*NOT a CFP!* ;)
Hello all!
I have been thinking about using the criterion of a minimum number of bytes to evaluate the students' edits for my next course - together with content, of course. This came up because I noticed some students were editing as little as possible, and this time I want the whole group to start new articles from scratch.
Has anyone used this approach? Pros/cons? What would you consider a reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Juliana.
Hello Juliana I have a project for high-schools which is called "Translator's corner". Schoolchildren translate from other languages one part of different articles. It's like a competition who will translate more. So there I count the translations via bytes and it stimulates them. They do everything in order their bytes chould grow higher. Here is the link of my projecthttps://hy.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D5%8E%D5%AB%D6%84%D5%AB%D5%BA%D5%A5%D5%A4%D5%AB%D5%A1:%D5%86%D5%A1%D5%AD%D5%A1%D5%A3%D5%AB%D5%AE:%D4%B9%D5%A1%D6%80%D5%A3%D5%B4%D5%A1%D5%B6%D5%B9%D5%AB_%D5%A1%D5%B6%D5%AF%D5%B5%D5%B8%D6%82%D5%B6#.D4.B9.D5.A1.D6.80.D5.A3.D5.B4.D5.A1.D5.B6.D5.AB.D5.B9.D5.B6.D5.A5.D6.80.D5.AB_.D5.B4.D5.AB.D5.A1.D5.BE.D5.B8.D6.80.D5.B6.D5.A5.D6.80but it's in Armenian. You can see the bytes of the schoolchildren. P.S. Will you please tell me a bit more of your project? Sorry if I have missed something. I'm new in this mailing list, may be you have already told.
Lilit
Lilit Tarkhanyan Wikimedia Armenia Board member Education program leader Aygestan 1/30 tel. +374 55 534 011 +374 10 575397
On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 5:12 AM, Juliana Bastos Marques < domusaurea@gmail.com> wrote:
*NOT a CFP!* ;)
Hello all!
I have been thinking about using the criterion of a minimum number of bytes to evaluate the students' edits for my next course - together with content, of course. This came up because I noticed some students were editing as little as possible, and this time I want the whole group to start new articles from scratch.
Has anyone used this approach? Pros/cons? What would you consider a reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Juliana.
-- www.domusaurea.org
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Lilit, thanks for sharing. My Armenian is not very fluent, but it looks a very interesting idea!
I work with undergraduate History students. This is the third time I'm grading Wikipedia articles, and I want them to use the subjects, discussions and bibliography we have in class, together with translations. I've been selecting some articles which are missing in the Portuguese Wikipedia about the Hellenistic world. So far, I've been collecting new articles on this table: https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usu%C3%A1ria:Domusaurea/O_Mundo_Helen%C3%ADsti....
Do you grade the number of bytes based on total edits or on the final version?
Juliana.
On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 8:25 AM, Lilit Tarkhanyan < lilit.tarkhanyan@wikimedia.am> wrote:
Hello Juliana I have a project for high-schools which is called "Translator's corner". Schoolchildren translate from other languages one part of different articles. It's like a competition who will translate more. So there I count the translations via bytes and it stimulates them. They do everything in order their bytes chould grow higher. Here is the link of my projecthttps://hy.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D5%8E%D5%AB%D6%84%D5%AB%D5%BA%D5%A5%D5%A4%D5%AB%D5%A1:%D5%86%D5%A1%D5%AD%D5%A1%D5%A3%D5%AB%D5%AE:%D4%B9%D5%A1%D6%80%D5%A3%D5%B4%D5%A1%D5%B6%D5%B9%D5%AB_%D5%A1%D5%B6%D5%AF%D5%B5%D5%B8%D6%82%D5%B6#.D4.B9.D5.A1.D6.80.D5.A3.D5.B4.D5.A1.D5.B6.D5.AB.D5.B9.D5.B6.D5.A5.D6.80.D5.AB_.D5.B4.D5.AB.D5.A1.D5.BE.D5.B8.D6.80.D5.B6.D5.A5.D6.80but it's in Armenian. You can see the bytes of the schoolchildren. P.S. Will you please tell me a bit more of your project? Sorry if I have missed something. I'm new in this mailing list, may be you have already told.
