Hi All,
Here's a short update on our campus related activities:
(1) Global university program: Pune pilot started
In March, we finalized our strategy paper for the expansion of our university program activities [1]. Now, we started to kick off a Campus Ambassador Program in India. Hisham Mundol, who is leading the work in India, selected Pune as the pilot location for the India Campus Program.
Pune [2] is reported to have the largest number of colleges and universities of any city in the world: about 100 colleges and universities attended by more than 200,000 students. Also, there is a vibrant and active community of Wikipedians in Pune which will provide support to incoming editors.
Over the last few days we asked Wikipedia readers in India to apply for the role of Wikipedia Campus Ambassadors. We got hundreds of applications, of which 50 are from people in Pune.
We are now screening the applications. In the second half of May, we plan to stage the first Campus Ambassador Training in India.
(2) Students add more than 1.4 million characters to English Wikipedia in March
Recent numbers show the huge impact that Wikipedia classroom activities can have on our content: in March 2011, participants of the Public Policy Initiative [3] added more than 1.4 million characters to the article namespace on the English Wikipedia. That's more than 960 printed pages (at 1,500 characters per page).
Moreover, an first analysis conducted by Amy Roth (Research Analyst for the Public Policy Initiative) indicates that those contributions improve the article quality by 60%.
I will keep you updated on our further progress.
Frank
[1] http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_University_Program [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Pune [3] http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Public_Policy_Initiative
Thanks for your report, Frank.
Am 19.04.11 18:17 schrieb Frank Schulenburg:
(2) Students add more than 1.4 million characters to English Wikipedia in March
Recent numbers show the huge impact that Wikipedia classroom activities can have on our content: in March 2011, participants of the Public Policy Initiative [3] added more than 1.4 million characters to the article namespace on the English Wikipedia. That's more than 960 printed pages (at 1,500 characters per page).
Moreover, an first analysis conducted by Amy Roth (Research Analyst for the Public Policy Initiative) indicates that those contributions improve the article quality by 60%.
Could you please elaborate on how "article quality" was assessed, or rather measured here? What does it mean to say that "article quality was improved by 60%"?
Thanks in advance.
Regards, Jürgen.
Could you please elaborate on how "article quality" was assessed, or rather measured here? What does it mean to say that "article quality was improved by 60%"?
The assessment of quality was based on the metric developed for the Public Policy Initiative, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Poli... .
Alex Stinson
Am 19.04.11 22:38 schrieb Alex Stinson:
Could you please elaborate on how "article quality" was assessed, or rather measured here? What does it mean to say that "article quality was improved by 60%"?The assessment of quality was based on the metric developed for the Public Policy Initiative, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Poli... .
Thanks, Alex, I did not know about that page. Interesting approach, based on the principles of Wikipedia. The most controversial point is clearly "comprehensiveness" because you have to be an expert in your field in order to assess this, and there will be a number of opinions in most cases on what "comprehensiveness" will mean.
Regards, Jürgen.
[snip] The most controversial point is clearly "comprehensiveness" because you have to be an expert in your field in order to assess this, and there will be a number of opinions in most cases on what "comprehensiveness" will mean.
Hi Jürgen,
Yes, and some of the people who rated the Public Policy articles written by the students were experts. Here's how we did it:
Amy Roth, our Research Analyst, recruited a group of volunteers for the assessment. This group is made up of both policy experts and experienced Wikipedians. The policy experts all have graduate degrees in public policy or a related field from top universities, including: Berkeley, Boise, Brandeis, Georgetown, Pennsylvania, Pepperdine, Sacramento, and Syracuse. Policy experts were recruited through alumni email lists of many universities. Wikipedians were recruited through direct invitation on their user talk pages and were selected for quality assessment experience and interest in public policy topics. In the fall there were six policy expert and fifteen Wikipedian assessors (1:2.5, PE:WP). This spring there are twenty-five policy experts and eleven Wikipedians (2.3:1, PE:WP). Over the course of both terms there have been a total of twenty-eight policy experts and seventeen Wikipedians on the assessment team.
Please let me know if you have further questions,
Frank