been busy with selling the house and have also been out of town; just saw this. I agree, and have posted over there, and won't omit that in the future even for minor updates. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:30, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Does the WEF have to hire an executive director? If a steady stream of funding is identified, what would the purpose of the ED be? Could this be a temporary position? Could it be something the volunteer board does (setting up fundraising)? Should better fundraisers be identified and recruited to the volunteer board? Those are just some of my ignorant thoughts. Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:59, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

@Biosthmors: Good question. We have consulted with several people with fundraising experience and they said that we really need an FTE working on this. The time, expertise, and networks required are not things that a volunteer board alone can provide. Pjthepiano (talk) 16:18, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Would it be possible to name the shortlist or the planned program manager? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 12:01, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

@Biosthmors: We will have more on this soon. Pjthepiano (talk) 16:18, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Does the WEF have to spend all of the money in 1 fiscal year? Could they not stretch it out over 2 or 3 years? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:16, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

@Biosthmors: The grant we received from the GAC is scheduled to provide 7 months of funding. If we find some savings then we could possibly stretch it a bit longer (although we'd have to request approval from the GAC in order to do that). However, there is just not enough money there to stretch it out over 2 or 3 years. We will need another injection of funding by March. Pjthepiano (talk) 16:18, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Couldn't the terms of the grant be re-negotiated with the agreement of the m:Grant Advisory Committee? I imagine, given the recent Signpost coverage and statement from Sue Gardner about grantmaking, that this would be a possibility. User:Sue Gardner? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 08:56, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

We could try, I'm sure, if we think that's the right thing to do. The board hasn't met to decide this yet, so that's possible. My personal opinion is that we should go ahead with the Executive Director hire, and that that person should focus mostly on fund-raising. I think not building in a fundraising role to a nonprofit right from the start is planning to fail. Fundraising isn't something that you can do effectively in your spare time, and the program manager won't have time. The board can contribute a little time but we all have full-time jobs and in any case will need to spend the time we have on fiscal and program oversight, governance issues such as elections, and administrative work such as payroll, and taxes. I think an employee who focuses on fundraising is necessary if we're to succeed. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 09:27, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Mike, for that response. I've made my preference clear on the regional ambassador mailing list, at least, that I favor the Czech Education Program model, and I currently perceive an ED as a potential bureaucratic (and wasteful) threat to that efficient model. I understand you're looking strategically at the long-term viability of the program. But if you don't have an ED, how much longer can you stretch the money instead of it being limited to 7 months? Also, you would save the board's time in looking for an ED. Or would you? Is there a shortlist for that position? Is it already "known" within the board who that job is going to? If so, who is it? Will the community have the ability to see a job application criteria for that position as well as the program manager? If the WMF had a slimmed down and highly efficient WEF, why wouldn't they give it funding again? If the Education Program improved and became more popular, why wouldn't another foundation happily throw money at it? After a secure stream of funding was found by the ED, what would they do? What should an ED do other than fundraising? I wouldn't really want them communicating with professors, except in rare circumstances. There should only be one WEF contact person to professors if we're going to follow the Czech model, in my opinion. Why can't the board just recruit more fundraising talent? How much, exactly, is the grant for in terms of dollars for the 7 month period? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 09:49, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

WP:COI disclosure, I would consider working for the WEF, if the grant terms were aligned with what I perceive to be in the best community interest. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:36, 7 October 2013 (UTC) (I might consider it one day, but today is not the day. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 09:43, 8 October 2013 (UTC))

I could be convinced that an ED makes sense, but I just don't see it making good sense at the moment, given my experience with education-related things so far. User:The Interior had a previous Wikipedian seat on the board. I wonder what they think. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:41, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

And for clarity, some of those questions above were rhetorical. I just think they're natural questions for community members to have who try to look at the Education Program and the WEF and then think about what might be done or what might be best as we're moving forward. Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 20:42, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, they're fair questions. I can't be precise about all of them but here are my takes on the answers. I would guess that we could roughly double the length of the PM role to 14 months if we have no ED; the ED salary was projected to be higher, so it could be longer than that, and of course the GAC would have to approve the change. Yes, we'd save the board's time in looking for an ED, but there's no dollar cost in that. There's no shortlist; we received one unsolicited resume via word of mouth and would do an open search if we go ahead with the ED -- there's no name in mind (that I'm aware of, anyway). Yes, the community will see the job descriptions for both positions. "...why wouldn't the WMF fund it again": well, maybe they would, but their plan was precisely to spin off this program to avoid funding it directly so this is certainly not guaranteed. And if another foundation wants to throw money at us, we'll deal with that when it happens -- I like your optimism but I don't think we can plan for that. Re the ED's tasks: I don't think fundraising is ever permanently secure, but there are plenty of administrative tasks and back office work. The board hasn't agreed a job description yet so I don't want to be specific since others might not agree, but there are many ideas for things the WEF could or should do and the ED would be the central role in trying to get them done. Whether they should talk directly to professors would depend on their skills and background, but I wouldn't want to hire someone we couldn't trust to talk to professors. By "recruit more fundraising talent" do you mean as an unpaid board member? If so, yes, we're thinking about that, but that doesn't guarantee funds; unpaid labour is rarely as effective as paid, though in the non-profit world there's certainly a track record for board fundraising. In our case, though, the board is not made up of people with that background and I don't see that as a sound plan for solving funding, though it's something that has been discussed. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:11, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Mike. I think that's a great reply. That helps me wrap my mind around where things are. I'd like to add a few things. Yes, I want the board to recruit more volunteer fundraising talent, even though that's not a reliable plan for securing actual funding. And I agree that there's no dollar cost to looking for an ED search, but there is an opportunity cost, and the board has limited volunteer time. I'm interested in hearing specific examples of what an ED might do other than making sure money is flowing in that a program manager couldn't do. I definitely want any potential future ED to have the skills to talk to professors. I just favor the Czech model, where there is one central person that serves as the coordinator, and whose job it is to facilitate the creation and maintenance of strong professor–Wikipedian relationships (as far as I understand it or imagine it to be in its idealized state). When this happens, I think good assignments will be a more natural result. I've emailed the Wikimedia Czech person who presented at the 2013 education conference in Milan to ask them to post their diagram to Wikimedia Commons. It's a simple diagram that draws out the logic of their program in one simple slide. A picture would enrich this discussion, in my opinion. The reason I said the bit about the ED not speaking to professors (generally speaking), was also an implicit criticism of the current Education Program model. But I'll go ahead and made it explicit. The Regional Ambassadors occasionally receive emails asking us to approve a certain list of professors with the user right without being given any context. I find this sort of email to be a powerfully demoralizing and demotivating statement, and one that says this: the powers that be [WMF] do not trust you to talk with professors. I sincerely hope the WEF will take a radically different approach, an approach that proves they will trust certain community members to establish relationships with professors in WEF's name. Will the WEF work to facilitate strong Wikipedian–professor relationships? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:59, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

