Hi all,

Thanks for the engagement on the questions that should be tacked in this evaluation. See inline for a brief response to Theo's question about Tory Read.

Best,

Barry

On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 9:16 AM, Theo10011 <de10011@gmail.com> wrote:

I really didn't read the entire thread to have a lot of comments, I just have one point I noticed that I wanted to ask - Why is Tory Read conducting the "evaluative study"?

As I recall, her only exposure to India and Wikipedia before this was the research project. And even that had nothing to do with the Education program directly. Is there a reason why she's leading the study?

It seems like the same pattern of avoiding knowledgeable and experienced members of the community to focus on the "outside perspective". I thought the only lesson that the team did take away was, you can't do in India what the global education team and Frank did in the US. They don't scale and you need local solutions.

I'm pretty sure Ms. Read is a competent researcher and would do a good job but I don't see how Ms. Read's expertise or exposure to India and the Education program would make this process any different from the pattern that brought IEP here. Talking to the staff in SF, or spending a day in Delhi or Pune is not going to give a clear picture at all.

Tory is indeed a competent researcher who built a solid understanding of the community and how things work in Wikimedia during her engagement with us in the India Chronicles. I selected her for this assignment because she has a good working knowledge of our general situation from her work on the India Chronicles, she has the skills to interview a good cross-section of those involved (WP editors, students, profs, Campus Ambassadors, online ambassadors, staff, others), she can look at the issue with fresh eyes and help synthesize learning and recommendations for changes, she will get this done in a timely fashion while memories are still fresh (which is really important).

She is doing a combination of Skype, email and in-person interviews...and is in Pune this week actually. I'm confident that her work will be valuable to all of us and it will be shared in its entirety with the community. It won't be the only work on this. Both the India team and the Global Education Program team are committed to doing more joint problem-solving on future changes to the program with those interested in engaging with us.

Either way, Good Luck.

Regards
Theo

On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 7:22 PM, Ram Shankar Yadav <ramshankaryadav@gmail.com> wrote:

Great suggestion Srikanth!

I totally agree with you on quality, staging and motivation aspects.

Cheers,
Ram

On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 7:12 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan <srik.lak@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

Apart from studying ourselves, It would also be interesting to do a case study of similar student participatory programs and take best practices and incorporate them. Google Summer of Code would be a classic example, though its a summer contract, but some of the aspects are worth comparing.

1. GSoC has a steep(okay relatively much higher) barrier to entry to attract the cream of students inturn the number of students would be significantly less.
2. Many students continue to contribute to the organization / open source in general beyond the contract

3. Strong staging process to cross the gates(merging the codeline happens mostly post final evaluation) ensures impact of the student does not affect the community.
4. Many communities are largely happy to participate in GSoC since they usually get contributors to the community.

5. Communication models that exist in the program, typically there would be hardly anyone from the city / country for that matter to mentor. The communication happens online inspite of timezone differences.
6. GSoC gives a huge money as motivation, but most students join the program for reasons beyond money though they swipe the cards :D

There are few students on this list who took the same program with WMF, they could share some insights too!

Regards,
Srikanth L

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