Hi folks,
I want to open discussion and hear some practical ideas or real stories about projects with large scale editing participation, or how to distribute assessment to the editors/students who are geographically distributed throughout the country.
For example, let's say that we want to recruit 10000 students grouped in class groups in particular schools to work on biology topics. Each school must follow the teaching plan / time-line according to the adopted methodology, i.e. they start with general biological terms then with kingdoms, ecosystems, interactions of living bing in ecosystem, evolution, and so on ... And the teachers give one or two assessment per student of biology in particular class in particular school, to write new or improve already written article in wikipedia. How to menage this process? How to measure student work? The goals are to create maximal number of articles with good quality. How to deal with projects of this kind in limited time if you have time window of 6 months to start and finish the project.
Any idea,
Dimce Grozdanoski Wikimedia Macedonia
A colleague of mine from our geology department has run article improvement projects for US undergraduates, and he found it very beneficial to have the main editing work done on a separate geology wiki (running Mediawiki) on a college server. Pictures were still uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (and therefore could be read in the college wiki). He was easily able to use the history feature to track students' contributions. Once the work was completed, the professor himself did the edit, presumably after checking for outside edits done while the project was ongoing. Students were able to improve Wikipedia, and see their real-world impact (a very poor article is now good and gets 70,000 hits a year).
For what you're proposing, I think a separate wiki like this would be essential. That way the chaos is contained and the Wikipedia biologists aren't going nuts; also, you can assess the students' contributions more easily. Once the work is complete, improved articles can be integrated into the main Wikipedia and everyone benefits.
Martin
Martin A. Walker Department of Chemistry State University of New York at Potsdam +1 (315) 267-2271 walkerma@potsdam.edu
On 10/2/2012 10:51 AM, Dimce Grozdanoski wrote:
Hi folks,
I want to open discussion and hear some practical ideas or real stories about projects with large scale editing participation, or how to distribute assessment to the editors/students who are geographically distributed throughout the country.
For example, let's say that we want to recruit 10000 students grouped in class groups in particular schools to work on biology topics. Each school must follow the teaching plan / time-line according to the adopted methodology, i.e. they start with general biological terms then with kingdoms, ecosystems, interactions of living bing in ecosystem, evolution, and so on ... And the teachers give one or two assessment per student of biology in particular class in particular school, to write new or improve already written article in wikipedia. How to menage this process? How to measure student work? The goals are to create maximal number of articles with good quality. How to deal with projects of this kind in limited time if you have time window of 6 months to start and finish the project.
Any idea,
Dimce Grozdanoski Wikimedia Macedonia
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
I worry a bit about your mention of "Once the work was completed, the professor himself did the edit, presumably after checking for outside edits done while the project was ongoing." As far as Wikipedia's licensing goes, that raises a lot of questions about proper attribution.
- GorillaWarfare
On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 11:57 AM, Martin Walker walkerma@potsdam.edu wrote:
A colleague of mine from our geology department has run article improvement projects for US undergraduates, and he found it very beneficial to have the main editing work done on a separate geology wiki (running Mediawiki) on a college server. Pictures were still uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (and therefore could be read in the college wiki). He was easily able to use the history feature to track students' contributions. Once the work was completed, the professor himself did the edit, presumably after checking for outside edits done while the project was ongoing. Students were able to improve Wikipedia, and see their real-world impact (a very poor article is now good and gets 70,000 hits a year).
For what you're proposing, I think a separate wiki like this would be essential. That way the chaos is contained and the Wikipedia biologists aren't going nuts; also, you can assess the students' contributions more easily. Once the work is complete, improved articles can be integrated into the main Wikipedia and everyone benefits.
Martin
Martin A. Walker Department of Chemistry State University of New York at Potsdam +1 (315) 267-2271 walkerma@potsdam.edu
On 10/2/2012 10:51 AM, Dimce Grozdanoski wrote:
Hi folks,
I want to open discussion and hear some practical ideas or real stories about projects with large scale editing participation, or how to distribute assessment to the editors/students who are geographically distributed throughout the country.