And who is User:JMathewson (WMF)'s boss (or bosses, or project leads, etc.) at the WMF, by the way? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 12:09, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to User:Mdennis (WMF) to pointing my way to wmf:staff. (I've previously requested that all English Wikipedia WMF accounts link to the profiles of their superiors or people they take direction from.) It appears that Jami currently gets direction from Rod Dunican, or User:Rdunican (Public Policy). I thought Rod was Jami's supervisor, eventually, but I didn't know it was an immediate boss–worker relationship, if it is. I notice Rod's name has appeared on the WP:WEF meeting minutes. Maybe he could share his perspective about my impression that I received from those emails? I'm curious if the WEF would confirm if Rod was or was not the one person who sent in an unsolicited resume via word of mouth? Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 13:07, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

@Biosthmors:, it's inappropriate (and I believe against American employment law) for anyone to comment about specific candidates for any position. But I can confirm that I have not put myself forward as a candidate for the Wiki Ed Foundation executive director position. Rdunican22 (talk) 23:00, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for replying Rod (Rdunican22). Did you get my email? As for the appropriateness, I took a look at m:Talk:Executive Director Transition Team and I get a completely different impression there. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 23:21, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

And yes, I have been given the opportunity by WMF staff to talk with professors to introduce them to Wikipedia on Skype before, so it's not like that never happens. I appreciate those opportunities. That's why I volunteer. I don't want to send what could be interpreted as an inaccurate message by cherry-picking. But to me, a central focus of the WEF should be ensuring that someone who is very well-versed in how Wikipedia works, in terms of knowing how to produce valued content, whether it is WEF staff or volunteers, should be collaborating with the professors on the design of their course (especially with new instructors).

So when an email is sent asking the Regional Ambassadors to assign course instructor rights, who is the person helping them set up the assignment and course page? I don't know, under the current system. The course page is the natural place where collaboration should happen. I think good professors allow their assignment to evolve over time, and having a course page that can be edited and specifies all the requirements, instructions, and grading is a good transparent mechanism to facilitate this process of course improvement. Existing course pages can also be copy-pasted, to help out new professors.

I think the current system does not place enough value on helping professors write out a meaningful course page. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 16:27, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

A better process for crafting a good course page — one that facilitates making relevant decisions and starting from good examples without just blindly saving boilerplate, and also makes it easy to collaborate on assignment design — would definitely be a step forward. It's something I've brainstormed before with Rod, Jami and LiAnna, and it's part of the longer-term goals for a redesigned course page system. Jami may pop in to give her thoughts, but I know that having the types of instructor-ambassador interactions you're asking for (instead of, for example, either WMF staff or no one at all having that sort of interaction with an instructor) has been the goal the US and Canada program has been moving towards for a while now. It's hard to get there, for a variety of reasons, but I hope and expect to see more progress on that as WEF gets rolling.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 16:54, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Sage. Might I suggest that if I didn't feel the duty, for Wikipedia's sake, of cleaning up the mess generated by your superiors, then the community might be able to actually deliver better course pages like Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/UCSF Elective 2013, which has generated press in the New York Times and The Atlantic? I know you can't answer that, because I'm directing it to Rod in this case, but still. All my points remain. I hope to see a cogent WEF reply to nearly every single one. I'd like to know how the WEF will enable and empower the community. Also, has Rod stopped attending board meetings? I don't know why I'm not allowed to attend board meetings but Rod is. I will be in the United States, EST time from October 10th through 20th and I'd like to request to sit in on a board meeting, if one is occurring then. Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 10:11, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Biosthmors, it looks to me from the above as if you're connecting Sage with the WEF in some way -- is that correct? Sage works in the education area on-wiki and has certainly had a lot of involvement in education, but isn't connected with the WEF at all. Not to say you shouldn't ask him what the WEF should be doing; it's a good question for anyone who cares about this area. To your questions: the board invites various people to the board meetings depending on the agenda; we've had Garfield Byrd, the WMF CFO, in the meetings, as well as our attorneys, Rod, Asaf Bartov from the GAC, and others. The meetings aren't open attendance. If you think they should be, I will raise that at the next board meeting -- one of my roles as a Wikipedian on the board is to represent the community -- but it would carry more weight the more people express agreement with you that the meetings should be open. Personally I don't think they should be; even aside from the need for confidential discussions about topics such as salary, I think the board should have a private discussion space. I'd like to hear from others on this point. Your other question is how will the WEF will enable and empower the community. I can give a couple of unsurprising answers to that but I'm far more interested in having the community tell the WEF what the answers should be to that. Remember that the WEF won't control much -- the Education Program doesn't belong to the WEF, it belongs to the community, and it will run the way the community wants it run. The WEF is a resource. What do you think it should do? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:58, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry for creating that confusion, but no, I was speaking to the WEF after I was done speaking to Sage. Sure, please make the request for some sort of increased level of openness to the community. I sent an email to Diana asking for permission as well. Many of my ideas are already recorded in the archives, and above, but I could incorporate them into an RfC for the community on these questions. Maybe we could work together on that. But I think that yes, there should be at least someone from the community who is trusted to listen in. If I remember correctly, User:SlimVirgin made that request at some time. I look forward to hearing more details on my other questions. Since you're a community member, what do you think it should do in terms of how many employees it should have over the next 2 years, for example? Might the WEF reveal who the one person was that sent in the unsolicited resume via word-of-mouth for the ED position? Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 12:18, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Actually, please put it on the WEF agenda to define the bounds for what is negotiable and non-negotiable in terms of community input. Can the community nix the idea of an ED, for example? What is the board willing to act on? That's what I want to know from the WEF, as a first priority. That is necessary knowledge before one crafts an RfC. When is the next board meeting, by the way? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 12:35, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

And because I've raised so many points already, I withdraw my request to sit in on the next board meeting for now. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 12:36, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

