(Adapting the subject to an adequate one)
Hi all,
this is a very important issue and we all involved in the global efforts to involve universities to improve Wikipedia - and, if I may add, raise awareness on the Wikimedia movement, which we could go deep, but let's retrict ourselves to the apparently solely goal at the moment.
Wikimania is far from an academic event. Fact. Only a few academics would be interested in attending to it or, if they would be interested, would have time for it. Fact.
The first time I've heard about Wikimania was during my masters studies, in 2005. I was already somewhat involved with Wikipedia, but even as a masters student, I would never think about going to what I've read at that time what is this event about. Instead I would go to a summer school (as I did in a previous year) or an academic conference that would be regarded by funding agencies. This is the view of a MS student, you can imagine a researcher who has to give number of papers/conferences/books and so on to survive inside the academic world (well, the well know publish or perish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publish_or_perish)
Frank has asked me to see with the five professors in Brazil who joined the Wikipedia Education Program if they would be interested in a meeting in the mid of the semester to share their, his and ambassadors experiences with the program. I've asked three of them until now (one is Juliana who raised the subject we are discussing here, who already gave the nice idea to transform the event in an academic meeting) and my feeling is that they will attend when they have time, which is not that much - waiting other professors answers and reactions to Juliana's proposal.
I don't know very much about Wikipedia Academy http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Academy and I'd love to hear more details about it and if it's aligned to the purpose of bringing attention of the academic world to Wikimedia projects, not only as a research field (indeed, a very interesting one, as Benkler teach us, for instance), but maybe as a source of inspiration from interesting peer production process that academia has a lot to learn - I believe that in a ideal world, if most forms of knowledge was freely shared, raw reserarch data, for instance [1], the processos of building new knowledge would be much faster (this is far from happening, if it will).
I belive that professors joining these global education efforts are usually those commited to education. Those I've choose are.* I thnk one way to bring more attention from academia would be to invest more thoughts (I am not saying it was not invested) on how would professors, key figures in this program, together. The program is expanding now. How will professors, with such scarce time, share their experiences and how would they benefit from it?
I believe those are a few and important challenges to make the program expand inside academia.
Best,
Tom
*Besides most public universities in Brazil have education as one of their pillars, research comes first. I've seen a lot of professors who produce amazing educational resources, but they are treated in the same way as those professors who simply copy and paste American or European books on the blockboard, instead of using some of their time to do what is written in the contract with the institution he or she works.
[1] http://pantonprinciples.org/
On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 11:51 PM, Bart bart.humphries@gmail.com wrote:
In other words, for academics to take it seriously (ask for time off, volunteer time to write a paper, spend money to travel out there, stay at a hotel, eat, etc.), it has to be run like a "real" academic conference. I could go present a topic and speak for an hour at my local Rotary club (and I have), but it's not really going to mean much professionally and I wouldn't be putting it on either my resume or curriculum vitae. Presenting a topic in a somewhat competitive forum where the speakers are vetted and the presentation topics have generally been run through some basic fact checking to make sure they're not complete bunkum would be something of a "feather in my cap", something that I would definitely put down on at least my curriculum vitae.
So, the question should be, is Wikimania a "real" academic conference, or a fan convention (or both)? I'd argue that, in its current state, Wikimania is basically a fan convention, designed as a big meet-and-greet for Wikipedia editors, with some presentations given that likely haven't been put up against any sort of test other than "It's not Time Cube, right?" That's cool, I enjoy fun conventions, but it's going to be difficult to attract "serious" academics to come as presenters.
Bart User:Banaticus
Hello Everybody, The problem with Wikimania is the lack of clarity of what it is, even in Wikimedia communities this event is not fully understood and supported. I know a lot of French speaking wikimedian thinking that Wikimania is just wasting money to make parties between wikimedians. It's not the subject of the thread, but if already at wikimedians level Wikimania is not something totally understood, I don't see how we could convince Academics to take it 100% seriously.
But I think that Academic world could join Wikimedia events, if the topic is clearly announced, and linked to academic activities. In Switzerland we have done the opposite, we have join a 100% scientific congress, and it was quite easy when we have shown to the organizers that in fact a part of the European project associated was dedicated to outreach activities, and that they have done nothing except an out of date website.
In my field (Professor in Biology) Wikimedia project and Academic (in term of researcher) have converging interest in outreach activities, Wikimedia need to find new contributors with a high skills, and researcher need to communicate efficiently to the public.