For example, let's say that we want to recruit 10000 students grouped in class groups in particular schools to work on biology topics. Each school must follow the teaching plan / time-line according to the adopted methodology, i.e. they start with general biological terms then with kingdoms, ecosystems, interactions of living bing in ecosystem, evolution, and so on ... And the teachers give one or two assessment per student of biology in particular class in particular school, to write new or improve already written article in wikipedia. How to menage this process? How to measure student work? The goals are to create maximal number of articles with good quality. How to deal with projects of this kind in limited time if you have time window of 6 months to start and finish the project.
Any idea,
Dimce Grozdanoski Wikimedia Macedonia
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
Actually I think I would presume he did *not* check for outside edits. Academics tend to actually be a bit more dogmatic about their own view of how an article should look.
-----Original Message----- From: Gorilla Warfare gorillawarfarewikipedia@gmail.com To: education education@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wed, Oct 3, 2012 9:01 am Subject: Re: [Wikimedia Education] Quantitative Metric and Article Quality
I worry a bit about your mention of "Once the work was completed, the professor himself did the edit, presumably after checking for outside edits done while the project was ongoing." As far as Wikipedia's licensing goes, that raises a lot of questions about proper attribution.
- GorillaWarfare
On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 11:57 AM, Martin Walker walkerma@potsdam.edu wrote:
A colleague of mine from our geology department has run article improvement projects for US undergraduates, and he found it very beneficial to have the main editing work done on a separate geology wiki (running Mediawiki) on a college server. Pictures were still uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (and therefore could be read in the college wiki). He was easily able to use the history feature to track students' contributions. Once the work was completed, the professor himself did the edit, presumably after checking for outside edits done while the project was ongoing. Students were able to improve Wikipedia, and see their real-world impact (a very poor article is now good and gets 70,000 hits a year).
For what you're proposing, I think a separate wiki like this would be essential. That way the chaos is contained and the Wikipedia biologists aren't going nuts; also, you can assess the students' contributions more easily. Once the work is complete, improved articles can be integrated into the main Wikipedia and everyone benefits.
Martin
Martin A. Walker Department of Chemistry State University of New York at Potsdam +1 (315) 267-2271 walkerma@potsdam.edu
On 10/2/2012 10:51 AM, Dimce Grozdanoski wrote:
Hi folks,
I want to open discussion and hear some practical ideas or real stories about projects with large scale editing participation, or how to distribute assessment to the editors/students who are geographically distributed throughout the country.
For example, let's say that we want to recruit 10000 students grouped in class groups in particular schools to work on biology topics. Each school must follow the teaching plan / time-line according to the adopted methodology, i.e. they start with general biological terms then with kingdoms, ecosystems, interactions of living bing in ecosystem, evolution, and so on ... And the teachers give one or two assessment per student of biology in particular class in particular school, to write new or improve already written article in wikipedia. How to menage this process? How to measure student work? The goals are to create maximal number of articles with good quality. How to deal with projects of this kind in limited time if you have time window of 6 months to start and finish the project.
Any idea,
Dimce Grozdanoski Wikimedia Macedonia
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
Good point about attribution. Actually, I checked the edit, and I found the students made the final edits, but presumably after the content had been checked by the professor (who did NONE of the final edits). Another feature - the professor worked closely with the Geology WikiProject, who were aware of the class project going on - this is often wise!
Martin
Martin A. Walker Department of Chemistry State University of New York at Potsdam +1 (315) 267-2271 walkerma@potsdam.edu
On 10/3/2012 12:01 PM, Gorilla Warfare wrote:
I worry a bit about your mention of "Once the work was completed, the professor himself did the edit, presumably after checking for outside edits done while the project was ongoing." As far as Wikipedia's licensing goes, that raises a lot of questions about proper attribution.
- GorillaWarfare
On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 11:57 AM, Martin Walker walkerma@potsdam.edu wrote:
A colleague of mine from our geology department has run article improvement projects for US undergraduates, and he found it very beneficial to have the main editing work done on a separate geology wiki (running Mediawiki) on a college server. Pictures were still uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (and therefore could be read in the college wiki). He was easily able to use the history feature to track students' contributions. Once the work was completed, the professor himself did the edit, presumably after checking for outside edits done while the project was ongoing. Students were able to improve Wikipedia, and see their real-world impact (a very poor article is now good and gets 70,000 hits a year).