As a second point of priority (and as I've politely requested), I would like for Diana (a board member of the WP:WEF) to share her course design details at User:DStrassmann/Assignment to facilitate community input. She shared the document with me by email and asked for my feedback. I responded that I would much rather her share it on Wikipedia. (I haven't opened the document yet.) I think the document should be shared openly, because I think it would create the kind of productive communication, collaboration, and mutual trust that both the community and professors should be having on course pages already. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 12:43, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I have already shared all the assignments on my course page. They've been up there for weeks. All I sent you, @Biosthmors was a minor revision to an assignment that has already been posted.DStrassmann (talk) 18:50, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, DStrassmann, you are more awesome than I've realized. Can I please (when I get the chance) copy and paste all of them into your user space where they can be discussed for next semester? Do you welcome Wikipedians boldly editing those documents, which I hope you will use for your Spring 2014 classes? I see there are 10 documents at Education Program:Rice University/Poverty, Justice, Human Capabilities Section 1 (Fall 2013). Do both courses have identical documentation? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 19:16, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

@Biosthmors. I have made heavy use of Education Program materials and advice from Wikipedians, and am especially grateful to my course online ambassador Mike Christie (who deserves no blame for any errors on my part). And while I continue to welcome advice and input, assignment design needs to balance what is said in class, what is presented by campus ambassadors, the prior experience of the students, the course subject matter, and other course requirements. I revise my assignments every semester, and do it immediately after grading the assignments that I've received from students, when I have a clear sense of what needs to be made more clear to them, etc. and after I have received feedback from students about what parts might be clarified and have more experience from our on wiki interactions. Edits by people who are not interacting with my students would simply not be a best practice, since they may not understand the reason for specific features of the assignments. I've shared my assignments with several other professors, who have adapated them for their courses, and in which they have made alterations that take into account the different skill levels and backgrounds of their students. What works well for Rice undergraduates in an interdisciplinary set of courses may appropriately be revised for students with different overall skills, in different disciplines,or levels of study. That said, I welcome suggestions, but would prefer to get them in a list or for people to request and edit a word document using track changes of my latest versions (which I haven't posted to my course page since they were not what I assigned). If anyone feels that my assignments might be useful to be developed as examples for other professors, I'd be more than willing to discuss a possible process for that, though right now I'm pretty heavily committed and would prefer to wait until the semester is over. DStrassmann (talk) 01:08, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

@Biosthmors: I'm not sure precisely what you're referring to with respect to "cleaning up the mess generated by [my] superiors", but if you mean the current system for setting up course pages, you'll have to put most of the blame for that on me. The sample syllabus was initially put together by me, LiAnna Davis and Annie Lin based on assignment plans for previous successful classes and adjusted to try to head off the biggest problems we were seeing in the first term of the Public Policy Initiative. It was updated more recently by me, LiAnna and Jami. Jami and I have talked together about the shortcomings of the current way it gets served up as part of the wizard, which doesn't make it easy enough to pick and choose which elements to build off of and doesn't make it easy to customize or collaborate on the assignment design. That said, I'm loathe to add more complexity to the wizard. If the "mess" is instead the processes of bringing on new instructors, I'll just say that trying to make that a scalable, efficient, community-driven process that doesn't require WMF staff is a central thread of the history of the education program up until now. Although I've never been the main person in charge of that effort, I've tried to help where I could; if I had an answer that was much better than what Annie, and then Jami, along with the assorted groups of volunteers were trying, I certainly would have shared it. Instead, what I've seen (and contributed to where I could) is incremental improvement.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 13:30, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback Sage. Usually you just comment on small-picture technical details, so it's nice to hear you say more about the big-picture. It's nice to learn how some of these decisions are made. I'm not pointing to you and saying you suck, because I know you don't suck. You're awesome. I do think the current system is sucky, and I'm trying to figure out why. Might it be possible that the current default actively discourages Wikipedian–Professor collaboration in pairs by making professors think that it's easy to run a course and they don't need help? Maybe a blank page would be better at getting this point across. That's the big point I'm driving home. I don't think the current structure is giving us the results I think the community wants. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 13:40, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

And I say the mess generated by your superiors because ultimately it is them who have responsibility for what I perceive to be a sucky program, do they not? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 13:46, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I try to stay out of decision-making and big-picture discussions on-wiki (in contrast to my role during the Public Policy Initiative) precisely because they are things that need to be decided by the community. I don't want to get in the way of what the WEF is doing, and my job is specifically *not* to work on things that are particular to English Wikipedia. Systematically and effectively encouraging/facilitating/ensuring collaborative relationships between experienced editors and instructors is really hard. In my experience, it is definitely not the case that starting from a blank course page helps with this problem (and it would un-solve a lot of the problems that led us to set up things like the wizard in the first place). I do think there is a lot of potential for software and on-wiki structure to help—both with encouraging the kinds of rich communicative relationships that help classes succeed, and with giving more and better automatic guidance for instructors trying to set up a class and design a good assignment. It's actually a set of problems that is relevant to outreach efforts more broadly, and we've started talking with the Growth team (the ones who built guided tours and other features) about what a more general replacement for the current extension might look like; on the tech side, these issues are part of that problem space.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:19, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. That helps. And I'd only agree that it is hard unless the person who is hired to speak with the professors is not an experienced editor. I think that should be a fundamental qualification for the person who is seeking to be the program manager, and who will communicate with professors extensively. I think that's a big part of what is currently missing. Since I'm being quite frank here, I wonder who made the hire or the decision to place Jami where she's been, seeing that she's not an experienced Wikipedian. (And who hired that person, and who hired that person... ;-) Sorry Jami, I emailed you to let you know I like you. I'm just trying to speak to what I perceive are the relevant community values. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 14:30, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

User:Mike Christie, to answer your question, I think the person who is hired by the WEF as the program manager should be a Wikipedian. How many Wikipedians does the WEF have on their short list? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 14:36, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

...help professors design their own tailored and relevant course pages for their students to really use. And as long as they have good on-wiki communications with editors who know how to develop content (which I think Jami is currently divorced from), then I have no problem with her having the job. =) I'm sorry that came off the wrong way. Jami I wasn't calling you incompetent. I just don't think whoever has been telling you what to do has been telling you the right things to do, but then again, maybe a lot of thought went into those decisions I'm unaware of. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 15:47, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Every course page for every class should be an individualized work of art. Can that be the mission statement of the WEF? ;-) Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 15:49, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