Lilit
Lilit Tarkhanyan Wikimedia Armenia Board member Education program leader Aygestan 1/30 tel. +374 55 534 011 +374 10 575397
On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 5:12 AM, Juliana Bastos Marques < domusaurea@gmail.com> wrote:
*NOT a CFP!* ;)
Hello all!
I have been thinking about using the criterion of a minimum number of bytes to evaluate the students' edits for my next course - together with content, of course. This came up because I noticed some students were editing as little as possible, and this time I want the whole group to start new articles from scratch.
Has anyone used this approach? Pros/cons? What would you consider a reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Juliana.
-- www.domusaurea.org
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Dear Juliana, in my project each language has its own worktable where the schoolchildren translate the parts. When the translation is over and the checker has checked the translation (the checker makes corrections, etc.), schoolchildren transfer the content from the worktable to the article. And I grade the bytes based on the final version. I agree with Craig that it is easy to inflate the bytecount by inserting templates. I don't face such problem in my project though I don't see any problem here cause creating templates or filling infoboxes is also editing and it is also should be taking into account. An article isn't a wiki article without such templates and I think that we should evaluate each edit of students in order they could feel that everything they do is evaluated.
Lilit
Lilit Tarkhanyan Wikimedia Armenia Board member Education program leader Aygestan 1/30 tel. +374 55 534 011 +374 10 575397
On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 4:30 PM, Juliana Bastos Marques < domusaurea@gmail.com> wrote:
Lilit, thanks for sharing. My Armenian is not very fluent, but it looks a very interesting idea!
I work with undergraduate History students. This is the third time I'm grading Wikipedia articles, and I want them to use the subjects, discussions and bibliography we have in class, together with translations. I've been selecting some articles which are missing in the Portuguese Wikipedia about the Hellenistic world. So far, I've been collecting new articles on this table: https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usu%C3%A1ria:Domusaurea/O_Mundo_Helen%C3%ADsti....
Do you grade the number of bytes based on total edits or on the final version?
Juliana.
On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 8:25 AM, Lilit Tarkhanyan < lilit.tarkhanyan@wikimedia.am> wrote:
Hello Juliana I have a project for high-schools which is called "Translator's corner". Schoolchildren translate from other languages one part of different articles. It's like a competition who will translate more. So there I count the translations via bytes and it stimulates them. They do everything in order their bytes chould grow higher. Here is the link of my projecthttps://hy.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D5%8E%D5%AB%D6%84%D5%AB%D5%BA%D5%A5%D5%A4%D5%AB%D5%A1:%D5%86%D5%A1%D5%AD%D5%A1%D5%A3%D5%AB%D5%AE:%D4%B9%D5%A1%D6%80%D5%A3%D5%B4%D5%A1%D5%B6%D5%B9%D5%AB_%D5%A1%D5%B6%D5%AF%D5%B5%D5%B8%D6%82%D5%B6#.D4.B9.D5.A1.D6.80.D5.A3.D5.B4.D5.A1.D5.B6.D5.AB.D5.B9.D5.B6.D5.A5.D6.80.D5.AB_.D5.B4.D5.AB.D5.A1.D5.BE.D5.B8.D6.80.D5.B6.D5.A5.D6.80but it's in Armenian. You can see the bytes of the schoolchildren. P.S. Will you please tell me a bit more of your project? Sorry if I have missed something. I'm new in this mailing list, may be you have already told.
Lilit
Lilit Tarkhanyan Wikimedia Armenia Board member Education program leader Aygestan 1/30 tel. +374 55 534 011 +374 10 575397
On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 5:12 AM, Juliana Bastos Marques < domusaurea@gmail.com> wrote:
*NOT a CFP!* ;)
Hello all!
I have been thinking about using the criterion of a minimum number of bytes to evaluate the students' edits for my next course - together with content, of course. This came up because I noticed some students were editing as little as possible, and this time I want the whole group to start new articles from scratch.
Has anyone used this approach? Pros/cons? What would you consider a reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Juliana.