For what you're proposing, I think a separate wiki like this would be essential. That way the chaos is contained and the Wikipedia biologists aren't going nuts; also, you can assess the students' contributions more easily. Once the work is complete, improved articles can be integrated into the main Wikipedia and everyone benefits.
Martin
Martin A. Walker Department of Chemistry State University of New York at Potsdam +1 (315) 267-2271 walkerma@potsdam.edu
On 10/2/2012 10:51 AM, Dimce Grozdanoski wrote:
Hi folks,
I want to open discussion and hear some practical ideas or real stories about projects with large scale editing participation, or how to distribute assessment to the editors/students who are geographically distributed throughout the country.
For example, let's say that we want to recruit 10000 students grouped in class groups in particular schools to work on biology topics. Each school must follow the teaching plan / time-line according to the adopted methodology, i.e. they start with general biological terms then with kingdoms, ecosystems, interactions of living bing in ecosystem, evolution, and so on ... And the teachers give one or two assessment per student of biology in particular class in particular school, to write new or improve already written article in wikipedia. How to menage this process? How to measure student work? The goals are to create maximal number of articles with good quality. How to deal with projects of this kind in limited time if you have time window of 6 months to start and finish the project.
Any idea,
Dimce Grozdanoski Wikimedia Macedonia
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
Not exactly. If the terms and conditions of uni-wiki give over the copyright to the professor where xe is allowed to release the rights under the CC BY-SA.
--Guerillero
On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 12:01 PM, Gorilla Warfare gorillawarfarewikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
I worry a bit about your mention of "Once the work was completed, the professor himself did the edit, presumably after checking for outside edits done while the project was ongoing." As far as Wikipedia's licensing goes, that raises a lot of questions about proper attribution.
- GorillaWarfare
On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 11:57 AM, Martin Walker walkerma@potsdam.edu wrote:
A colleague of mine from our geology department has run article improvement projects for US undergraduates, and he found it very beneficial to have the main editing work done on a separate geology wiki (running Mediawiki) on a college server. Pictures were still uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (and therefore could be read in the college wiki). He was easily able to use the history feature to track students' contributions. Once the work was completed, the professor himself did the edit, presumably after checking for outside edits done while the project was ongoing. Students were able to improve Wikipedia, and see their real-world impact (a very poor article is now good and gets 70,000 hits a year).
For what you're proposing, I think a separate wiki like this would be essential. That way the chaos is contained and the Wikipedia biologists aren't going nuts; also, you can assess the students' contributions more easily. Once the work is complete, improved articles can be integrated into the main Wikipedia and everyone benefits.
Martin
Martin A. Walker Department of Chemistry State University of New York at Potsdam +1 (315) 267-2271 walkerma@potsdam.edu
On 10/2/2012 10:51 AM, Dimce Grozdanoski wrote:
Hi folks,
I want to open discussion and hear some practical ideas or real stories about projects with large scale editing participation, or how to distribute assessment to the editors/students who are geographically distributed throughout the country.
For example, let's say that we want to recruit 10000 students grouped in class groups in particular schools to work on biology topics. Each school must follow the teaching plan / time-line according to the adopted methodology, i.e. they start with general biological terms then with kingdoms, ecosystems, interactions of living bing in ecosystem, evolution, and so on ... And the teachers give one or two assessment per student of biology in particular class in particular school, to write new or improve already written article in wikipedia. How to menage this process? How to measure student work? The goals are to create maximal number of articles with good quality. How to deal with projects of this kind in limited time if you have time window of 6 months to start and finish the project.
Any idea,
Dimce Grozdanoski Wikimedia Macedonia
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
That's one way. Other ways: * having the original wiki use CC-BY-SA and link the org page in first edit or on talk page * transwiki process
-- Piotr Konieczny
"To be defeated and not submit, is victory; to be victorious and rest on one's laurels, is defeat." --Józef Pilsudski
On 10/3/2012 12:26 PM, Guerillero Wikipedia wrote:
Not exactly. If the terms and conditions of uni-wiki give over the copyright to the professor where xe is allowed to release the rights under the CC BY-SA.
--Guerillero
On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 12:01 PM, Gorilla Warfare gorillawarfarewikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
I worry a bit about your mention of "Once the work was completed, the professor himself did the edit, presumably after checking for outside edits done while the project was ongoing." As far as Wikipedia's licensing goes, that raises a lot of questions about proper attribution.
