[Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail

[Swaroop Rao]

Also, it seems that CoEP has most of the problems; I think that CoEP being
an engineering college, is more rigid in its working than other
science/commerce/liberal arts colleges. What we could do is branch out into
other streams (other than engineering I mean); Law for example: Why not
have law students editing about Intellectual Property Rights (I know the
irony we'll have in case we have copyvios out of that). And the course
structuring in other colleges are a bit different, so they could
accommodate programs like the Wikimedia education programs much easier.

Swaroop Rao
(MikeLynch <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MikeLynch>)

Steering Committee member, United States Education Program




On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 19:39, Swaroop Rao <raul.swaroop at gmail.com> wrote:

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> On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 19:33, Bala Jeyaraman <sodabottle at gmail.com>wrote:
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>> >>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.
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>> +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
>>
>> In my four years of college, i copy pasted almost every single assignment
>> given to me. I did not know it was wrong and wouldnt have cared if someone
>> from outside pointed it to me. The attitude i saw from the IEP students is
>> exactly the same. Unless the students are penalised for plagiarism by being
>> failed in the course, they are not going to change the behaviour. And how
>> many of your professors in indian education were concerned that you were
>> copy pasting your assignment. (None of mine cared - i can say with
>> confidence that is the same case in 99% of the cases in India now)
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>> So no amount of increasing the number of campus ambassadors, their
>> training, etc would help unless there is a stick involved - How many times
>> did the campus ambassadors tried to tell students not to copy paste?. How
>> many of the students heeded the warning. This issue was raised in Late
>> August. There were two whole months to hammer in the message and it didnt
>> work out. Why? there were no serious implications for the students
>> involved. There is a conversation in Srikanth's en wiki talk page, where a
>> student tries to weasel out of copyvio by giving every excuse in the book -
>> he did not correct his behaviour, but instead tried everything to get the
>> copyvio he added approved.
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>> Those who got blocked weaseled, whined and pleaded for an unblock but in
>> many of the cases reverted to the previous behaviour, when they thought
>> they could get away with it. They are socking and trying to remove cleanup
>> comments from the IEP page !!!!. Without a no-nonsense approach, you will
>> only gets repeats of such behaviour.
>>
>> So here is what is to be done:
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>> 1) *Keep the number low* - The next round should have less than 50
>> students. No classwide / collegewide  blanket programs. Make this a
>> "interested students only" program.  We have clearly demonstrated there is
>> no manpower to handle anything more.  We have about exhausted the goodwill
>> of the en wiki community. If this repeats, you are looking at a wholesale
>> blocks for the students and IP addresses.
>>
> That's true. The enwiki community is losing its patience really.
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>> 2) *Penalise those who copy paste*  -  either they should be failed by
>> their professors. If the professors dont care, drop the program and stop
>> going back to that institution. Wikipedia is a work in progress, we dont
>> need plagiarism by Indian students to shore it up. We are not that
>> desperate.
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> A bit harder to enforce, since academic plagiarism is practised en masse
> by many professors themselves (not generalizing, just saying that the
> problem goes way deeper than the students).
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>> 3) *The CA to student ratio has to be 5 to 1. *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.
>>
>> Go back to the drawing board. Dont start with 1000. not even a 100, start
>> with a 50.
>>
>>
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>>
>> Swaroop Rao
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> Steering Committee member, United States Education Program
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