@Biosthmors: I'm trying to understand what you think is "sucky" about the program in the US and Canada. From my team's perspective, the goals we've had for the program come out of our theory of change; the central purpose of the education program is to expand and improve Wikipedia's content. I think Jami is doing a phenomenal job at the goals we have for the program in the US and Canada. I'm wondering if our difference in opinion is actually in different goals for what the program should be. So I'm curious: What do you think the goals of the Wikipedia Education Program US and Canada should be? (I would be happy to talk with you about this via Hangout or Skype rather than text chat if that would be easier.) -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 18:42, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for asking LiAnna. The short story is that I think we're failing at realizing the "Every course page for every class should be an individualized work of art" mission. And I'd say that's because we're not establishing good collaborations to negotiate between classroom values and Wikipedian values on course pages that should set the stage for reproducible classroom assignments (professor retention). Are there any numbers on professor retention in the program? Do you think there is room for improvement there? Sure a video chat sometime might be fantastic. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 18:49, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

@Biosthmors: Your vision of having more Ambassadors work closely with professors in this way is spot on with the WEF and with the current WEP team. Giving the sort of guidance to enable each new professor to create a successful assignment each term is a lot of work and takes a lot of time, and volunteer time is precious. With 70+ classes and about 6 active Regional Ambassadors who have the time and interest to work with more than a few professors, there's a gap in capacity for assignment design help. I fill that gap myself, but since many English Wikipedia community members were not comfortable with a WMF staff member granting user rights, I cannot give the Instructor user right to those profs that I work with. I sincerely apologize that you felt demoralized and demotivated by the emails I send out requesting people grant the user right. I absolutely trust you and the other RAs to talk with professors, but I hope that trust is a two-way street. I trust that RAs grant user rights to professors they've worked with, and I hope that you can trust I request user rights for people I've worked with. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 20:32, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining that Jami. I trust that you work well with professors. I can't say I trust that you faithfully represent a Wikipedian's point of view with professors. So how about this? Could I suggest having a developed course page in the user space, such as at User:Ituta/Course page, that way Regional Ambassadors can trust but verify? Then we could also jump in, propose changes, and then when a course page is approved (much the same way Online Ambassadors are approved), then we'll grant the user right. There's no reason to give out the course right if the community doesn't agree with the course design/grading etc. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 20:39, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

@Biosthmors: Where specifically do you draw that line for who is Wikipedian enough to represent Wikipedians' points of view? -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 21:01, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

One who helps develop course pages that the community supports. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 21:06, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

@Biosthmors: Sorry, can you clarify? Do you mean Course Pages or assignments? I'm a little confused about whether you actually care about the content on the Course Page or if you mean the guidance the students get and the work they do. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 21:13, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Course pages should explicitly state the assignments, in my opinion, as Diana's course page does, and the course page I designed does. Could I suggest having a developed course page in the user space, such as at User:Ituta/Course page, that way Regional Ambassadors can trust but verify? Then we could also jump in, propose changes, and then when a course page is approved (much the same way Online Ambassadors are approved), then we'll grant the user right. There's no reason to give out the course right if the community doesn't agree with the course design/grading etc. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 21:24, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

@Biosthmors: I completely disagree with the mission being to create course pages that are individualized works of art. I believe the mission should be to add quality content to Wikipedia. Diana Strassmann has a lot of responsibilities in her life, and I doubt she will ever prioritize learning enough wiki code to put her assignment on wiki. Instead, I think she prioritizes identifying content gaps related to feminist economics, helping students find good references for their articles, and giving feedback on their articles, and I think that's exactly how it should be. Course pages are mostly a tool to track student user names and to have information about in general what students are being asked to do. What matters at the end of the day is whether students are adding quality content to Wikipedia, not whether their course page is a work of art.

Re: professor retention, see the notes and slides from our Mid-Year Review with Sue and Erik, where Jami talked about retention. The short answer to your question is that we're doing well, but we could do better; that's the kind of progress we are strategically focusing on.

Could course pages be better? Yes. But here's my thought: With our existing resources (volunteers, Jami), I'd rather have 75 classes operating at 90% of their potential than 20 classes operating at 95% of their potential. Something has to give, and I'd rather have a larger impact on Wikipedia with more students adding quality content to articles than fewer students adding content (or having dramatically more staff) and having nice course pages. Certainly it's up to the WEF to decide what their mission will be (and for the record, I have never been involved with the WEF aside from being on the selection committee to pick the original Working Group), but in my personal opinion, their mission should be to improve Wikipedia content through supporting the use of Wikipedia as a teaching tool in classrooms in the US and Canada. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 20:58, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

LiAnna, I think you're missing my point. A quality and individualized course page is just an indication that a professor is prepared to run a class on Wikipedia that should generate OK quality content. The same way an Online Ambassador application works. We vote for people based upon their contributions. I helped design Education Program:Saint Louis University/Signal Transduction (SP13), and it helped produce quality contributions. I'm currently experiencing problems with Education Program:Georgia Institute of Technology/Introduction to Neuroscience (Fall 2013) because students aren't using the course page. I got an email today from a student after I had already told them once to use the WikiProject Neuroscience talk page for that sort of inquiry. I wasn't upset, it just shows that some classes ignore the course page to the community's own peril. I will have a meeting this week to try and bridge this gap to work on the course page for the Fall 2014 class. Other classrooms actually use a course page like they should (Diana's class is an excellent example, which as I mentioned above, is already completely on wiki). See WT:MED for more recommendations I have for her course. Why would Wikipedians vote for who should represent Wikipedia as Online Ambassadors but then we don't get a chance to vote on classroom assignments? I think that is incredibly unfair to the community. I think that thinking that Course pages are mostly a tool to track student user names and to have information about in general what students are being asked to do is just planning for failure. We had a similar kind of discussion in Milan and I agree with you that I'd rather have 75 classes operating at 90% of their potential than 20 classes operating at 95% of their potential, though those were nowhere near the ballpark of the numbers that were thrown out, during our conversation, if I remember correctly. So I see that as a straw man-like comment. =) Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 21:21, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Awww man. The first line under the link you gave uses the "wall of text" criterion. I hate that metric. Who at WMF thinks that is a valid metric? Dern... Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 21:35, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

The big difference between classes and Online Ambassadors is that Online Ambassadors work on wiki, and classes work in "real life"/"meatspace" (ugh, I hate those terms, but that's another story). Professors will give assignments, talk to students, etc., and it's unrealistic to expect all of that to also happen on wiki. I don't think the professor's ability to create a course page on wiki indicates at all whether the students will generate good content. I think how well the professor teaches, how much they care about student learning, and how much time they put into the class (all of which happen in "real life") are all much more important than whether they created a sufficiently detailed course page.