-- www.domusaurea.org
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
-- www.domusaurea.org
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
The obvious problem I see is that adding a lot of bytes to an article doesn't necessarily equate to adding a lot of *value* to an article. On enwiki at least, it's probably very easy to inflate the bytecount by inserting superfluous templates and the like into an article, without actually adding any content. At most I'd recommend using it as a rough guide for students as to when an article *may* be ready, and then assess the articles qualitatively after that.
Cheers, Craig
On 28 January 2014 11:12, Juliana Bastos Marques domusaurea@gmail.comwrote:
*NOT a CFP!* ;)
Hello all!
I have been thinking about using the criterion of a minimum number of bytes to evaluate the students' edits for my next course - together with content, of course. This came up because I noticed some students were editing as little as possible, and this time I want the whole group to start new articles from scratch.
Has anyone used this approach? Pros/cons? What would you consider a reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Juliana.
-- www.domusaurea.org
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
What would you mean by "superfluous templates"? Infoboxes and such?
Juliana.
On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 10:31 AM, Craig Franklin <cfranklin@wikimedia.org.au
wrote:
The obvious problem I see is that adding a lot of bytes to an article doesn't necessarily equate to adding a lot of *value* to an article. On enwiki at least, it's probably very easy to inflate the bytecount by inserting superfluous templates and the like into an article, without actually adding any content. At most I'd recommend using it as a rough guide for students as to when an article *may* be ready, and then assess the articles qualitatively after that.
Cheers, Craig
On 28 January 2014 11:12, Juliana Bastos Marques domusaurea@gmail.comwrote:
*NOT a CFP!* ;)
Hello all!
I have been thinking about using the criterion of a minimum number of bytes to evaluate the students' edits for my next course - together with content, of course. This came up because I noticed some students were editing as little as possible, and this time I want the whole group to start new articles from scratch.
Has anyone used this approach? Pros/cons? What would you consider a reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Juliana.
-- www.domusaurea.org
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Indeed. The WMF repeatedly bandied around the number of bytes produced by education projects, and it was (understandably) hugely controversial, not least given the problems that the program has had with plagiarism (most notoriously with the Pune project).
I would strongly suggest that bytes are a very poor indication of success.
Take care
Jon
On Jan 28, 2014, at 4:31 AM, Craig Franklin cfranklin@wikimedia.org.au wrote:
The obvious problem I see is that adding a lot of bytes to an article doesn't necessarily equate to adding a lot of *value* to an article. On enwiki at least, it's probably very easy to inflate the bytecount by inserting superfluous templates and the like into an article, without actually adding any content. At most I'd recommend using it as a rough guide for students as to when an article may be ready, and then assess the articles qualitatively after that.
Cheers, Craig
On 28 January 2014 11:12, Juliana Bastos Marques domusaurea@gmail.com wrote: *NOT a CFP!* ;)
Hello all!
I have been thinking about using the criterion of a minimum number of bytes to evaluate the students' edits for my next course - together with content, of course. This came up because I noticed some students were editing as little as possible, and this time I want the whole group to start new articles from scratch.
Has anyone used this approach? Pros/cons? What would you consider a reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Juliana.
-- www.domusaurea.org
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
I forgot to mention a couple of important things I'm expecting to happen. First of all, I thought about measuring bytes *only after* the qualitative part is assessed (kinda like publishing guidelines, which I'm trying to make them acquainted with). But I think the reason this could work is because at least half of the enrolled students have already worked with me in other previous classes with Wikipedia editing. My idea is to make them help the other students learn how to edit during the course, together with the ambassador.
In the last course I offered, some students later got Good Article status, and they were very excited and proud (https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genotdel, https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filipa_de_Lencastre). This wasn't the main goal, but kept them engaged even months after the course. A Facebook group helped with continuous lively discussions - the students are always there, anyway. I'm also relying on word of mouth, which has actually been proven quite effective. ;)
Juliana.
On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 5:47 PM, Jon Beasley-Murray < jon.beasley-murray@ubc.ca> wrote:
Indeed. The WMF repeatedly bandied around the number of bytes produced by education projects, and it was (understandably) hugely controversial, not least given the problems that the program has had with plagiarism (most notoriously with the Pune project).
I would strongly suggest that bytes are a very poor indication of success.
