I have helped to host a couple of digital literacy workshops (including Wikipedia editing) and will be planning more in at least five languages. Some learnings from work already done:

--Student interest/motivation relates to the relevance of the material they are producing (relevance: to a better grasp of their curriculum, to topics that connect to their daily lives - as students, as young people)

--They do get excited by the idea that they can contribute to assembling knowledge on a platform that makes it so widely available

--Motivation is high when entries come out of research projects they have undertaken either as part of college work or as part of co-curricular activities

--Using wikipedia editing as part of a more general research training programme is also helpful

My colleagues and I have worked with students in remote colleges whose primary language is not English. These students are more interested in contributing material in Indian languages than those who have been educated mainly in English medium. Since they hear so much about how they cannot be socially mobile because they don't know English well, they do feel encouraged and validated when they are able to communicate the work they have done in a language they are comfortable with.

On 16 March 2013 18:56, sankarshan <foss.mailinglists@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 4:59 PM, Tejaswini Niranjana <teju@cscs.res.in> wrote:

Hope this will be of interest. Just published in the Economic and Political Weekly.

And, also at <http://www.epw.in/commentary/indian-languages-indian-higher-education.html> You mention "Creation of Indian language materials by students could also be an invaluable resource; this could include Wikipedia entries, audiovisual resources, and compilations of material on peer-to-peer learning platforms." - I would like to know your thoughts about what around the motivations/incentives that would facilitate the creation of new content in Indian languages by students.

--
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
<https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan>

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--
Tejaswini Niranjana, PhD
Lead Researcher - Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications (HEIRA)
Senior Fellow - Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS)
Visiting Professor - Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS)
Visiting Faculty - Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute
of Science (CCS-IISc)

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