Wikipedia has an open editing model, which means that no, you do not have the right to vote on whether someone can contribute or not. We try through our program to guide assignments to be constructive contributions. If you put up a barrier like making professors create a course page before they can get the course instructor right, and then making them create the course page again after they've passed your vote, how many professors will actually do that? What possible motivation would a professor have to do their assignment in the open with input from experienced editors when they can just do their assignment without publicizing anything on wiki and get away with it? If you think the professors will just not do an assignment, you're being naive. They will do it, just under the radar. I'm confident there's tens or maybe even hundreds of classes operating on the English Wikipedia each term, and we just don't know about them unless an editor happens to stumble across them or if we bring them on board through our program.

Let me give you a concrete example: I don't think you were copied on the exchange I had about the UCSF class with the UCSF PR person and James Heilman, in which I told them I was pretty certain from my past experiences that there would be at least one prior med school class that had done this assignment. James was convinced he'd have known about it if there had been, so they released the press release claiming UCSF as the first. Once it went out, there was a University of Texas at San Antonio med school instructor who got upset because he'd done five years ago, and even published a journal article about it. This was the most recent example, but I've had many people say they've been doing classroom assignments for years, but didn't know WP:SUP or our program existed, and had no course pages. More barriers to participation is a bad thing, because I'm sure it will just drive more Wikipedia assignments underground, where the professors won't bother to work with our guidelines at all, and students may or may not contribute content that helps Wikipedia.

I've already written a lot (hello ironically large wall of text!), and I think you and I might just have to agree to disagree on the relative importance of detailed course pages. But I want to close by saying that while you think it's unfair that you can't vote on whether an assignment is good or not, I think it's unfair to categorize Jami in particular as someone who you don't trust to develop a course page that the community supports. Jami has mentored more than 50 classes who have contributed great content to Wikipedia in the last two years. She spends probably more than 50 hours a week thinking about the best way to improve Wikipedia through classroom assignments. She has more than 2,000 edits on her staff account and more than 800 on her personal account. I have heard her talk to professors about Wikipedia policies and encourage them to do good assignments that benefit Wikipedia. If she's not someone trustworthy enough to help professors create good assignments, I don't know who is. She's truly one of the greatest assets this program has. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 22:45, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

LiAnna, forgive me if I have misstated myself, but I consider you saying Wikipedia has an open editing model, which means that no, you do not have the right to vote on whether someone can contribute or not a complete misrepresentation of my position. Why do you think that's what I'm saying? I'm simply suggesting that it should be Jami's job to write out, on Wikipedia, what kind of instruction the professor will be giving the students before Regional Ambassadors decide to give the course instructor right. This could be as simple as copying and pasting. I feel like I'm running into a wall by suggesting, as a volunteer, that the WMF might do anything slightly differently (while I also suffer the consequences of having my position misrepresented). :-/ Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 22:58, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I apologize, then, as I clearly didn't understand what you were asking — I think asking Jami to add a few sentences detailed information about what the assignments professors are going to be doing when she requests user rights for them is perfectly reasonable. (I thought you were asking the professors to create course pages in their sandboxes like the one you'd linked to; that was my misunderstanding, so I'm glad you clarified.) Jami, is that something you can do in the future? -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 23:21, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I think a few sentences is also a misrepresentation. ;-) Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 23:28, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

OK, I updated. :) -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 23:35, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

We can plan on that moving forward. I still have to disagree with one premise that a professor should only get the user right if they've planned their assignment with one of us. Some professors are unwilling to work with someone (or, typically, just don't ever respond), but I still think it's drastically better for us to have a space for their students to enroll, so we can proactively try to work with them during the assignment. I think that beats "under the radar" any day, and some professors just aren't responsive when it comes to an attempt to guide them through the process. I will give any information that I can when it comes to requesting user rights for professors to whom I've spoken, though. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 23:43, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

From my limited experiences, I generally get the fuzzy impression that if the professor doesn't collaborate on the course page, they also "send the message", somehow, to the students that they shouldn't collaborate with the community. What's wrong with initially pitching it like this: "I'd love to get you the course instructor right immediately, but a group of trusted Wikipedia editors will need to check off on your plans first, and they might request some changes". Then you're leveraging the user right to the benefit of the community. If they balk, then perhaps Wikipedia isn't the place for them? I do want to avoid "under the radar" classes as well. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 00:10, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

That's how it does usually work (though I would not agree with you that a professor who doesn't collaborate can't run a successful class). The point is, SO many professors will back off from this step, meaning they won't create Course Pages for us to follow their student contributions. Even the professors who are most eager to get feedback on their assignment and advice on working within the existing infrastructure on Wikipedia still won't let others approve their classroom assignment or decide what's best for their students. I'm telling you that we've done something like this before, and it worked ok with the 15 professors who were willing to go through with it. With the rest, we had to start making adjustments and "letting them participate" anyway because we were able to support their students better if we could at least know who they were. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 00:44, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to learn more. Maybe we could talk sometime soon. But I never said a professor who doesn't collaborate can't run a successful class. So... you know. ;-) And your argument for tracking assumes that because a user right is granted when a course is running that a course page will necessarily be created and all students will enroll. What is the actual loss ratio, though? And to me, your statement that Even the professors who are most eager to get feedback on their assignment and advice on working within the existing infrastructure on Wikipedia still won't let others approve their classroom assignment or decide what's best for their students comes off as impossible to be 100% true. How can you say that as a fact? When I have designed course pages with instructors, I "approve" of what they do. It's an active negotiation. I think I've done exactly what you posit is impossible to do. And I don't grasp your last two sentences. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 01:01, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

One thing I learned from Jon Murray was that looking at the student's interaction with Wikipedia did not give me an accurate understanding of the class. The more I work with the education program, the more I realize that course design is a real and complex skill and that I don't have any background in it. So despite my knowledge of Wikipedia, I would hesitate to suggest to any professor that I should approve the overall assignment. What I can do, and have done, is to point out to professors the (unintended) negative consequences of elements of their course design. I don't have any authority over the professor to force them to change the design, and I don't want that authority; instead I try to build a relationship with them where they trust me as the expert in my field, which is Wikipedia. I suspect you're saying something along the same lines as this -- is that correct?