Take care
Jon
On Jan 28, 2014, at 4:31 AM, Craig Franklin cfranklin@wikimedia.org.au wrote:
The obvious problem I see is that adding a lot of bytes to an article
doesn't necessarily equate to adding a lot of *value* to an article. On enwiki at least, it's probably very easy to inflate the bytecount by inserting superfluous templates and the like into an article, without actually adding any content. At most I'd recommend using it as a rough guide for students as to when an article may be ready, and then assess the articles qualitatively after that.
Cheers, Craig
On 28 January 2014 11:12, Juliana Bastos Marques domusaurea@gmail.com
wrote:
*NOT a CFP!* ;)
Hello all!
I have been thinking about using the criterion of a minimum number of
bytes to evaluate the students' edits for my next course - together with content, of course. This came up because I noticed some students were editing as little as possible, and this time I want the whole group to start new articles from scratch.
Has anyone used this approach? Pros/cons? What would you consider a
reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Juliana.
-- www.domusaurea.org
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 2:12 AM, Juliana Bastos Marques < domusaurea@gmail.com> wrote:
Has anyone used this approach? Pros/cons? What would you consider a reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Juliana.
I have seen this done for classes, but the problem sometimes becomes students look at it as a exercise in adding content but ignore Wikipedia guidelines. They end up adding essay like material, add information that makes existing tags worse in order to add material related to the course, etc.
Speculating, I would think a potential better criteria might be adding references to uncited materials related to the topic as there is a lot of unsourced material. They would be adding pure bytes by adding sources. It would also assist in making them more familiar with other sources that you may think valuable for them to be aware of.
This is definitely an interesting discussion that has been ongoing in the Arab world education programs as well.
In Egypt, the program adopted a byte threshold/goal in most classes. Bytes do allow for quick, surface level evaluation to see how much students are contributing. Our ambassadors seem to appreciate having a benchmark for student contributions, but we have also gotten pushback from the Arabic Wikipedian community fearing that the primary focus is quantity, and not quality contributions (like Craig mentions). Most of our students in Egypt do translation assignments, so it is often more important to select high quality content in the other language, and ensure that students are not copying and pasting machine translations and wikifying their contributions. I've noticed students in Egypt like having a numeric goal more than their teachers do.
Here's an example course pagehttps://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%88%D9%8A%D9%83%D9%8A%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%AF%D9%8A%D8%A7:%D8%A8%D8%B1%D9%86%D8%A7%D9%85%D8%AC_%D9%88%D9%8A%D9%83%D9%8A%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%AF%D9%8A%D8%A7_%D9%84%D9%84%D8%AA%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%8A%D9%85/%D9%85%D9%86%D8%A7%D9%87%D8%AC_%D8%AF%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%A9/%D9%84%D8%BA%D8%A9_%D8%A5%D9%86%D8%AC%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%B2%D9%8A%D8%A9%D8%8C_%D8%B1%D8%B6%D9%88%D9%89_%D9%82%D8%B7%D9%8A%D8%B7_4from an English translation class at Ain Shams University. You'll notice they set a 50kb threshold, and also have a section for additional contributions of 5kb each. (To compare these numbers to English/latin scripts, you should halve the bytes because of the Arabic script which "inflates" the number):
Like all assignment guidelines, having a byte benchmark might be a necessary evil, just like traditional writing assignments tend to have minimum word count or pages. Depends on your context and goals. It would depend on the rest of the assignment and the rubric you would use to evaluate the assignment. Giving more weight to proper writing style and citations would probably be a good place to start.
Juliana, it does sound like you want your students to contribute more since they're stopping when they reach the minimum. That sounds like normal student behavior. Would there be a different way to motivate students to keep editing with extra points for going beyond the minimum thresholds, for example? Or a competition for number of bytes, articles created, citations added (they could all have different weights and be evaluated in conjunction with quality checks).
I'd love to hear more thoughts on the topic since it's something I struggle with as well!
Tighe
On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 9:06 AM, Laura Hale laura@fanhistory.com wrote:
On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 2:12 AM, Juliana Bastos Marques < domusaurea@gmail.com> wrote:
Has anyone used this approach? Pros/cons? What would you consider a reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Juliana.
