Hi Nemo,

I am happy to clarify! With "staff" I included university teachers and professors. I intentionally wrote it a bit more blurry as I figured that this might differ between different countries. :-)

In Sweden we have so far worked directly with teachers and professors to formulate an interesting topic and they have added themselves - or colleagues - as supervisors. Wikimedia Sverige's staff is involved as external experts that will help guide the students.

To make it more concrete I have included an example of a thesis topic that we have added to the university's database below:

What role can Wikipedia’s material have in Sweden’s prisons? It is possible to provide prisons with an offline version of Wikipedia so that the prisoners can read and continuously educate themselves? This has already been tested in Switzerland in 2013-2014. It would be interesting to evaluate the possibilities for similar projects in Sweden and to find out what the possibilities and the obstacles are. Supervisor Henrik Hansson, DSV, John Andersson, Wikimedia Sverige

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kiwix_-_Wikipedia_Offline https://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Projekt:Wikipedia_i_f%C3%A4ngelser_2015

If there is interest from a student then the discussion continues in order to narrow down the topic - in a way that is good for both us and for the student. The result can then, hopefully, be used for an external application to fund a project. In Sweden many universities also offer the possibility for external organizations/companies to send in suggestions on thesis topics even without the contact with a professor/teacher in advance. The professors/teachers at the university will then decide if they care to be supervisors or not. A few months from now we will see if this works out well for us or not.

John

From: wiki-research-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Wiki-research-l Digest, Vol 111, Issue 7 To: wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2014 00:57:40 +0000

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Today's Topics:

1. List of student research assignment (John Andersson)
2. Re: List of student research assignment (Kerry Raymond)
3. Re: List of student research assignment (Federico Leva (Nemo))
4. Re: List of student research assignment (Kerry Raymond)

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Message: 1 Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 20:48:25 +0100 From: John Andersson john.andersson@wikimedia.se To: "Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org" wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wiki-research-l] List of student research assignment Message-ID: DUB131-W90D8F08860280D1CFAD4BDBF800@phx.gbl Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Hi,

The last year Wikimedia Sverige has deepened the cooperation with a number of universities in Sweden and we have recently started providing them with research assignment for students' thesis work (to work on for either during 10 weeks (Bachelor) or 20 weeks (Master)). As a small pilot I gave a presentation about this a couple of weeks ago and we have seen a great interest in this opportunity from staff and student - with around 10 students (out of ~300) deciding to do their thesis work about our movement and projects next year!

I was wondering if there is a list of possible thesis assignments compiled somewhere (of course many different structures for thesis work exist - but anything would help)? We would especially like more ideas regarding technical assignments that the students could do - and investigate the effect from - during their thesis course. I.e. not just the Phabricator/Bugzilla bugs, but something a bit more comprehensive and structured. Is there anything out there? (Kind of like GSoC - but during the semesters.)

If no such resource exists - and if more people/chapters/WMF would find this approach of involving universities interesting - perhaps we could create the necessary structures for this in the future?

PS. Wiki Education Foundation do not have one - I already asked.

Best,

John

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John Andersson

Wikimedia Sverige

Project Manager

Phone: +46(0)73-3965189

Email: john.andersson@wikimedia.se

Skype: johnandersson86

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