On another point, I like your idea of detailed course pages, but I don't believe it will happen as a general rule, and I don't see how to make it a requirement. (In fact, of course, we can't make anything a requirement of running a class on Wikipedia; we can only make requirements to formally join the EP, assuming the EP has enough benefits to make it worth while for a professor to meet those requirements.) All we can do is come up with best practices, and those need to be identified both by discussion, as is happening here, and also by reference to past classes, looking for correlations between what's worked and the success of the class. Sage can probably provide the link to the study I'm half-remembering: wasn't there a statistical analysis of this sort done earlier this year that found little correlation between success and other factors? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:33, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Here is the analysis of success factors. Indeed, the results were disappointing in that they didn't give much in the way of specific factors to focus on to help classes be successful.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 13:17, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Bruceselleck (talk)

Name

Bruce Selleck

Institution

Colgate University

Course title and description

Stratigraphy and Sedimentation. This 300-level geology course involves students in the study of sediments, sedimentary rocks and the spatial and temporal distribution of sedimentary rock units

Assignment plan

Wikipedia converaage of geological formations is relatively sparse. The general public has increasing interest in the sedimentary rocks units involved in natural gas exploration and development, including natural gas. Each student will either edit existing entries, or create new entries, for sedimentary rock formations in the Appalachian Basin of NY, PA and OH.

Number of students

12

Start and end dates

September 1, 2013-December 12, 2013

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Bruceselleck (talk) 18:15, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

If I remember correctly, User:Pharos, this is your region. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 10:48, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Top 10 lists

We need a top 10 professor list and a top 10 course page list, in my opinion. Brian Carver would definitely make the professor list. Who else is generally awesome? I'm going to kick this off at WP:Student assignments. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 10:47, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

User:The Interior, you mentioned Wikipedia:Canada Education Program/Courses/Present/North American Environmental History (Tina Loo) from the archives, so I'm going to list it there. Got any others?! Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 13:07, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Before seeing this post here, I started a discussion at WT:Student assignments. I think there needs to be some consensus about what we say about who is or is not in a particular ranking. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:18, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

What's the purpose of this? If it's to recognize good work, a ranking isn't really necessary—sends the wrong message. czar ♔ 23:01, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree with you. I think that there could be value in having examples of best practices for other users to look at and learn from, but a "top ten" may be the wrong way to present it. Likewise, I see value in complimenting users who do good work, but again a list may be the wrong way. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:30, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Barnstars and kittens are great for this. I'm a huge fan of giving people kittens. Stuartyeates (talk) 07:04, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

A top 10 list would be great, if we had a real criteria for it. Think "Top 10 educators by number of articles their students have get FA status" or similar. Stuartyeates (talk) 07:03, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I've converted the budding info into prose. Discussion at WT:ASSIGN. Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 08:08, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

This "fish" gets a little nervous around "kittens" (joke), but I think that barnstars are actually a better approach than lists for commending good work. Whether as lists or as prose, I think that we need to have some sort of consensus of criteria for it, if we present it in Wikipedia's voice, and the focus then should be on showing readers what good practice is, as opposed to thanking someone for good work. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:36, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

That's a good point. If you don't mind, I'll just attempt one more time to wp:preserve the content by rewording the prose to make it softer and more criteria explicit. If you still don't like it, I'll remove it from the page and we can discuss further. No problem. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 20:22, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Just to add my two bits to this, my goal is to inspire students to become active Wikipedians and to learn how they can provide valuable missing content,making use of the course knowledge they gain and through their access to scholarly articles. There are many ways to judge quality of contributions (just as there are many valuable roles for Wikipedians). Setting up FA as a main goal would mean that students who simply add an important missing section or set of sections to an article may not gain the same sense of accomplishment for their work in Wikipedia as might those who write a featured article on an easier but less important topic. I prefer the multiple models and barnstars approach. DStrassmann (talk) 01:17, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Tracking students, categories, user pages should link to course pages

Is there any way to search the education extension to see if, for example, User:Stack0711, who I saw at WT:ANAT, is a student in a course within the extension? There is no link on the user page to a course page. (Linking to the course page from the user page follows WP:STUDENTUSER. It would be great if signing up as a student enabled a category to be added to the student's page that then linked to the course page. This would automate the process.) Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 18:46, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

What class are they in?

If anyone figures out what class they're from please post here thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 19:03, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

It might be a Cornell class. A couple of students who took the training class and posted feedback on the same day noted they came from Cornell. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:44, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

You can check from Special:WhatLinksHere/User:Ran21, which I thought should show the EP pages, if linked (but perhaps not). The editor's in Education Program:Boston College/Developmental Biology (Fall 2013). czar ♔ 19:59, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Sage, should that be filed as a bug/feature request (per WP:WMF, where "feature request" is defined) or should we just assume that the new version of this software will have normal Wikipedia functionality? Or is that not a safe assumption and would you recommend that we document all the things we want it to do? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 08:12, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

@Czar and Biosthmors: Making 'what links here' work is someone I expect will be part of a replacement for the course pages extension. Currently, the easiest way to find out if a user has enrolled in a course is to check their logs: Special:Log/Ran21. All course-related actions (enrolling, unenrolling, adding an article, signing up as a reviewer) should show up in the log.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 13:15, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Ah, the logs. Good point. Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 20:19, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Connect with others using Wikipedia assignments - invitation to EduWiki Conference 2013

Hi All,

Wikimedia UK's second annual EduWiki conference will take place in Cardiff, UK on 1 and 2 November 2013. The registration is open (link on the event page), so anyone interested to attend is welcome to book in October. The conference is a chance to discover opportunities; report lessons learned; and explore how the free, open, learner-centred ethos of Wikimedia overlaps current trends in formal education.

Queries about the conference or any other aspect of Wikimedia UK's Education activities can be sent directly to WMUK's Education Organiser toni.sant@wikimedia.org.uk

Many thanks, Daria Cybulska (WMUK) (talk) 15:00, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Daria Cybulska (WMUK), could you please welcome Wikimedia UK to comment occasionally on the issues raised on this noticeboard sometime? I'm not sure why anyone needs to travel to a conference to learn from Wikimedia UK. =) It would be nice to go, but I can't make it. I do think person to person communication is invaluable, which is why I support conferences, generally speaking. But I'm not sure if it represents a good community value to go to a conference if we haven't even started to communicate on the noticeboard here or at WT:ASSIGN. That's just my two cents. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 12:57, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia UK is fairly active on the education mailing list, and I think this was just a notification to let anyone who frequents this page know they are welcome to attend. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 21:42, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Of course. And I would honestly like to attend. I might even do so. But I recently got invited to go to a European country for some Wikimedia conference (travel paid, within Europe). So really my comment relates to this: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-10-02/News and notes. I tend to question the value of the money chapters are spending, as Sue and many others also do. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 21:57, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I wonder if I am on this education mailing list... Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 22:01, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I will notify Toni, the Education Organiser, so he is aware there may be discussions here to be involved with. It would be great to see you at the event and discuss further, although since we are not financially supporting everyone's attendance I will understand if that's not possible. Daria Cybulska (WMUK) (talk) 18:24, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Czech model

Team structure of the Czech Education Program. Simply substitue "ambassador" for "instructor" in this slide.