- GorillaWarfare
On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 11:57 AM, Martin Walker walkerma@potsdam.edu wrote:
A colleague of mine from our geology department has run article improvement projects for US undergraduates, and he found it very beneficial to have the main editing work done on a separate geology wiki (running Mediawiki) on a college server. Pictures were still uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (and therefore could be read in the college wiki). He was easily able to use the history feature to track students' contributions. Once the work was completed, the professor himself did the edit, presumably after checking for outside edits done while the project was ongoing. Students were able to improve Wikipedia, and see their real-world impact (a very poor article is now good and gets 70,000 hits a year).
For what you're proposing, I think a separate wiki like this would be essential. That way the chaos is contained and the Wikipedia biologists aren't going nuts; also, you can assess the students' contributions more easily. Once the work is complete, improved articles can be integrated into the main Wikipedia and everyone benefits.
Martin
Martin A. Walker Department of Chemistry State University of New York at Potsdam +1 (315) 267-2271 walkerma@potsdam.edu
On 10/2/2012 10:51 AM, Dimce Grozdanoski wrote:
Hi folks,
I want to open discussion and hear some practical ideas or real stories about projects with large scale editing participation, or how to distribute assessment to the editors/students who are geographically distributed throughout the country.
For example, let's say that we want to recruit 10000 students grouped in class groups in particular schools to work on biology topics. Each school must follow the teaching plan / time-line according to the adopted methodology, i.e. they start with general biological terms then with kingdoms, ecosystems, interactions of living bing in ecosystem, evolution, and so on ... And the teachers give one or two assessment per student of biology in particular class in particular school, to write new or improve already written article in wikipedia. How to menage this process? How to measure student work? The goals are to create maximal number of articles with good quality. How to deal with projects of this kind in limited time if you have time window of 6 months to start and finish the project.
Any idea,
Dimce Grozdanoski Wikimedia Macedonia
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
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
How would you evaluate the difference between a separate wiki and the sandboxes?
Juliana
Enviado via iPhone
Em 03/10/2012, às 12:57, "Martin Walker" walkerma@potsdam.edu escreveu:
A colleague of mine from our geology department has run article improvement projects for US undergraduates, and he found it very beneficial to have the main editing work done on a separate geology wiki (running Mediawiki) on a college server. Pictures were still uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (and therefore could be read in the college wiki). He was easily able to use the history feature to track students' contributions. Once the work was completed, the professor himself did the edit, presumably after checking for outside edits done while the project was ongoing. Students were able to improve Wikipedia, and see their real-world impact (a very poor article is now good and gets 70,000 hits a year).
For what you're proposing, I think a separate wiki like this would be essential. That way the chaos is contained and the Wikipedia biologists aren't going nuts; also, you can assess the students' contributions more easily. Once the work is complete, improved articles can be integrated into the main Wikipedia and everyone benefits.
Martin
Martin A. Walker Department of Chemistry State University of New York at Potsdam +1 (315) 267-2271 walkerma@potsdam.edu
On 10/2/2012 10:51 AM, Dimce Grozdanoski wrote:
Hi folks,
I want to open discussion and hear some practical ideas or real stories about projects with large scale editing participation, or how to distribute assessment to the editors/students who are geographically distributed throughout the country.
For example, let's say that we want to recruit 10000 students grouped in class groups in particular schools to work on biology topics. Each school must follow the teaching plan / time-line according to the adopted methodology, i.e. they start with general biological terms then with kingdoms, ecosystems, interactions of living bing in ecosystem, evolution, and so on ... And the teachers give one or two assessment per student of biology in particular class in particular school, to write new or improve already written article in wikipedia. How to menage this process? How to measure student work? The goals are to create maximal number of articles with good quality. How to deal with projects of this kind in limited time if you have time window of 6 months to start and finish the project.
Any idea,
Dimce Grozdanoski Wikimedia Macedonia
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
The first and most obvious difference to me is the hardware, software, and the know-how required to set up another wiki, which most professors unlikely have. I, too, am interested in learning benefits of this strategy.
