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

[Srikanth Lakshmanan]

On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 09:13, Ashwin Baindur <ashwin.baindur at gmail.com>wrote:

> *On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 4:28 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan <srik.lak at gmail.com>
>  wrote:*
> *I would also request people not to fork any more new threads on this
> with same thoughts, *
>
> CAMPUS AMBASSADOR SETBACK - The Local Community Viewpoint
>

Ashwin, I respect you views, know the amount of interest and time you had
put on the program, but have wide differences. The common thing between
your viewpoint and Hisham's is both of you take out bulk of the blame from
students, shield them. The difference being Hisham cites culture,host of
other things, you point towards management. I will cite only 2 reasons,
Scale & Quality of students. IMO, nothing else could have helped
significantly get a different outcome than this.


> After the training, Ashwin wrote a note of dissent on the talk page of the
> CAs at the time:
>
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/India_Campus_Program_Reports
>

Agree with you on this, Infact i raised on the other thread, Hisham still
maintains CA's doesnt need to know enough of Wikipedia to teach others. If
it happened in PPP too, its still a wrong way I would say. May be the US
students were more mature that even with peer level (in terms of wiki exp)
ambassadors, they did a decent job. Indian students are not that mature
probably.


> * Need for a project management approach, with deliverables, stages,
> identification of scaling resources, check-backs, etc was emphasised.
>
> * Attitudes of local college managements and how to function in Pune
> academic environment were given.
>
> * Intricacies of academic systems in the colleges, universities in Pune
> were explained.
>
> * Cultural differences between colleges, their goals and priorities, as
> well as their mutual relations were told.
>

All the above are overrated and irrespective of either way, the outcome
would not have been much different. Tell me do WikiProjects use project
management etc ? Project management is waste of time in these type of
projects where there are a lot of other main things to worry.

* We asked an important question - what is the take home for the stake
> holders? There were adequate take-homes for the CA (a certificate, a T
> shirt,  learning experiences. opportunities in Wikiworld, recognition and
> some marks for the exam). The participating students were only getting
> wiki-knowledge and assignment marks. Was that enough to motivate them?
>  There was no formal training for the actual editors.
>

Huh, Do you think CA did "better job" FOR the extra T-shirt and for other
students, T-Shirts would have made a difference. Come on, please dont go to
down to this level, AGF that like you and me, they too wanted to
volunteer(at least many of them, some might have been forced in the 800
number). Scale was the problem for lack of "enough" training & the quality
of students you get at that scale and it was acknowledged.


> * Most important of all, what is there in return to the stake holders like
> colleges? This question is still unanswered. There has to be something for
> all the stakeholders (CAs, students, college teachers, college management,
> community, IEP program team) in the program. Right now, only Wikipedia is
> the ultimate beneficiary. and partly CAs and some students. For a win-win
> situation, everybody must have something reasonable for take-home.
>

Well, infact colleges got very nice publicity. Its ideally the colleges
that won without doing much(may be just entertained Hisham and Co and gave
them few hours). Even CA's / students' tried contributing and failed for
some reason.  So colleges won, Wikipedia lost. Reality IMO.


> * We repeatedly emphasised the need for the staff person to be recruited
> from Pune and function from Pune 24x7, who should preferably be
> Maharashtrian, and having local contacts, rather than be from Delhi,
> stationed there and fly in here for a few days a week (as we were told it
> would be).
>

Would have made no big difference,seriously. If in one class visit they
dont get the message "Do not copy" after numerous warnings online, how
would they get it had one person physically being present. "Maharashtrian
and Local contacts" Ah? are we doing some cinema shooting / driving around
the city? I thought it was about Wikipedia editing.


> * The need for rigorous training of campus ambassadors and formal training
> for student editors.
>
> The community felt that it was not quite being listened to. Slowly contact
> with Hisham dwindled. We never came to know except through grape-vine when
> Hisham was in town. It appeared to us that the community mattered no more
> and the IEP (India Education Project) was the whole-soul focus. Our contact
> with local CAs was not encouraged. When a request was made for at least one
> Pune community member to be on the CA mailing list so that we could be in
> the loop and available for ready support and advice, it was not agreed.
>

I suppose most of the students got online with a User account, nothing
stopped anyone from communicating to students. I did try and wrote on few
pages, few responded few did not.


> There was one exception. One of the Pune community members, Prof Radha
> Misra is running a quiet, efficient IEP in her department and college. The
> community was invited by her to conduct two wiki-academies in different
> workshops in her College which were successfully conducted. We thank her
> for the support to the community.
>

Great, 2 Wiki-acadamies, unofficial IEP. Cool. Please give us more
links, at least usernames of Students.


>  Reluctantly we came to the conclusion that the local Pune community had
> no role to play in IEP. We decided to support the initiative passively.
> Soon the WikiConference planning started and our attention and energies
> were drawn away.
>
>
> The Pune Community had a clearer idea of what was involved right in the
> beginning than the India Programs office. Its decades of experience in
> academicia (Harshad & Sudhanwa), FOSS (Sudhanwa), industry (Mandar),
> teaching (Sudhanwa & Ashwin), marketing (Mahitgar), retired marathi expert
> (J), business (Suhel), armed forces (Ashwin), Wikipedia experience (in
> en:WP, mr:WP, Commons) and the general management experience and detailed
> on-site knowledge etc were a very valuable human resource, and these were
> made available to Hisham. He chose to sip sparingly. Perhaps, just perhaps,
> if he had drunk deeply - recognised that the miniscule Pune community was a
> true well-wisher, and had made us a true partner, the outcome may have been
> different.
>

None of the other skills you had mentioned would have had impact on the
program apart from en:WP editing skills, mr:WP skills to an extent,
considering policies are mostly same but yet enwp is a vastly different
community(I don't think I need to tell that to you, you know better). I
have no idea of how strong "Pune community" is with that experience, can
you please enlighten me with some details?.

In summary I would still put the blame where it belongs, students and some
extent to faculty. In fact, a greater audit needs to be done on the role of
faculty on IEP and PPP to see the differences, I think Nitika had done some
work on it, might be doing more.

-- 
Regards
Srikanth.L
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