I have seen this done for classes, but the problem sometimes becomes students look at it as a exercise in adding content but ignore Wikipedia guidelines. They end up adding essay like material, add information that makes existing tags worse in order to add material related to the course, etc.
Speculating, I would think a potential better criteria might be adding references to uncited materials related to the topic as there is a lot of unsourced material. They would be adding pure bytes by adding sources. It would also assist in making them more familiar with other sources that you may think valuable for them to be aware of.
-- twitter: purplepopple
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Tighe makes a really great point that it seems like normal student behavior to meet the bare minimum when possible. In the US and Canada, we measure bytes as a program to evaluate how we're doing from semester to semester (has our impact increased while our resources have stayed the same?). On a class level, though, professors rarely mention bytes in their syllabus or grading rubric. When there is a minimum length, it usually takes the form of "500 words" or "2 sections". I don't think the minimum length is inherently bad if the students are otherwise set up to do great work (research, writing, understanding Wikipedia policies and norms, etc.). If you can assume most of them are doing good work, then more content is likely better.
Most of our professors probably don't grade in this way simply because they don't know how to measure bytes contributed (it's not one of the training topics we cover). Similarly, I haven't seen students trying to inflate their content contribution with templates mostly because they don't know about them or how to use them (they're new editors).
I really like the idea of making it more competitive, which we also did during the pilot of the program in the US. Of course, then the professor ideally is savvy enough not to count copy & paste from a sandbox into the article namespace when most of that content existed before they worked on it (this was a problem we saw with our tool). Hopefully the education extension will eventually tie WikiMetrics into it, which should make the content quantity easier for students/professors to monitor and measure.
On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 8:28 AM, Tighe Flanagan tflanagan@wikimedia.orgwrote:
This is definitely an interesting discussion that has been ongoing in the Arab world education programs as well.
In Egypt, the program adopted a byte threshold/goal in most classes. Bytes do allow for quick, surface level evaluation to see how much students are contributing. Our ambassadors seem to appreciate having a benchmark for student contributions, but we have also gotten pushback from the Arabic Wikipedian community fearing that the primary focus is quantity, and not quality contributions (like Craig mentions). Most of our students in Egypt do translation assignments, so it is often more important to select high quality content in the other language, and ensure that students are not copying and pasting machine translations and wikifying their contributions. I've noticed students in Egypt like having a numeric goal more than their teachers do.
Here's an example course pagehttps://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%88%D9%8A%D9%83%D9%8A%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%AF%D9%8A%D8%A7:%D8%A8%D8%B1%D9%86%D8%A7%D9%85%D8%AC_%D9%88%D9%8A%D9%83%D9%8A%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%AF%D9%8A%D8%A7_%D9%84%D9%84%D8%AA%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%8A%D9%85/%D9%85%D9%86%D8%A7%D9%87%D8%AC_%D8%AF%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%A9/%D9%84%D8%BA%D8%A9_%D8%A5%D9%86%D8%AC%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%B2%D9%8A%D8%A9%D8%8C_%D8%B1%D8%B6%D9%88%D9%89_%D9%82%D8%B7%D9%8A%D8%B7_4from an English translation class at Ain Shams University. You'll notice they set a 50kb threshold, and also have a section for additional contributions of 5kb each. (To compare these numbers to English/latin scripts, you should halve the bytes because of the Arabic script which "inflates" the number):
Like all assignment guidelines, having a byte benchmark might be a necessary evil, just like traditional writing assignments tend to have minimum word count or pages. Depends on your context and goals. It would depend on the rest of the assignment and the rubric you would use to evaluate the assignment. Giving more weight to proper writing style and citations would probably be a good place to start.
Juliana, it does sound like you want your students to contribute more since they're stopping when they reach the minimum. That sounds like normal student behavior. Would there be a different way to motivate students to keep editing with extra points for going beyond the minimum thresholds, for example? Or a competition for number of bytes, articles created, citations added (they could all have different weights and be evaluated in conjunction with quality checks).
I'd love to hear more thoughts on the topic since it's something I struggle with as well!
Tighe
On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 9:06 AM, Laura Hale laura@fanhistory.com wrote:
On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 2:12 AM, Juliana Bastos Marques < domusaurea@gmail.com> wrote:
Has anyone used this approach? Pros/cons? What would you consider a reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Juliana.