As previously mentioned, here's a picture of the Czech Education program, which I favor for its emphasis on the Wikipedian–Professor pairs (the slide calls them Instructor–Professor pairs). Thoughts? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 12:55, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, it is also all volunteer run and they have about 6 classrooms. That's why I think 1 full time WP:WEF employee makes sense. There are about 70 classrooms under the guidance of what will become the WEF. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 14:17, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes: although I am glad that our Czech program serves as a model for your future plans, I think that pure volunteering would not be sufficient for such a large number of classes. However, the team structure may remain the same. The coordinator is in charge of answering to teachers and assisting them and helping them to find local ambassadors. He/she cannot, however, train all the students in your 70 classrooms - that is too much even for an employee: the coordinator must serve as a "brain centre" making decisions and assisting everyone. --Vojtech.dostal (talk) 16:20, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Concern about an AFD

I have some concerns about this AFD that might need some assistance. An editor has worked on the article (and not much else) since August but has said it is part of an assignment for Coastal Carolina University and that he is one of 125 "travel" students who have been assigned to write articles (an assignment apparently suspended pending the outcome of the AFD).

I'm not sure how credible the claim is (or whether it is an elaborate AFD ruse) but I thought if there was some way someone could contact the university... If it is legit, the lecturer (and his/her students) could do with some assistance. If it's not, a quick call/email to the uni should sort it. Would appreciate suggestions. Stalwart111 14:04, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

User:JMathewson (WMF), can't we have that google spreadhsheet with the colleges and Regional Ambassadors on Wikipedia? That would help make things like this more efficient, in my opinion. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 14:08, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Also, who is the private "+ 1 more" person who can view that spreadsheet currently besides you and the Regional Ambassadors? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 14:09, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Stalwart, I don't see it on that spreadsheet. Is it on anyone else's radar? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 14:13, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

It seems like Wiki Voyage is an appropriate place for this. If the instructor/students are doing a project with a sister project, then there isn't always going to be the communication between the class and this part of Wikimedia. I have experience working with Wikinews. But perhaps if we find out who the instructor is then that course/instructor/students could be "gently" directed to the more appropriate site with a contact there. Just a suggestion, Crtew (talk) 15:17, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

No, this isn't a class I've ever heard of or known anything about, though I'm happy to try and contact the professor. @Biosthmors: There are privacy issues with almost all of that information in that spreadsheet. What information do you want available on-wiki? The non-RA person on the spreadsheet is probably Sage, as I shared it with him a while back, but I don't think he's on the RA listserv anymore. JMathewson (WMF) (talk) 17:28, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Everything but the private info. =) I'm assuming the real names of the professors is not private, though, right? Brian Carver edits anonymously, though he still runs assignments. So this would be Institution, Professor name, Class name (such as a link to the course page), and Regional Ambassador username (I think the real name should be disclosed to the Professor, with the understanding it might get to the students), if one has been assigned. If the subheadings were the 10 regions (aren't there 10), then that would be awesome. And actually that should serve as the place where Regional Ambassadors should be listed (assuming we don't redesign the Ambassador program after the WEF spin-off). That's something for a RfC, in my opinion. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 18:01, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Jumping in randomly here, I do not think you could anonymize the list well enough to preserve privacy. If you know a USA person's zipcode,, date of birth and gender, you can probably personally identify them based on that alone. There is also the seminal case described here. Unless there is a compelling reason otherwise, I cannot see a reason for them to share personally identifying information. --LauraHale (talk) 19:58, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure anyone suggested that kind of fine grain detail—just classes, colleges, and regions (and maybe names?), which would be the bare necessities for the program anyway czar ♔ 23:36, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

• I now believe the reason nobody has been made aware of this "class" is that the class itself doesn't exist. One of our clever colleagues just pointed out that the "student" in question has a username that just happens to be the same as the CEO of the company being written about. The blog on the company's site makes a similar claim about the article being written as a "university paper" but attributes the work to group of Florida students instead. The story is starting to fall apart. Stalwart111 03:09, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

WMF blog posts, but the education ones are where?

So if I am at http://blog.wikimedia.org/ how do I get to education-related posts? The website isn't intuitive. I don't see any help on the left side. Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 22:35, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

This point I completely agree with you about! :) The education posts are at: http://blog.wikimedia.org/c/global/global-education-program/ — and you will be glad to know that we are in the process of rolling out a completely new blog, which will have Education as one of the navigation categories. There will be more detailed information from my colleagues in communications published soon, hopefully. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 22:51, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

=) Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 22:59, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I havent promoted it here (my bad) but there is also a wiki newsletter much like This month in GLAM at [1] Editions come out on the 15th so there is still time to add something to the newsroom!Thelmadatter (talk) 15:15, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Assistance with Education Program extension on English Wikinews

Hi. The Education Program Extension was installed on English Wikinews after community discussion. I set up a demo class at Education Program:The Wikinewsie Group/New reporters (2013). I then wanted to create what amounts to a landing page for educators at Wikinews:Education, which is basically copying and pasting from Wikipedia where relevant because the basic structure looks really good and appears to have been tested extensively through use on English Wikipedia. I keep getting errors with the coding. Can anyone assist in basically duplicating the structure and pages so that the Wikipedia specific portions can then be taylored to fit the specific needs of English Wikinews? Thanks. --LauraHale (talk) 10:00, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

And looking around at Wikipedia:Training/For educators/About the classroom module,, would some one possibly be interested in assisting us on Wikinews in creating something like the sample syllabus like this one for Wikipedia? While we have the resources to deal with student submissions, assuming we have advanced warning, we do lack some of the resources on project to develop a lot of training materials like this. Some of the materials we do have are at Wikinews training materials and Bookshelf/Wikinews. --LauraHale (talk) 12:05, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Implementation question: Do other languages have ambassador programs? How do smaller non-English Wikipedia projects handle the ambassador thing? We don't have the capacity to create a special class to work with students, but we do have community support to provide additional attention for students if we know they are part of a course. --LauraHale (talk) 06:27, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Campus Ambassador application: Birajkarmakar

Birajkarmakar (talk · contribs)

1. Why do you want to be a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   As a lover of wikipedia, i want to join it.also I want to help recruit new Wikipedia contributors on campus,Organize engaging on-campus events to encourage editing (and continued editing) of Wikipedia,think of creative ways for promoting Wikipedia in my region etc.

