>>That's one way of looking at it.  Another way would be that an editor (in this case who happened to be a student) contributed content to an article.  It would (almost routinely) reviewed by other editors who coudl/would improve it or point out issues.  One of the aspects that the better students have fed back to us is the value of the collaboration with the global editing community.

Hisham, i was an online mentor for seven students in the PPP in the previous sem. I have done this before. I am normally a patient newbie helper. I help tens of newbies every day in Ta and en wiki. But if you make it an obligation for me to check through the edits of forty odd guys, who turn in assignments and are only angling for marks in their courses,  you are turning me off. You heard what another OA surya had to say about this .

You are looking at OAs as full time employees - "they have a job to do, why not do it". Remember this is a volunteer project and we volunteers have only X amount of time to donate to wikipedia, OAs have other interests in Wikipedia - being a OA isnt supposed to take up all my wikitime. I certainly did not sign up for following every edit of a COEP student who shows no sign of actually wanting to voluntarily contribute to Wikipedia or any sign of learning. My onwiki time is better spent elsewhere.

This is the biggest difference between my PPP experience and IEP experience. In the former i had 7 mentees, who asked me for help, when they ran into trouble, listened to what i had to say, were basically competent, produced workable quality content. I was happy to improve their content as the workload was manageable.  In the IEP, i had 40, who never asked me anything (instead i am expected to go through their edits). But could be seen arguing with people who tag their content for copyright violation, adding the same copyvio content after being reverted multiple times. Getting their CAs to plead with admins if they get blocked.

So for the next phase do not design a OA as someone who will track every edit of a student and correct all his mistakes - Such a thing might be possible with one on one mentoring, but even then it routinely fails in the regular "adopt a editor" arrangements that happen in en wiki. But with five or seven students (forget about forty) it is impossible for me to log in daily, check if they have edited, check out the diffs, cross check for copyvio and then give him/her a feedback.


On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 10:13 AM, Hisham <hmundol@wikimedia.org> wrote:

On Nov 12, 2011, at 7:33 PM, Bala Jeyaraman wrote:

>>Many of us went through college recently know its not *Some*, its *Most*. Anything called assignment and graded will be copy-pasted even by the brightest 5% of students in class who would have potential to do on their own.

+1.  with Srikanth This is the SINGLE MOST important thing to remember for the future. Lets cut the political correctness and putting the blame everywhere else than where it belongs - the students and faculty involved

My view is not driven by political correctness but I do want to avoid generalising all students and all faculty.  Just take a look a the user talk and article discussion pages and it's immediately apparent that quite a few students and teachers wouldn't deserve blame.  Many students did make mistakes - but they made the same mistakes that many newbies.


So here is what is to be done:

1) Keep the number low -

Agree and we need to work on how we select the colleges and faculty and classes and students.

2) Penalise those who copy paste

This is something that can (and should) be led by the faculty.  Some teachers have shown the way on how this can be done.


3) The CA to student ratio has to be 5 to 1.

Clearly the student:CA ratio needs to be reduced significantly. ...but did you mean students:CA 5:1 or 1:5?

Anything more seems to non-workable. Online Ambassadors/mentors are not handholders and error correctors. I signed up to be an online ambassador. But stopped reading the IEP mails that were sent to me after i realised, that the IEP program essentially wanted to me to do the students' work.

That's one way of looking at it.  Another way would be that an editor (in this case who happened to be a student) contributed content to an article.  It would (almost routinely) reviewed by other editors who coudl/would improve it or point out issues.  One of the aspects that the better students have fed back to us is the value of the collaboration with the global editing community.



hisham



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