Rob
-----Original Message----- From: domusaurea Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2012 12:07 PM To: education@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: education@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia Education] Quantitative Metric and Article Quality
How would you evaluate the difference between a separate wiki and the sandboxes?
Juliana
Enviado via iPhone
Em 03/10/2012, às 12:57, "Martin Walker" walkerma@potsdam.edu escreveu:
A colleague of mine from our geology department has run article improvement projects for US undergraduates, and he found it very beneficial to have the main editing work done on a separate geology wiki (running Mediawiki) on a college server. Pictures were still uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (and therefore could be read in the college wiki). He was easily able to use the history feature to track students' contributions. Once the work was completed, the professor himself did the edit, presumably after checking for outside edits done while the project was ongoing. Students were able to improve Wikipedia, and see their real-world impact (a very poor article is now good and gets 70,000 hits a year).
For what you're proposing, I think a separate wiki like this would be essential. That way the chaos is contained and the Wikipedia biologists aren't going nuts; also, you can assess the students' contributions more easily. Once the work is complete, improved articles can be integrated into the main Wikipedia and everyone benefits.
Martin
Martin A. Walker Department of Chemistry State University of New York at Potsdam +1 (315) 267-2271 walkerma@potsdam.edu
On 10/2/2012 10:51 AM, Dimce Grozdanoski wrote:
Hi folks,
I want to open discussion and hear some practical ideas or real stories about projects with large scale editing participation, or how to distribute assessment to the editors/students who are geographically distributed throughout the country.
For example, let's say that we want to recruit 10000 students grouped in class groups in particular schools to work on biology topics. Each school must follow the teaching plan / time-line according to the adopted methodology, i.e. they start with general biological terms then with kingdoms, ecosystems, interactions of living bing in ecosystem, evolution, and so on ... And the teachers give one or two assessment per student of biology in particular class in particular school, to write new or improve already written article in wikipedia. How to menage this process? How to measure student work? The goals are to create maximal number of articles with good quality. How to deal with projects of this kind in limited time if you have time window of 6 months to start and finish the project.
Any idea,
Dimce Grozdanoski Wikimedia Macedonia
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
Why not do the same work on a userpage/workbench? Then the licence is no problem and the students will know they are doing it for real. That's what I an going to do with a wikibook project (Swedish). Then you do not have to learn how to put up an own wiki on a server. /Harald
From: schnautzr@hotmail.com To: education@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2012 12:28:07 -0500 Subject: Re: [Wikimedia Education] Quantitative Metric and Article Quality
The first and most obvious difference to me is the hardware, software, and the know-how required to set up another wiki, which most professors unlikely have. I, too, am interested in learning benefits of this strategy.
Rob
-----Original Message----- From: domusaurea Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2012 12:07 PM To: education@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: education@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia Education] Quantitative Metric and Article Quality
How would you evaluate the difference between a separate wiki and the sandboxes?
Juliana
Enviado via iPhone
Em 03/10/2012, às 12:57, "Martin Walker" walkerma@potsdam.edu escreveu:
A colleague of mine from our geology department has run article improvement projects for US undergraduates, and he found it very beneficial to have the main editing work done on a separate geology wiki (running Mediawiki) on a college server. Pictures were still uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (and therefore could be read in the college wiki). He was easily able to use the history feature to track students' contributions. Once the work was completed, the professor himself did the edit, presumably after checking for outside edits done while the project was ongoing. Students were able to improve Wikipedia, and see their real-world impact (a very poor article is now good and gets 70,000 hits a year).
For what you're proposing, I think a separate wiki like this would be essential. That way the chaos is contained and the Wikipedia biologists aren't going nuts; also, you can assess the students' contributions more easily. Once the work is complete, improved articles can be integrated into the main Wikipedia and everyone benefits.
Martin
Martin A. Walker Department of Chemistry State University of New York at Potsdam +1 (315) 267-2271 walkerma@potsdam.edu
On 10/2/2012 10:51 AM, Dimce Grozdanoski wrote:
Hi folks,
I want to open discussion and hear some practical ideas or real stories about projects with large scale editing participation, or how to distribute assessment to the editors/students who are geographically distributed throughout the country.