2. Where are you based, and which educational institution(s) do you plan to work with as a Campus Ambassador?

   Dr.B.C.Roy Engineering College,Durgapur,West Bengal,India

3. What is your academic and/or professional background?

   B.Tech, 4th year

4. In three sentences or less, summarize your prior experience with Wikimedia projects.

   I am great lover of wikipedia. Always read wikipedia documents for particular Searching.I know how to edit wikipedia.

5. What else should we know about you that is relevant to being a Wikipedia Ambassador?

   myself mozilla reps also foss evangelist.

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Birajkarmakar (talk) 10:12, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• Support Looks like they will benefit with the rights. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 15:50, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Marimfdh (talk)

Name

Maryam Abdullah Almufadhi

Institution

Princess Nora Bint Abdul Rahman University

Course title and description

Computer Assisted Translation : The course aims to improve students technical skills with regards to translation so using Wikipedia to translate articles from English into Arabic will help them practice the tools covered in the course (Computer Assisted Translation Tools such as glossaries and translation memories) as well as enhance their "media and information fluency" as was stated in the Wikipedia Training/For Educators/Learning Goals. The students enrolled in this course are advanced undergraduates who have taken various translation courses and practiced translation intensively. Wikipedia will be used to translate English articles that are not available in Arabic. We will be working with the WikiProject https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/ويكيبيديا:مشاريع_ويكي/ترجمة to enrich Arabic content on Arabic Wikipedia.

Assignment plan

We wil be adding Arabic translations of articles available on English Wikipedia. Students will either choose an English article that has no corresponding Arabic article or further develop stub Arabic articles which have a full English version.

Number of students

I teach 3 groups, the total number of students is 84.

Start and end dates

Starts on Monday 21st of October, 2013 - ends on 16th of January, 2014.

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Marimfdh (talk) 13:45, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

I think we don't need to do anything here. They will be using English pages and translate them into Arabic pages. Translation can be done with or without instructor rights or Education Program module. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 15:11, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

@Marimfdh: We also have a program on the Arabic Wikipedia; please reach out to Tighe Flanagan at tflanaganwikimedia.org to get access to information in Arabic. -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 17:22, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Request for course instructor right: Ldmanthroling (talk)

Name

Lev Michael

Institution

UC Berkeley

Course title and description

Linguistics 150 (Sociolinguistics): This is an upper division linguistics course focusing on variationist sociolinguistics and language contact. As part of the course, students form groups of 3-4 individuals to develop new pages for important topics in sociolinguistics that do not yet have dedicated pages.

Assignment plan

Students will develop new pages on important topics in sociolinguistics that do not yet have dedicated pages. The goals are both the improve the coverage of these important topics on Wikipedia, and to provide students with an opportunity to create a useful resource in a supportive environment (including in-class evaluation and discussion) that takes advantage of the expertise they are developing in the course.

Number of students

34

Start and end dates

August 29, 2013 - December 10, 2013

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Ldmanthroling (talk) 22:23, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

• Granted. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 15:48, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

Request for course instructor right: Sanetti (talk)

Name

Cynthia Beall

Institution

Case Western Reserve University

Course title and description

Anthropology 302 Darwinian Medicine. Darwinian (evolutionary) medicine deals with evolutionary aspects of modern human disease. It applies the concepts and methods of evolutionary biology to the question of why we are vulnerable to disease. The purpose of this course is to understand the approach of Darwinian (evolutionary) medicine and apply it to explain “Why We Get Sick”. The content includes general hypotheses about the evolutionary bases of diseases (defenses, infection, novel environments, genes, design compromises, and evolutionary legacies) and tests of those hypotheses using information about a wide variety of contemporary diseases.

In the medical context, evolutionary medicine is seen as a basic science that plays an important role in understanding health and disease. In the evolutionary biology context, evolutionary medicine provides opportunities to test and refine fundamental concepts using a well-understood and documented species. In the anthropological context, evolutionary medicine expands understanding of human evolution, adaptation, and variation

Level of students: advanced undergraduates, M.A. level graduate students

How Wikipedia fits into the syllabus. One of the course requirements is the following.

Goals Wikipedia is increasingly used as a medical reference resource by the general public and medical students. This assignment is designed to contribute to the goals of the Evolutionary Medicine Wikipedia Network (EvMedWikiNet), identified as a priority by the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) working group on evolutionary medicine education (http://www.nescent.org/cal/calendar_detail.php?id=862 ) . The goal of the EvMedWikiNet is to add evolutionary considerations to existing Wikipedia medicine articles and to develop new pages on key terms and concepts in evolutionary medicine. The EvMedWikiNet aims to make Wikipedia entries on Evolutionary Medicine topics up-to-date, reliable, cross­linked and accessible to the general public while integrating effectively with existing Wikipedia content.

Which experienced editors and/or WikiProjects you'll be working with None so far. I would like to do so and welcome suggestions.

Assignment plan

Assignment overview This assignment has several stages. Students will develop a wikipedia account, review wikipedia resources, identify a page to edit, edit the page, and review and discuss changes with other students in class, and perhaps from other classes, and keep a log of their work.

Number of students 18

Start and end dates August 26, 2013 start, December 6, 2013 end.

@OhanaUnited, Neelix, Ktr101, Pharos, and Pongr: @Sleuthwood, Etlib, Daniel Simanek, Biosthmors, and Kayz911: @DStrassmann, Rjensen, Bluerasberry, and Kevin Gorman: --Sanetti (talk) 19:35, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Return to the Course pages module.

Granted. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 01:01, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Update on development of the Education Program extension (course pages)

I wanted to give a quick update on the current plans for developing the extension, since that's a perennial topic here.

After a few months without dedicated support, we now have a developer who has started working on the extension, Andrew Green. Andrew will be working for the next few months to fix as many of the bugs and user interface problems as possible. (He submitted his first patch today!) Andrew will probably not be undertaking any major re-engineering of the extension, which will likely put some of the prominent bugs out of reach, but we'll see what we can do.

In the longer term, I've started talking with the Growth team (the ones who developed the GettingStarted features, among other things) about a future replacement for the Education Program extension, one that would be more tightly integrated into the wikis and would also be built with diverse uses in mind: education programs, as well as in-person events like editing workshops and edit-a-thons, and other sorts of outreach involving a discrete group of users. It's just at the planning stage at this point, so that may or may not be the direction things go in the future.

If you have thoughts on what small tweaks and improvements you would most like to see, let me know. That will be helpful as Andrew and I start to plan out his development priorities.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 21:17, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi, everyone, really great to be on board! --Andrew Green (talk) 00:41, 16 October 2013 (UTC)