[Gendergap] A Scholar Comments on Wikipedia Class

[Karen Sue Rolph]

Report to Colleagues Interested in Gender and Culture in the Wikipedia Classroom,

It will be no surprise to you that getting used to Wikipedia contributing is a process, and as far as I understand, this is a forum for tackling the gender gap in particular.  Our particular Ambassador program is working well, the individuals involved are accessible, knowledgeable, and supportive.  Additionally, I've intervened on my students' behalves and generated a message for another user when necessary, asked for tolerance, explained learning circumstances. I always get positive responses from users who'd challenged incompetent newbie contributors.

As the real-time classroom leader or navigator, Wikipedia is fun because it challenges learning paradigms, and must be engaging and "student-centered" at the same time as we all discover together; for this reason, I 'brand' the class as a workshop.  A structure such as this, however, leads to productivity and grading ambiguity- a greater and more complex issue than I want to elaborate here.  But for instance, I am "grading" contributions and the mid-terms are group collaboration projects- there is some academic frontier here.

The class' students are a mix, both in gender and ethnicity, and representative of the U.S. today.  Some students first language is not English.  I loosely utilize Wikipedia's Educator materials.  We are reading, "Good Faith Collaboration..." as a basis for historical and societal background about how Wikipedia has evolved, and we augment our understanding with outside readings, sometimes from the news (WikiLeaks and Anonymous are examples of topics that interest students).  We have assigned grammar captains (majors in relevant fields), PhotoShop captains (experience with PS), and an HTML captain (writes code).  Student-to-student participation in the workshop is important, yet added to that, students today come to class with mobiles, have Facebook, Twitter, and Google + at the ready.  They quickly learn that Wikipedia is social too.

We listened to an interview of Sue G., that Sue had pasted the link in this forum a few weeks back.  I sought feedback, especially from females.  Only a few students commented, but generally I sensed a generation gap about the significance of low female participation in Wikipedia.  The most important message I received from female students is this: Their parents have warned them that the potential for danger lurks on the internet, and that open disclosure of information on their identities, or even becoming a viewable entity, such as a user, could put them at risk.  I cannot emphasize enough, how my students heed the cautionary advice of their elders.  Students mention concern that their true identities could become known, they express anxiety about the potential for becoming targets of any kind of ire, including slights that more mature adults have long since learned to live with.  Cyber-predation and identity theft come to mind.  This gender forum too, is published to the internet and names names... moreover, ones ideas here may be batched with topics that one is disinclined to comment on in public fora.

My students hesitate to voice their views in this forum; though I had wished they would share them, I cannot ask students to do something they worry is not in their best and safest interests.  Some students complain that 'gendergap' contains non-pertinent sends, some females agree a female-only forum would feel safer; females are divided on this latter.  One Latino male said he quickly got bored with this forum, that people don't realize the world of single mothers is devastated by exigencies far removed from Wikipedia, especially for females of color.

Males (Caucasian) in this class are more likely to make early contributions- then get them dinged or deleted.  This seems to be based on preliminary self-confident behavior, but once chastised by Wikipedians for low competence, they quickly become more hesitant to contribute.  In contributions by females, grammarian females show high confidence and competence for ongoing contributions.  Some females demonstrate surprisingly high levels of self-uncertainty.  For some, self-perceived as not certain, passion for topic and zest for engagement may slightly mitigate low contribution probabilities.  To generalize for the purposes of this forum, ethnically African American, Latino, and African males "behave" more like females in terms of uncertainty and contribution engagement.

Low social credibility, an outcome produced by new engagers' problematic contributions, seems to be a cocktail of: contributor culture of origin, natural inclination (for scholarly pursuits), social self-measure- predicaments and constraints, gender-based sensitivity, and ability to roll with the punches as a newcomer to knowledge-driven social fora.  It should not be surprising that many newcomers to Wikipedia, already in a sea of social media, will opt for that Tweet about someone's idea, rather than dig in, and do the dry and rigorous research required to construct a survivable statement with references and links in Wikipedia.  Young knowledge pursuers want to own something and have safe places to do it.

Overall, females want non-gendered usernames, they worry true identity data "escapes" and IP data could make them vulnerable to mishaps.  While all students want to learn and make meaningful contributions, students see there are problems with the importance of their contributions.  Experience with deletions and comments can help students rise to a higher level of contribution, raise the bar on themselves, learn to navigate Wikipedia culture, and grow into a sense of importance in the Wikipedia super- and infrastructural (for lack of better terms) communities.

I encourage all students to see themselves becoming those overseers and caretakers of Wikipedia and its future. Empowerment starts at home (females remind us), then is supported in the classroom (such as by a caring mentor).  Just 
as I had professors and others whose ideas have an enduring impact on my
 intellectual and societal present, one tries, through the scholarly 
mission, to inspire this new generation of eager, good-hearted, 
well-intentioned, capable of excellence, set of newcomers.  I don't have revolutionary ideas (yet).  But please, hang in there good people!

KSR


 		 	   		  
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