I have seen this done for classes, but the problem sometimes becomes students look at it as a exercise in adding content but ignore Wikipedia guidelines. They end up adding essay like material, add information that makes existing tags worse in order to add material related to the course, etc.
Speculating, I would think a potential better criteria might be adding references to uncited materials related to the topic as there is a lot of unsourced material. They would be adding pure bytes by adding sources. It would also assist in making them more familiar with other sources that you may think valuable for them to be aware of.
-- twitter: purplepopple
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
-- Tighe Flanagan Arab World Education Program Manger Wikimedia Foundation
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
And turning bytes added into a competition was especially controversial, though it was one of Frank Schulenberg's favourite devices: he had a "leaderboard" and all. There is some discussion here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Canada_Education_Program/Leader....
In line with the WMF and the education program's tendency to take things off wiki whenever they came upon disagreement, they then moved it to outreach (see http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia%3aWikipedia%3aCanada_Education_...), before eliminating the traces from en.wiki, replacing it with a meaningless redirect elsewhere: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Canada_Education_Progra....
Take care
Jon
On Jan 28, 2014, at 10:10 AM, Jami Mathewson jami@wikiedfoundation.org wrote:
Tighe makes a really great point that it seems like normal student behavior to meet the bare minimum when possible. In the US and Canada, we measure bytes as a program to evaluate how we're doing from semester to semester (has our impact increased while our resources have stayed the same?). On a class level, though, professors rarely mention bytes in their syllabus or grading rubric. When there is a minimum length, it usually takes the form of "500 words" or "2 sections". I don't think the minimum length is inherently bad if the students are otherwise set up to do great work (research, writing, understanding Wikipedia policies and norms, etc.). If you can assume most of them are doing good work, then more content is likely better.
Most of our professors probably don't grade in this way simply because they don't know how to measure bytes contributed (it's not one of the training topics we cover). Similarly, I haven't seen students trying to inflate their content contribution with templates mostly because they don't know about them or how to use them (they're new editors).
I really like the idea of making it more competitive, which we also did during the pilot of the program in the US. Of course, then the professor ideally is savvy enough not to count copy & paste from a sandbox into the article namespace when most of that content existed before they worked on it (this was a problem we saw with our tool). Hopefully the education extension will eventually tie WikiMetrics into it, which should make the content quantity easier for students/professors to monitor and measure.
On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 8:28 AM, Tighe Flanagan tflanagan@wikimedia.org wrote: This is definitely an interesting discussion that has been ongoing in the Arab world education programs as well.
In Egypt, the program adopted a byte threshold/goal in most classes. Bytes do allow for quick, surface level evaluation to see how much students are contributing. Our ambassadors seem to appreciate having a benchmark for student contributions, but we have also gotten pushback from the Arabic Wikipedian community fearing that the primary focus is quantity, and not quality contributions (like Craig mentions). Most of our students in Egypt do translation assignments, so it is often more important to select high quality content in the other language, and ensure that students are not copying and pasting machine translations and wikifying their contributions. I've noticed students in Egypt like having a numeric goal more than their teachers do.
Here's an example course page from an English translation class at Ain Shams University. You'll notice they set a 50kb threshold, and also have a section for additional contributions of 5kb each. (To compare these numbers to English/latin scripts, you should halve the bytes because of the Arabic script which "inflates" the number):
Like all assignment guidelines, having a byte benchmark might be a necessary evil, just like traditional writing assignments tend to have minimum word count or pages. Depends on your context and goals. It would depend on the rest of the assignment and the rubric you would use to evaluate the assignment. Giving more weight to proper writing style and citations would probably be a good place to start.
Juliana, it does sound like you want your students to contribute more since they're stopping when they reach the minimum. That sounds like normal student behavior. Would there be a different way to motivate students to keep editing with extra points for going beyond the minimum thresholds, for example? Or a competition for number of bytes, articles created, citations added (they could all have different weights and be evaluated in conjunction with quality checks).
I'd love to hear more thoughts on the topic since it's something I struggle with as well!