For example, let's say that we want to recruit 10000 students grouped in class groups in particular schools to work on biology topics. Each school must follow the teaching plan / time-line according to the adopted methodology, i.e. they start with general biological terms then with kingdoms, ecosystems, interactions of living bing in ecosystem, evolution, and so on ... And the teachers give one or two assessment per student of biology in particular class in particular school, to write new or improve already written article in wikipedia. How to menage this process? How to measure student work? The goals are to create maximal number of articles with good quality. How to deal with projects of this kind in limited time if you have time window of 6 months to start and finish the project.
Any idea,
Dimce Grozdanoski Wikimedia Macedonia
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
Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
While I tend to support live article Wikipedia edits, for 10,000 student project, Martin's point about Wikipedians going nuts trying to deal with such a large influx of new editors is a valid point. There is a point at which the educational program threatens to overwhelm the community. We have not reached it yet, but it is worth remembering our community numbers only few dozen thousand of active editors (depending on which metric one uses), a number that pales in comparison with that of the students who could potentially be contributing.
Of course, much of this could be alleviated if the instructors and their assistants had sufficient Wikipedia experience to monitor the student progress. Unfortunately, this is a case for only a small number of classes so far, and unlikely to change that much even if we were to stress the importance of that more (which, sadly, we don't).
-- Piotr Konieczny
"To be defeated and not submit, is victory; to be victorious and rest on one's laurels, is defeat." --Józef Pilsudski
On 10/3/2012 11:57 AM, Martin Walker wrote:
A colleague of mine from our geology department has run article improvement projects for US undergraduates, and he found it very beneficial to have the main editing work done on a separate geology wiki (running Mediawiki) on a college server. Pictures were still uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (and therefore could be read in the college wiki). He was easily able to use the history feature to track students' contributions. Once the work was completed, the professor himself did the edit, presumably after checking for outside edits done while the project was ongoing. Students were able to improve Wikipedia, and see their real-world impact (a very poor article is now good and gets 70,000 hits a year).
For what you're proposing, I think a separate wiki like this would be essential. That way the chaos is contained and the Wikipedia biologists aren't going nuts; also, you can assess the students' contributions more easily. Once the work is complete, improved articles can be integrated into the main Wikipedia and everyone benefits.
Martin
Martin A. Walker Department of Chemistry State University of New York at Potsdam +1 (315) 267-2271 walkerma@potsdam.edu
On 10/2/2012 10:51 AM, Dimce Grozdanoski wrote:
Hi folks,
I want to open discussion and hear some practical ideas or real stories about projects with large scale editing participation, or how to distribute assessment to the editors/students who are geographically distributed throughout the country.
For example, let's say that we want to recruit 10000 students grouped in class groups in particular schools to work on biology topics. Each school must follow the teaching plan / time-line according to the adopted methodology, i.e. they start with general biological terms then with kingdoms, ecosystems, interactions of living bing in ecosystem, evolution, and so on ... And the teachers give one or two assessment per student of biology in particular class in particular school, to write new or improve already written article in wikipedia. How to menage this process? How to measure student work? The goals are to create maximal number of articles with good quality. How to deal with projects of this kind in limited time if you have time window of 6 months to start and finish the project.
Any idea,
Dimce Grozdanoski Wikimedia Macedonia
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
Of course, much of this could be alleviated if the instructors and their assistants had sufficient Wikipedia experience to monitor the student progress. Unfortunately, this is a case for only a small number of classes so far, and unlikely to change that much even if we were to stress the importance of that more (which, sadly, we don't).
While I recognize how much things are unlikely to change from this only, I do beg to stress the importance of this factor. : )
I am not aware of a consolidated method of training and retaining ambassadors out of the group of students new to Wikipedia. The ambassador training sessions I know of are still a bit empirical - mostly, it's a crash course on editing, which we know is only part of the requirements.
Here in Brazil we don't have enough volunteers from the editors' community to cater for the demand of interested teachers throughout the country. Unless we can finally rely on new people, I understand the need for big amounts of effort such as a new wiki, so to control the final results.
Juliana.
