Hi Pine

I agree with Leigh that an educator should design his course based on his students' abilities as not all the students have strong skills of writing an encyclopedic article and in in this case the age doesn't really matter. That is the reason why we started our Education program based on Armenian Wiktionary which has a real success. The majority of the program editors are secondary school students. We also began to include Armenian Wikisource in our program, so we'll see what comes of it.

Best,

Lilit Tarkhanyan
Wikimedia Armenia
Board Member
Wikipedia Education Program Leader
2a Arshakunyats ave., 4th floor
tel. +374 55 534 011

On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 4:07 AM, Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com> wrote:

That is very useful information for me to hear. Thanks Leigh.

I think that Wikimedia Armenia is similarly finding that they can be successful on projects other than Wikipedia; in their case I believe that their younger students are having success with Wiktionary.

Pine

On Tue, Jul 12, 2016 at 4:44 AM, Leigh Thelmadatter <osamadre@hotmail.com> wrote:

If we only think about WEP as writing a Wikipedia article as a class assignment, then yes, the overriding qualification is writing ability... same as for any other volunteer doing that work. 

Fortunately, there are other ways to participate... just like any other Wikimedian.

I think what it really comes down to is designing a program/activities that meet the needs and strengths of students. We saw a long time ago that what works for the US and Canada does not necessarily work for other parts of the world. Even at the national level, a single model may not work.

At Tec de Monterrey, little of our activity is writing new articles as part of coursework and there are various reasons for this based on our system and culture. Instead, we focus on students doing their community service requirement (WP is a popular option for this) and Semana i (i Week) ... when students work on projects instead of going to class.  We do translations, photography, video, audio and animation. (still working on convincing someone to look into hacking opportunities). These activities have worked very well for us so far, and we have excellent contribution stats.

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From: wiki.pine@gmail.com
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2016 20:49:11 -0700
To: education@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikimedia Education] Which kinds of students are successful in education programs?

Hi Education Program participants,

I am wondering, for purposes of the "LearnWiki" video series, which kinds of students tend to be successful in Wikipedia Education Program courses. The impression I am getting is that age is less important than writing ability. I have heard that some middle school students with strong writing abilities can do well on Wikipedia, while 1st and 2nd year college students can struggle if their writing skills are weak. Would you agree with that assessment?

Are there any "skill checks" that you would recommend educators do with their students to make sure that they have the skills necessary for a WEP course?

Thanks,

Pine

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