Frank Schulenburg é o líder do "Public Outreach" da Wikimedia Foundation.
Abaixo, Schulenburg fala do seu trabalho e da sua visão sobre a relação da
Wikimedia e Academia.
*Como líder do projeto na WMF, que tipo de programas vocês vislumbram?*
FS: Meu foco é aumentar a participação e o entendimento da Wikipédia. Nós
estamos atualmente trabalhando em três principais projetos:
(1) O “Bookshelf” Project para criar um conjunto de materiais educacionais
para os novos contribuidores. Desde 2009 nós produzimos material impresse,
online e vídeos que explicam a cultura da wikipédia, as regras, políticas,
tudo para ajudar os novatos a fazer as 100 primeiras edições.
(2) Uma iniciativa de divulgação (the Public Policy Initiative) para
institucionalizar a utilização da wikipédia como ferramenta de aprendizagem
na educação superior. Como parte dessa iniciativa, nós treinamos
Embaixadores de Campus, que ajudam professores e estudantes a usar a
wikipédia em sala de aula.
(3) Melhorar o processo de criar uma conta na Wikipédia. Nós pensamos que
criar uma conta é um momento crucial no ciclo de vida do editor da wikipédia
e estamos buscando tonar o processo mais fácil, dando aos novatos mais ajuda
e suporte.
*The Public Policy Initiative is of particular interest to academia, in that
it addresses the role of Wikipedia in higher education. How does this
program work and what are Wikimedia’s aims with this type of outreach?*
FS: The Public Policy Initiative is a pilot project that the Wikimedia
Foundation is running during the 2010–11 academic year. Professors at public
policy programs in universities in the United States are participating in
our initiative by asking their students to improve articles on the
English-language Wikipedia as part of the curriculum. The Foundation is
providing professors support in the form of lesson plans and coordination
with the community to provide Wikipedia Ambassadors, who are serving as
mentors for the first-time Wikipedians.
We know that the use of Wikipedia as a teaching tool in university courses
offers a number of opportunities for students. They improve their writing
skills, gain a deeper understanding of media literacy, learn how to work
collaboratively, and interact with readers and writers in real-time. We
learned that students are much more motivated if they write for a global
audience on Wikipedia compared to the traditional “throw-away assignments.”
These factors make it very attractive for professors to explore using
Wikipedia as a teaching tool.
Our vision is to create a world where every single person has access to the
sum of all human knowledge. We see the use of Wikipedia as a teaching tool
as an important step toward making this vision come true. Students make
great contributors to Wikipedia because they’re immersed in a culture of
learning, so sharing that knowledge with the world is a logical next step.
*Are there any plans to extend the Public Policy Initiative into other areas
of study, such as the biomedical sciences?*
FS: The Public Policy Initiative represents the first time the Wikimedia
Foundation has pushed to seed a community of contributors within higher
education on a larger scale. Our first results are very promising, as
professors across disciplines, universities, and countries have expressed
interest in using Wikipedia as a teaching tool. While we are working only
with U.S.-based public policy programs during the pilot program, we’re
continually seeking opportunities to engage professors, students, and
volunteers in other parts of the world and in other topic areas.
At the end of our pilot in September 2011, we will open the program for
professors of other topic areas. Our goal is to institutionalize the use of
Wikipedia as a teaching tool in higher education across all academic
disciplines.
*When developing outreach programs, how do you envision the ideal role of
Wikipedia in academics?*
FS: This goes back to the question about the nature of Wikipedia. Wikipedia
is a project to create a free encyclopedia. It is not a place to publish
original research. All information on Wikipedia has to be based on
verifiable information that has previously been published by a reliable
source. Whenever we talk to students, we say that Wikipedia is a good
starting point for their research, but it should never be the end point. You
shouldn’t cite Wikipedia, but nor should you cite Encyclopedia Britannica.
We believe that media literacy is a key skill for students in the 21st
century, particularly with regards to online resources. Students should be
able to look at a Wikipedia article or a blog post or a news article and
judge whether or not it’s a valid source of information. With a Wikipedia
article, for example, students should look for a lot of citations to sources
like books, scholarly journals, and major news sources – if the article
doesn’t have many citations or all of the citations are to the same source,
the student should look elsewhere for sources (and come back and improve the
Wikipedia article!).
For academics, Wikipedia offers a great opportunity to improve the publicly
available information about their field. More than 400 million people use
Wikipedia every month. If your goal is to let people share your knowledge
about a specific topic, then Wikipedia is a great point to reach out to a
broad audience.
*Some hesitation in using Wikipedia stems from uncertainty about the editing
process-- while most articles are open to editing by any user, some are
subject to higher regulation like the “pending changes” system. Can you
provide a summary of the current editing system and guidelines?*
FS: Wikipedia was founded on radically open collaboration. Pick an article
you know something about, and the “edit” link at the top allows you to make
an instant change to the page. This open policy to editing has allowed
impressive growth and responsiveness.
In 2009, the Wikipedia community agreed to a trial run which entailed
installing a software extension called “pending changes”. Previously, a very
limited number of high profile articles subject to ongoing vandalism were
locked. When the pending changes feature is enabled for an article, edits
are possible but they will not be visible to the general public until an
established editor flags the article as free of vandalism. The pending
changes feature replaced article locking with a lighter form of protection.
This actually opened Wikipedia further by allowing new and unregistered
users to suggest changes where they could not before. Aside from these few
articles with the pending changes featured applied, articles are open for
editing by any user.
*For the most part, academia is asking what Wikipedia can do for them. But
much of the growth of Wikipedia is dependent on their contribution. Do you
have suggestions for what academics can do to help improve Wikipedia?*
FS: For academics, Wikipedia offers a great opportunity to improve the
publicly available information about their field. More than 400 million
people use Wikipedia every month. If your goal is to let people share your
knowledge about a specific topic, then Wikipedia is a great point to reach
out to a broad audience. I think that scientists and educators can help
Wikipedia most if they participate in the existing review processes and if
they use Wikipedia as a teaching tool in their classes.
There are many ways you can help improving Wikipedia. If you find an error,
just click on the edit button on top of the page and fix it. If you want to
leave a note, go to the talk page of an article. If you have more time, go
to Wikipedia’s good article nominations page (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Good_article_nominations) and
featured articles candidates page (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates) and look
for articles in your specific field of expertise. Also, ask your students to
improve Wikipedia articles, instead of assigning a traditional term paper.
Your students will be much more motivated as they are writing for a global
audience. The better the articles in your field of expertise get, the more
they attract readers – and among them maybe the next generation of smart
students that will be eager to learn more about your research.
--
{+}Nevinho
Venha para o Movimento Colaborativo
http://sextapoetica.com.br !!