For European funds research project, outreach activities are always needed, but most of the times Europe only ask for a website. One point of entry in Academic world could be that Wikimedia project could be a component of the research project (public information). It could change the game, because in this case we are talking to all researcher and not only those committed to education.
Sorry if my message is the mess :-) My point is that we should design some Wikimedia Events for academics to attract them, and after we could bring Academics to general Wikimedia Event .
Charles
___________________________________________________________ Charles ANDRES, Membre du Comité Wikimedia CH - Association pour l'avancement des connaissances libres www.wikimedia.ch Skype: charles.andres.wmch IRC://irc.freenode.net/wikimedia-ch
-----Message d'origine----- De : education-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:education-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] De la part de Everton Zanella Alvarenga Envoyé : lundi 26 mars 2012 05:52 À : education@lists.wikimedia.org Objet : [Wikimedia Education] Bringing academia to Wikimedia projects and events (it was Education Digest, Vol 10, Issue 3)
(Adapting the subject to an adequate one)
Hi all,
this is a very important issue and we all involved in the global efforts to involve universities to improve Wikipedia - and, if I may add, raise awareness on the Wikimedia movement, which we could go deep, but let's retrict ourselves to the apparently solely goal at the moment.
Wikimania is far from an academic event. Fact. Only a few academics would be interested in attending to it or, if they would be interested, would have time for it. Fact.
The first time I've heard about Wikimania was during my masters studies, in 2005. I was already somewhat involved with Wikipedia, but even as a masters student, I would never think about going to what I've read at that time what is this event about. Instead I would go to a summer school (as I did in a previous year) or an academic conference that would be regarded by funding agencies. This is the view of a MS student, you can imagine a researcher who has to give number of papers/conferences/books and so on to survive inside the academic world (well, the well know publish or perish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publish_or_perish)
Frank has asked me to see with the five professors in Brazil who joined the Wikipedia Education Program if they would be interested in a meeting in the mid of the semester to share their, his and ambassadors experiences with the program. I've asked three of them until now (one is Juliana who raised the subject we are discussing here, who already gave the nice idea to transform the event in an academic meeting) and my feeling is that they will attend when they have time, which is not that much - waiting other professors answers and reactions to Juliana's proposal.
I don't know very much about Wikipedia Academy http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Academy and I'd love to hear more details about it and if it's aligned to the purpose of bringing attention of the academic world to Wikimedia projects, not only as a research field (indeed, a very interesting one, as Benkler teach us, for instance), but maybe as a source of inspiration from interesting peer production process that academia has a lot to learn - I believe that in a ideal world, if most forms of knowledge was freely shared, raw reserarch data, for instance [1], the processos of building new knowledge would be much faster (this is far from happening, if it will).
I belive that professors joining these global education efforts are usually those commited to education. Those I've choose are.* I thnk one way to bring more attention from academia would be to invest more thoughts (I am not saying it was not invested) on how would professors, key figures in this program, together. The program is expanding now. How will professors, with such scarce time, share their experiences and how would they benefit from it?
I believe those are a few and important challenges to make the program expand inside academia.
Best,
Tom
*Besides most public universities in Brazil have education as one of their pillars, research comes first. I've seen a lot of professors who produce amazing educational resources, but they are treated in the same way as those professors who simply copy and paste American or European books on the blockboard, instead of using some of their time to do what is written in the contract with the institution he or she works.
[1] http://pantonprinciples.org/
On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 11:51 PM, Bart bart.humphries@gmail.com wrote:
In other words, for academics to take it seriously (ask for time off, volunteer time to write a paper, spend money to travel out there, stay at a hotel, eat, etc.), it has to be run like a "real" academic conference. I could go present a topic and speak for an hour at my local Rotary club (and I have), but it's not really going to mean much professionally and I wouldn't be putting it on either my resume or curriculum vitae. Presenting a topic in a somewhat competitive forum where the speakers are vetted and the presentation topics have generally been run through some basic fact checking to make sure they're not complete bunkum would be something of a "feather in my cap", something that I would definitely put down on at least my curriculum vitae.
So, the question should be, is Wikimania a "real" academic conference, or a fan convention (or both)? I'd argue that, in its current state, Wikimania is basically a fan convention, designed as a big meet-and-greet for Wikipedia editors, with some presentations given that likely haven't been put up against any sort of test other than "It's not Time Cube, right?" That's cool, I enjoy fun conventions, but it's going to be difficult to attract "serious" academics to come as presenters.
Bart User:Banaticus
-- Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom) Wikimedia Brasil Wikimedia Foundation
_______________________________________________ Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education