Hi Online Ambassadors and Campus Ambassadors!
I am emailing to request for urgent, emergency help from all of you who are
able and willing. Can you dedicate 30 minutes, 1 hour, 5 hours in the next
week to help?
Here's the story: As you know, the Global Education Program is also
operating in India. While some Indian students have contributed spectacular
content, a large of number of the edits coming from the participating Indian
students has been of extremely poor quality: copyright violations, unsourced
paragraphs, paragraphs with blatant POV, incomprehensible English, new
articles under a different name from an existing article, etc. The staff and
Campus Ambassador team in India have been working extremely hard to combat
these issues, and the English Wikipedia community at large has reverted or
warned students repeatedly, but the problem persists. The biggest challenge
is that the Online Ambassador team helping out India was just launched
recently and is currently very small (we have about 1,000 students in the
India program, but only about 30 Online Ambassadors dedicated to the India
program). The problems are so extreme that we've asked all students to stop
editing in the article namespace at this point and put any contributions
into sandboxes.
So we urgently need your help for the India students now. Much of the poor
content the students added in the last few months is already live on
Wikipedia, and some students might continue adding poor content onto
articles despite us telling them to edit only in sandboxes. Would you be
willing to go through a few students' contributions, or a whole class's
contributions, and delete any problematic material from the article
namespace? That means things like:
* Removing any plagiarized material (this is often easy to spot, as they've
cited the source they plagiarized from).
* Deleting articles that are duplications of existing articles.
* Moving any unsourced sentences to the talk page of the article or just
deleting them.
* Deleting or moving to the talk page any additions to Wikipedia that are so
poor English that they need serious editing help before they should be
on-wiki.
At this point, it's less mentoring and more cleaning up Wikipedia -- we need
swift action on removing problems from articles.
If you are willing and able to be part of this "Emergency India Ambassador
Team," please email me back immediately. We can use ALL the help we can get,
and we need help very urgently. Once you email me back, I will send you
exact details on which class(s) we need your help with and how exactly to
track student edits.
Thank you all very much. You all are doing amazingly as Ambassadors in the
U.S. program, and major thanks in advance to those of you who help out with
this more recent emergency.
Annie
Welcome to the Global Education Update — a newsletter from the Wikimedia Foundation that is distributed the first and third Tuesday of each month. Someone from our staff has talked with you about our Global Education Program to bring Wikipedia into higher education classrooms around the world, and we wanted to keep you in the loop on all of our exciting activities. If you would prefer not to receive these messages, simply reply to the email and ask for your address to be removed. Learn more about subscribing and read the archives here:
https://contacts.wikimedia.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=4…
Monthly Global Ed metrics meeting announced
Interested in hearing the latest data from the Global Education Program? Beginning next week, we are introducing a new Metrics and Activities Meeting that will take place each month. We'll rotate responsibility for leading the meeting each month among the various volunteers in-country, and topics will include the latest activities in each country and a report card of the latest numbers documenting the contributions of students to Wikipedia. Learn more about the meeting.
https://contacts.wikimedia.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=4…
Wikipedia part of this week's ISSOTL conference
Are you attending the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin? So are we! Global Education Program Manager Annie Lin and Communications Manager LiAnna Davis will be on-hand to man a booth about Wikipedia's use as a teaching tool in higher education around the world and to give a presentation on research results from the U.S. pilot program. Learn more about ISSOTL.
https://contacts.wikimedia.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=4…
Wikipedia in classroom featured in Monitor
In a recent article on technology in the international relations university curriculum, the Christian Science Monitor pointed to Wikipedia's use in higher education as a positive, emerging trend. Quoting Professor Rochelle Davis and students Patrick Friedel and Adrieh Abou Shehadeh, the article notes that using Wikipedia as a teaching tool can enrich students' learning experiences. Read the article.
https://contacts.wikimedia.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=4…
Montana Senior News covers Ambassador program
Montana State University Campus Ambassador Mike Cline penned an article for Montana Senior News on his experiences in the Wikipedia Ambassador program. In the article, which begins on Page 11, Mike shares why he's proud to be a Wikipedia editor and Ambassador, and encourages readers of Montana Senior News to also become a contributor. Read Mike's article.
https://contacts.wikimedia.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=4…
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Welcome to the Global Education Update — a newsletter from the Wikimedia Foundation that is distributed the first and third Tuesday of each month. Someone from our staff has talked with you about our Global Education Program to bring Wikipedia into higher education classrooms around the world, and we wanted to keep you in the loop on all of our exciting activities. If you would prefer not to receive these messages, simply reply to the email and ask for your address to be removed. Learn more about subscribing and read the archives here:
https://contacts.wikimedia.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=4…
India Campus Ambassador starts video series
Abhishek Suryawanshi, a Campus Ambassador in the India Education Program, has started a video series chronicling the experiences of participants in the program. Abhishek's goal is to create short, fun interviews of Ambassadors, professors, students, and others as part of a video diary. His first video, featuring Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees member Bishakha Datta, is now available on Wikimedia Commons. Watch the video.
https://contacts.wikimedia.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=4…
WMF leads workshop at MobilityShifts
Wikimedia Foundation Global Education Program Director Frank Schulenburg is leading a workshop at next week's MobilityShifts conference in New York City. Hosted by the New School, MobilityShifts is an event geared toward conversations about learning with digital media. Frank's workshop, "Wikipedia and Academia, Friends at Last?" will cover the basics of incorporating Wikipedia into higher education learning and teaching. Learn more or register to attend.
https://contacts.wikimedia.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=4…
Ambassadors present at EduCause conference
Attending the EduCause Annual Conference? Come to a Wikipedia session! Ambassadors Richard Knipel and Cristian Opazo will present information on how Wikipedia can be used as a teaching tool in higher education courses, using several specific curricular efforts as an example. Read more about Richard and Crisitan's presentation.
https://contacts.wikimedia.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=4…
University of British Columbia hosts Wikipedia event
The Centre for Learning, Teaching, and Technology at the University of British Columbia is hosting an event on Thursday, October 6, that addresses some of the work being done in the Canada Education Program. Dr. James Heilman of Wikimedia Canada and Dr. Jon Beasley-Murray, who has used Wikipedia as a teaching tool in his class, will present information on how Canadian universities like UBC can become more involved with Wikipedia. Learn more about the event.
https://contacts.wikimedia.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=4…
To unsubscribe from this newsletter, click this link:
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