[Gendergap] Supporting Campus Ambassador programs [Fwd: Issue of Copy-Pasting]

Sat Oct 8 15:03:36 UTC 2011

Hi all, this is my first message here, so let me introduce myself. My name
is Juliana, I'm a professor of Ancient History at the Federal University of
Rio de Janeiro State, in Brazil, and here we're also starting our own
version of the GEP program, Wikimedia Brasil
Educação<http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:WBE>.
This is the first GEP program wholly working with a language and a WP other
than English, and the WP:PT still has a lot to improve in terms of quality -
so we have plenty of space to work on.

I'd like to comment on these problems that are happening in India, because
we have also been facing issues of plagiarism, poor editing and conflicts,
although on a lesser scale. The class has 30 students, and there is
currently one article online that we worked
on<http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romaniza%C3%A7%C3%A3o>,
with all the rest of their work on sandboxes until the third week of
November. One wikipedian has spotted plagiarism on an early draft of that
article (it was stored in my sandbox, assembling the different parts the
groups had written), and I pointed that out in the following class,
explaining the problem and its consequences. I urged the students to spot
the places of the article where the copy&paste happened and fix it
themselves, without pointing out who made what mistake. The same will happen
with the rest of the articles until the end of the course, witht help from
online ambassadors and other experienced editors that have been occasionally
mentoring the students.

I'm lucky enough to have a campus ambassador who's a very experienced
editor, having written some featured articles
himself<http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usu%C3%A1rio:OTAVIO1981>(hes
actually not a student). I cannot stress more the advantages of
working
with an ambassador who's also an experienced wikipedian - if they're not
yet, then it's crucial tha the ambassador edits on their own as much as they
can. Also, I happen to have been a wikipedian even before becoming a
professor, so I know very well the importance of writing with the WP rules
constantly in mind. Actually, almost half the course has been dedicated to
working on those skills with the students, rather than just teaching them
the specific contents of Roman history and culture (I can do that because
this is one of the elective courses on the curriculum).

It's true that many students don't understand exactly why plagiarism is bad,
and how to cite correctly. They have serious handicaps on researching and
writing skills, and what I've been noticing with the WP experience in class
is that it reveals these problems in a very clear way, which a regular
course doesn't. This also requires shifting paradigms of behavior (oh my,
how academic this sounds...) both in students AND in professors. I'm still
figuring out how to deal with this new situation. One challenge in
particular is how to have the students working on their assignments when not
in class. My next classes will be regular lectures, away from the computer,
because I don't want them to create an automatic association between editing
and the lab/class hours. In our case this is even more critical, because
History students are not used with working on computer labs, so the
environment is very distracting for them.

And on specific gender issues: my trick was not to make them conscious of
any of this (also because here in Brazil we don't focus as much on a gender
gap agenda, for better or for worse...). Still, my most engaged student is a
woman, and she's considering acting as a campus ambassador when this course
ends. : )

If anyone is interested on discussing more strategies to overcome the
problems with students, and on the GEP program as a whole, please do contact
me <http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usu%C3%A1rio:Domusaurea>, over email or
through my talk page.

Juliana.

> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2011 12:50:31 -0700
> From: LiAnna Davis <ldavis at wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Supporting Campus Ambassador programs [Fwd:
>        Issue   of Copy-Pasting]
> To: Increasing female participation in Wikimedia projects
>        <gendergap at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
>        <CAEjBVQYGA2tZeW-+L-d2C-bLZxP2Bakut__97GNoZMcL8=ebkA at mail.gmail.com
> >
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Lennart's exactly correct: The primary goal of our program is to improve
> the
> content of Wikipedia by reaching out to academia. We're of course very
> excited if a student becomes a Wikipedian (and many have), but that's not
> our primary goal.
>
> And yes, our students do get slapped on the hand for failing to follow
> Wikipedia policies to the letter--just like all other new contributors do.
> One key difference, though, is our students have access to Campus and
> Online
> Ambassadors, who are able to encourage them to fix any problems -- they are
> a mentoring role to the new editors who provide that crucial welcoming
> voice
> from the community. Copyright, notability, and other issues are covered
> during in-class and out-of-class Wikipedia labs with students, and they're
> given reference materials about the policies, but not all students listen
> the first time around -- that's just part of working with people. :)
>
> In terms of mentoring female Campus and Online Ambassadors -- please do!
> And
> feel free to encourage any female students as well. Links to our three
> programs operating right now:
> http://enwp.org/WP:USEDU
> http://enwp.org/WP:CANADAEDU
> http://enwp.org/WP:INDIAEDU
>
> LiAnna
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 7:37 AM, Lennart Guldbrandsson <
> l_guldbrandsson at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >  Sarah's conclusions are in sync with what I've heard from the team at
> the
> > Wikimedia Foundation. But, and that's a crucial point, the goal with the
> > collaborations with the universites is not to make everyone a Wikipedian.
> I
> > know, that may be strange or counter-intuitive. It certainly was for me.
> > Instead, the goal is to increase the quality of those articles that they
> > university courses are working on, and if some of those who edited during
> > the course stays on as Wikipedians, that's terrific, but it cannot be the
> > goal. I am sure that Frank Schulenburg, Rod Dunican, LiAnna Davis or the
> > other people in the (now) Global Education team can provide more insight
> > into their original thinking. Or Pete Forsythe, for that matter, who I
> know
> > is on this list.
> >
> > I know that is but one of the aspects of Sarah's email, but it's the one
> > aspect I know something about :-)
> >
> > Best wishes,
> >
> > Lennart
> >
> > Lennart Guldbrandsson,
> > Wikimedia Sverige http://wikimedia.se
> > Tfn: 031 - 12 50 48 Mobil: 070 - 207 80 05 Epost:
> > l_guldbrandsson at hotmail.com Anv?ndarsida:
> > http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anv%C3%A4ndare:Hannibal Blogg:
> > http://mrchapel.wordpress.com/
> >
> > ------------------------------
> > Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2011 10:30:10 -0400
> > From: sarah.stierch at gmail.com
> > To: fredbaud at fairpoint.net; gendergap at lists.wikimedia.org
> > Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Supporting Campus Ambassador programs [Fwd:
> Issue
> > of Copy-Pasting]
> >
> >
> > I took some time last week and actually went through the "female" editors
> > (many of the students openly identify their real names and/or genders)
> > participating in class programs.
> >
> > 1) Most don't edit Wikipedia after the class is over - and this goes
> beyond
> > gender. I determined this by studying their user contributions and also
> > using a tool to examine contributions and gender for specific
> WikiProjects
> > (specifically WP:Public art which developed as a program with students
> > before the Campus Ambassador program existed)
> > 2) A nice amount of them generally get slaps on the hand for their lack
> of
> > understanding on "How Wikipedia Works"
> >
> > I'm not sure if this means that something in the system is broken (i.e.
> > we're not educating students and professors on how Wikipedia works write,
> > we're not providing ongoing outreach - which seems to be a problem in a
> lot
> > of areas of WP outreach...), that the students genuinely have no interest
> > (and that's fine, they are "forced" to do it, after all), or what..
> >
> > Some of these problems involve image deletion (due to lack of
> understanding
> > on how fair use/copyright works in Wikipedia), article deletion, blocking
> of
> > accounts, or just plain calling people out on their talk pages. I didn't
> > gather all this information in a pile - I've looked at upwards of a
> thousand
> > female editors accounts over the past two weeks - but, it's there, if you
> > dig around a bit.
> >
> > -Sarah
> >
> > On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 10:13 AM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net
> >wrote:
> >
> > Help is needed.
> >
> > Fred
> >
> > --------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
> > Subject: Issue of Copy-Pasting
> > From:    "Hisham" <hisham at wikimedia.org>
> > Date:    Fri, October 7, 2011 7:46 am
> > To:      "Wikipedia Ambassadors India"
> > <wikipedia-ambassadors-india at googlegroups.com>
> >         wikipedia-online-ambassadors at googlegroups.com
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Hi Team
> >
> > This problem is continuing and is fast approaching disaster proportions.
> > Please see these comments
> >
> > <
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:India_Education_Program#Queries_from_the_Wikipedia_community
> > >
> > and
> > <
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Ambassadors#Concerns_over_impact_on_article_quality
> > >
> >
> > Please urgently do the following
> >
> > a) Constantly repeat to every student that copy-pasting is not acceptable
> > b) Monitor the work of your students - and make sure they edit in their
> > sandboxes before they go live (and only go live after you ok it.)
> > c) Please let's have the Campus & Online Ambassadors working closely with
> > each other to do point (b) and to track, monitor and correct the work of
> > your respective students.
> >
> > In the next few days and weeks, the problem is going to explode unless we
> > control it because many students' deadlines are approaching.
> >
> > Please treat this matter with the highest urgency.  The very future of
> > our program is at stake.
> >
> > Many thanks.
> >
> > hisham
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Gendergap mailing list
> > Gendergap at lists.wikimedia.org
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > GLAMWIKI Partnership Ambassador for Wikimedia <http://www.glamwiki.org>
> > Wikipedian-in-Residence, Archives of American Art<
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User%3aSarahStierch>
> > and
> > Sarah Stierch Consulting
> > *Historical, cultural & artistic research & advising.*
> > ------------------------------------------------------
> > http://www.sarahstierch.com/
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list
> > Gendergap at lists.wikimedia.org
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Gendergap at lists.wikimedia.org
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> LiAnna Davis
> Global Education Program Communications Manager
> Wikimedia Foundation
> http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_Education_Program
> (415) 839-6885 x6649
> ldavis at wikimedia.org
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