Tighe
On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 9:06 AM, Laura Hale laura@fanhistory.com wrote:
On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 2:12 AM, Juliana Bastos Marques domusaurea@gmail.com wrote:
Has anyone used this approach? Pros/cons? What would you consider a reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Juliana.
I have seen this done for classes, but the problem sometimes becomes students look at it as a exercise in adding content but ignore Wikipedia guidelines. They end up adding essay like material, add information that makes existing tags worse in order to add material related to the course, etc.
Speculating, I would think a potential better criteria might be adding references to uncited materials related to the topic as there is a lot of unsourced material. They would be adding pure bytes by adding sources. It would also assist in making them more familiar with other sources that you may think valuable for them to be aware of.
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Our organization supports the Wikipedia Education Program in the United States and Canada. _______________________________________________ Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
I belive Frank will like your approach. You should let him know. :)
Prizes depending on the number of bytes would be really cool and pedagogical.
2014-01-27 Juliana Bastos Marques domusaurea@gmail.com:
*NOT a CFP!* ;)
Hello all!
I have been thinking about using the criterion of a minimum number of bytes to evaluate the students' edits for my next course - together with content, of course. This came up because I noticed some students were editing as little as possible, and this time I want the whole group to start new articles from scratch.
Has anyone used this approach? Pros/cons? What would you consider a reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Juliana.
-- www.domusaurea.org
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
And this was how I learned not to ask questions, ever.
Juliana
Enviado via iPhone
Em 31/01/2014, às 02:17, Everton Zanella Alvarenga everton.alvarenga@okfn.org escreveu:
I belive Frank will like your approach. You should let him know. :)
Prizes depending on the number of bytes would be really cool and pedagogical.
2014-01-27 Juliana Bastos Marques domusaurea@gmail.com:
*NOT a CFP!* ;)
Hello all!
I have been thinking about using the criterion of a minimum number of bytes to evaluate the students' edits for my next course - together with content, of course. This came up because I noticed some students were editing as little as possible, and this time I want the whole group to start new articles from scratch.
Has anyone used this approach? Pros/cons? What would you consider a reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Juliana.
-- www.domusaurea.org
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
-- Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom) OKF Brasil - Rede pelo Conhecimento Livre http://br.okfn.org
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Juliana, please don't worry about the question and discussions that followed your email. The reason why the thread became controversial and a long debate is because assessing articles quality has been hard for everyone I guess. Not an individual problem, but a movement problem for which nobody has the perfect answer.
I think some good inputs came out of this and that's obviously your call to decide the best way to grade your students. You've been constantly experimenting and this is important to find pros and cons of the methodologies you try.
Perhaps, establishing a minimum contribution (a complete paragraph with references? I don't know) could help you establish a baseline and you wouldn't have to be counting bytes (we can help you on this, but believe me, it can be hard, especially when they work in groups, or forget to login etc).
Oona
On 31 January 2014 08:09, domusaurea domusaurea@gmail.com wrote:
And this was how I learned not to ask questions, ever.
Juliana
Enviado via iPhone
Em 31/01/2014, às 02:17, Everton Zanella Alvarenga <
everton.alvarenga@okfn.org> escreveu:
I belive Frank will like your approach. You should let him know. :)
Prizes depending on the number of bytes would be really cool and
pedagogical.
2014-01-27 Juliana Bastos Marques domusaurea@gmail.com:
*NOT a CFP!* ;)
Hello all!
I have been thinking about using the criterion of a minimum number of
bytes
to evaluate the students' edits for my next course - together with
content,
of course. This came up because I noticed some students were editing as little as possible, and this time I want the whole group to start new articles from scratch.
Has anyone used this approach? Pros/cons? What would you consider a reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Juliana.
-- www.domusaurea.org
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
-- Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom) OKF Brasil - Rede pelo Conhecimento Livre http://br.okfn.org
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 8:56 PM, Oona Castro ocastro@wikimedia.org wrote:
... that's obviously your call to decide the best way to grade your students....
Haven't we been using program-wide student assessment guidelines instead of asking teachers to entirely design their own in the past?