-- Piotr Konieczny
"To be defeated and not submit, is victory; to be victorious and rest on one's laurels, is defeat." --Józef Pilsudski
On 10/3/2012 11:57 AM, Martin Walker wrote:
A colleague of mine from our geology department has run article improvement projects for US undergraduates, and he found it very beneficial to have the main editing work done on a separate geology wiki (running Mediawiki) on a college server. Pictures were still uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (and therefore could be read in the college wiki). He was easily able to use the history feature to track students' contributions. Once the work was completed, the professor himself did the edit, presumably after checking for outside edits done while the project was ongoing. Students were able to improve Wikipedia, and see their real-world impact (a very poor article is now good and gets 70,000 hits a year).
For what you're proposing, I think a separate wiki like this would be essential. That way the chaos is contained and the Wikipedia biologists aren't going nuts; also, you can assess the students' contributions more easily. Once the work is complete, improved articles can be integrated into the main Wikipedia and everyone benefits.
Martin
Martin A. Walker Department of Chemistry State University of New York at Potsdam +1 (315) 267-2271 walkerma@potsdam.edu
On 10/2/2012 10:51 AM, Dimce Grozdanoski wrote:
Hi folks,
I want to open discussion and hear some practical ideas or real stories about projects with large scale editing participation, or how to distribute assessment to the editors/students who are geographically distributed throughout the country.
For example, let's say that we want to recruit 10000 students grouped in class groups in particular schools to work on biology topics. Each school must follow the teaching plan / time-line according to the adopted methodology, i.e. they start with general biological terms then with kingdoms, ecosystems, interactions of living bing in ecosystem, evolution, and so on ... And the teachers give one or two assessment per student of biology in particular class in particular school, to write new or improve already written article in wikipedia. How to menage this process? How to measure student work? The goals are to create maximal number of articles with good quality. How to deal with projects of this kind in limited time if you have time window of 6 months to start and finish the project.
Any idea,
Dimce Grozdanoski Wikimedia Macedonia
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I mention Biology just as an example, it can be any other subject.
It's very easy to start new mediawiki server dedicated to project. But which is better solution: to begin with empty wiki database (no articles, no templates, ...) or with latest snapshot of wikipedia? I suppose your colleague from geology department exploit the benefits of the first option. But when the work was completed on dedicated server, the professor should merge the articles with real wikipedia, and it is not very easy task, I mean it's not simple as copy&paste. Also the moment of collaboration with the wider wiki community is loosed.
I mean that the idea of dedicated server comes from the need to have full control of students work, and to avoid the chaos when huge number of students try to edit some stuffs in real wiki. I think that this mediawiki extension http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Education_Program, give some solutions to this issue.
On 03.10.2012 17:57, Martin Walker wrote:
A colleague of mine from our geology department has run article improvement projects for US undergraduates, and he found it very beneficial to have the main editing work done on a separate geology wiki (running Mediawiki) on a college server. Pictures were still uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (and therefore could be read in the college wiki). He was easily able to use the history feature to track students' contributions. Once the work was completed, the professor himself did the edit, presumably after checking for outside edits done while the project was ongoing. Students were able to improve Wikipedia, and see their real-world impact (a very poor article is now good and gets 70,000 hits a year).
For what you're proposing, I think a separate wiki like this would be essential. That way the chaos is contained and the Wikipedia biologists aren't going nuts; also, you can assess the students' contributions more easily. Once the work is complete, improved articles can be integrated into the main Wikipedia and everyone benefits.
Martin
Martin A. Walker Department of Chemistry State University of New York at Potsdam +1 (315) 267-2271 walkerma@potsdam.edu
On 10/2/2012 10:51 AM, Dimce Grozdanoski wrote:
Hi folks,
I want to open discussion and hear some practical ideas or real stories about projects with large scale editing participation, or how to distribute assessment to the editors/students who are geographically distributed throughout the country.
For example, let's say that we want to recruit 10000 students grouped in class groups in particular schools to work on biology topics. Each school must follow the teaching plan / time-line according to the adopted methodology, i.e. they start with general biological terms then with kingdoms, ecosystems, interactions of living bing in ecosystem, evolution, and so on ... And the teachers give one or two assessment per student of biology in particular class in particular school, to write new or improve already written article in wikipedia. How to menage this process? How to measure student work? The goals are to create maximal number of articles with good quality. How to deal with projects of this kind in limited time if you have time window of 6 months to start and finish the project.
Any idea,
Dimce Grozdanoski Wikimedia Macedonia
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