I've been working with Wiki Education for the last nine months researching
student learning outcomes using Wikipedia based assignments. We have a ton
of amazing data that we'll be posting about shortly and releasing under an
open license (as well as a summary of some preliminary findings).
I've written a grant proposal for WMF to continue this research as we've
really only touched the tip of the iceberg here. Please check it out and if
you're interested I'd love your feedback (and your support).
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Learning_with_Wikipedia_Base…
best,
Zach
--------------------
Zachary J. McDowell, PhD
University of Chicago at Illinois
Postdoctoral Fellow, National Center for Digital Government
Research Fellow, Wiki Education Foundation
Managing Editor, communication +1
www.zachmcdowell.com
Hello education community!
I'm happy (and relieved) to announce that the new issue of This Month in
Education <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/News> is out.
There are some great stories to read, as well as a featured article about
challenges written by Liang. Don't forget to submit your stories for the
next issue by 20 April! Late submissions will go in the next month's issue.
Wish you a great week, and for those at WikiCon, enjoy the last day of the
conference!
best,
Nichole
--
*Nichole Saad*
WMF | Education Program Manager
nsaad(a)wikimedia.org
user: NSaad (WMF)
*Want to talk about the Wikipedia Education Program?*
Schedule a meeting: https://calendly.com/nsaad-1
I imagine that this subject will be of interest and concern to educators,
including those who teach in the Wikipedia in Education Program. Here is a
thought-provoking newspaper column about a University of Washington
professor's troubling findings: http://www.seattletimes.com/
seattle-news/politics/uw-professor-the-information-war-
is-real-and-were-losing-it/
Quoting briefly from the article:
"Starbird is publishing her paper as a sort of warning. The information
networks we’ve built are almost perfectly designed to exploit psychological
vulnerabilities to rumor."
"Your brain tells you ‘Hey, I got this from three different sources,’ ” she
says. “But you don’t realize it all traces back to the same place, and
might have even reached you via bots posing as real people. If we think of
this as a virus, I wouldn’t know how to vaccinate for it.”
Pine