Should we apply the process in http://www.pareonline.net/pdf/v17n4.pdf to the existing article evaluation policy criteria? It is very good. It would take some effort to do, but well within available resources at the Foundation's disposal, and the Education Program is one of its most important efforts. That factor analysis process is no more than a few weeks' work. The hard part is scoring a significant number of student achievements according to an initial new rubric. Deriving a smaller equivalent rubric is much easier than the initial scoring of 35-50 students' past efforts.
I agree with Oona. No problem with the question at all! Indeed, another lesson we can learn from Frank and the WMF more generally is that backing off for fear of disagreements is only counterproductive.
But to put this in more positive terms... Again, I do think that the WP quality assessment criteria are helpful bases for assessing much student work on the encyclopedia. So rather than cumulative material, I'd ask students to think about things such as comprehensiveness, balance, range of sources, and so on. What belongs in an article on a novel (say): plot summary, yes; theme analysis or account of critical reaction, yes; literary and historical context; and so on and so forth. It is much more difficult to write a *balanced* article (in all senses of the term) than simply to write a *long* one.
Personally, in class I focus above all on the notion that students should contribute *regularly*: i.e. that they should start editing early, and continue throughout the semester. This goes against their (natural?) tendencies, encouraged by term papers etc., to leave everything to the last minute. But it helps them get into the notion that writing on Wikipedia is a matter of *re*-writing and revising, rather than simply dumping pre-prepared text.
(Ideally, this will also advance them towards the notion that all writing, even for term papers etc., is also a matter of rewriting and revising... This can be one of the great pedagogical benefits of using Wikipedia in class.)
Take care
Jon
On Jan 31, 2014, at 4:56 AM, Oona Castro ocastro@wikimedia.org wrote:
Juliana, please don't worry about the question and discussions that followed your email. The reason why the thread became controversial and a long debate is because assessing articles quality has been hard for everyone I guess. Not an individual problem, but a movement problem for which nobody has the perfect answer.
I think some good inputs came out of this and that's obviously your call to decide the best way to grade your students. You've been constantly experimenting and this is important to find pros and cons of the methodologies you try.
Perhaps, establishing a minimum contribution (a complete paragraph with references? I don't know) could help you establish a baseline and you wouldn't have to be counting bytes (we can help you on this, but believe me, it can be hard, especially when they work in groups, or forget to login etc).
Oona
On 31 January 2014 08:09, domusaurea domusaurea@gmail.com wrote: And this was how I learned not to ask questions, ever.
Juliana
Enviado via iPhone
Em 31/01/2014, às 02:17, Everton Zanella Alvarenga everton.alvarenga@okfn.org escreveu:
I belive Frank will like your approach. You should let him know. :)
Prizes depending on the number of bytes would be really cool and pedagogical.
2014-01-27 Juliana Bastos Marques domusaurea@gmail.com:
*NOT a CFP!* ;)
Hello all!
I have been thinking about using the criterion of a minimum number of bytes to evaluate the students' edits for my next course - together with content, of course. This came up because I noticed some students were editing as little as possible, and this time I want the whole group to start new articles from scratch.
Has anyone used this approach? Pros/cons? What would you consider a reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Juliana.
-- www.domusaurea.org
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
-- Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom) OKF Brasil - Rede pelo Conhecimento Livre http://br.okfn.org
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
In my experience, the best writers and the best students are able to convey information concisely - so it's a question of how much information is captured. Measurable perhaps in - references, equations, images; - outline length, and a set of key sections; - the # of internal links to related articles; the # of inbound links from other articles.
For a given amount of information, I prefer work to be as clear as possible: a combination of simple language (which you can measure automatically and spot-check) and fewer words, rather than more words.
Measuring character count is often counter-productive: it inspires repetitive writing, mentioning barely-relevant topics to fill space, rewriting material that exists elsewhere rather than linking to it, and writing that is repetitive.
Sam.
On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 8:12 PM, Juliana Bastos Marques domusaurea@gmail.com wrote:
*NOT a CFP!* ;)
Hello all!
I have been thinking about using the criterion of a minimum number of bytes to evaluate the students' edits for my next course - together with content, of course. This came up because I noticed some students were editing as little as possible, and this time I want the whole group to start new articles from scratch.
Has anyone used this approach? Pros/cons? What would you consider a reasonable number for the minimum of bytes in the final article?
Juliana.
-- www.domusaurea.org
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education